Please help!

[lisamarie930]

Hi all my boyfriend has a salt water tank. He had a blue tang and a blue starfish. Tang died out of the blue and today the star fish had a bite taken out. He got a lion yesterday after the tang died! Any help!!

 

[Big Tex]

wow.. um lets get some more details on the tank, fish and whatever else is in the tank.. also blue tangs are notorious for ich, and thats probably what happened, getting a lionfish out of the blue doesnt sound like a good decision either unless its an all predator tank which it sounds not to be..

 

[lisamarie930]

Thanks the tang looked fine and ate. He has coral and liverock. A clow as well he had wanted the lion . The other fish seem to be ok. The star fish was fine then he walked away and it had a bite

 

[woody390]

What size tank what type of lion and clown too?

 

[lisamarie930]

55 gal, dwarf lion and the clown is bigger maybe 2 inches

 

[woody390]

Ok that's too small for a blue tang FYI. Also do you have any test kits to check tank parameters?

 

[lisamarie930]

Everything was tested and it was fine . We took it 2 places. And really to small for a tang?

 

[woody390]

Yeah you may get away with a kole or tomini but not a blue. Did they tell you what the readings were when they said they were ok? How long has the tank been running?

 

[lisamarie930]

A few weeks and I don't remember .:/

 

[woody390]

No worries did you cycle the tank before you added fish?

 

[lisamarie930]

Yea . Would the dwarf Lion go after the star .

 

[woody390]

Lions will eat anything that will fit in their mouth so depends on size of both

 

[lisamarie930]

Oh boy!! I better go check to see if it ate anything

 

[mr_X]

A few weeks and I don't remember .:/

If you only had the tank a few weeks, it's probably not cycled, and is way too early to put corals in. Tell him to slow down. Don't add anything more until you get the tank squared away. Fish don't die from nothing. There was probably an ammonia spike from all the new additions.
The lion is going to swallow the clown, and as stated, whatever else it can fit in it's mouth. I don't think that's what happened to the starfish however. Can you take a picture of the starfish?

 

[bribo12]

No the star was starving before you bought it. You probably didn't acclimate it long enough and it has started to die. Blue starfish are linckias which don't last long in captivity. And yes blue hippo tangs get over a foot, a 55 is nowhere big enough

 

[lisamarie930]

The tank was his friends tank and gave it to him

 

[lisamarie930]

The lion is only like 2 inches long if that

 

[bribo12]

If its a dwarf lion that tank is fine for it

 

[Big Tex]

The tank was his friends tank and gave it to him

That means he broke it down before the move and reassembled once at your house you will still have a small cycle even if he did everything right, had he ever moved a tank before? Did he use new sand or rinse the old? How mucb of the old water did he use?

You guys need a test kit for yourselves and save the trip to petco, they use the strips and those are useless, you need a marine/reef specific test kit, I suggest the API master kit.

What equipment is he running on the tank? Hob? Wet dry Sump? Refugium sump? Canister filter?

 

[lisamarie930]

Everything was the same from his tank and we have the kit the 40$ one.