Something wrong with my clown

[Friction]

4 days ago I bought my first clown for my "new" nano tank. First day he seemed fine, exploring the tank but day two and three he just stayed In a corner and is now just laying sideways on the bottom. He hasn't eaten since he arrived. He looked fine at the store, followed my finger and came up for food. Tank is just over 8 weeks old, cycle is done and all my cuc look just fine. Ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 5. PH 8.2 salinity 1.025 temp 23c to 24c.
Any ideas?

 

[jwh0818]

How big is your nano tank?

 

[Friction]

60L with a 17L hob refugium where I have all hardware, (heater, skimmer carbon and LR)

 

[Friction]

Woke up this morning to a dead gold banded maroon clown fish not a good start to my salt water experience :/

 

[carey]

Sorry about your clown. :-(

Sometimes this just happens, with no reason or anything you did so don't take it too personally. If your tank is properly cycled I would just try again.

Good luck

 

[Bectan01]

How did you acclimate it? What does your set up look like? If you are going to get another clown, try a percula or ocellaris clown - maroons get too big for your tank anyways...

 

[Friction]

I left the open bag floating in thank, added little tank water after 15 minutes for the next 20 minutes or so then took fish out of bag and placed in tank. Tested bag water for ph, salinity and temp, all were the same as my tanks water. I will go for a percula or maybe a fire fish next as id like to have 2 clowns and a fire fish. I'd really like to know if there was anything I did wrong before buying another fish. 1 thing I did notice fluctuates daily is my temp. Itgoes from 22.5c to 23.5 even 24c during a 24hr period, even after I changed my heater to a bigger and better model and also put a glass lid over tank.

 

[Bectan01]

Next time try the drip method, much more effective. However it doesn't sound like that was the problem if the water matched your tank water. I've lost fish before in the first few days, sometimes it just happens. What kind of lighting do you have? My temp used to swing that much when I ran t5-ho until I switched to LEDs. If you solved the temp issue try a smaller clown...

 

[Mebbid]

If you're going for ocellaris clowns I would suggest getting two that are kept together rather than buying one at a time.

As for the fish, it's hard to tell. Stress from the move could have let an infection take hold or get worse. He could have had issues during transfer. It really could be a number of things.

 

[Friction]

I'm running a beamswork led fixture with a mixture of blue and white LEDs on for 8-10hrs a day. I was thinking maybe the heater is not in a high flow area so I placed it in the return chamber of my hob refugium and still get same readings.

 

[Friction]

If you're going for ocellaris clowns I would suggest getting two that are kept together rather than buying one at a time.



As for the fish, it's hard to tell. Stress from the move could have let an infection take hold or get worse. He could have had issues during transfer. It really could be a number of things.

Ill put it down to something wrong with fish before I bought it. I read that I should stock my tank slowly that's why I wanted to buy fish one at a time. With percs or ocellaris I was thinking of buying first one bigger than the second one id get and might stop fighting. Am I thinking right? Also, I would add fire fish first

 

[Mebbid]

Ill put it down to something wrong with fish before I bought it. I read that I should stock my tank slowly that's why I wanted to buy fish one at a time. With percs or ocellaris I was thinking of buying first one bigger than the second one id get and might stop fighting. Am I thinking right? Also, I would add fire fish first

You can try that but there are no guarantees. That's actually exactly what I did with mine (buying both at the same time of different sizes) and there was never any aggression. The clowns however are a very aggressive fish and if the big one decided to push it then the smaller one will get the crap kicked out of it. It's best to add them at the same time so theres no territory issues to compound on top of the other stressors.

 

[Friction]

So yesterday I decided that I should try another fish after the loss of my first fish. I went and got me a nice looking fire goby, brought him home, did the usual stuff to get him in his new home ie floating the bag in my tank for over an hour, adding 5ml of my water to bag every 20mins after the first half hour he was there. I let him out and he was swimming happily around the tank. I tested the bag water for PH and salinity and was same as tank. I woke up this morning to a dead goby what am I doing wrong here! I'm really bummed about all this. My tank parameters are fine, Ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 5. PH 8.2 salinity 1.025 temp 23c to 24c. Is there anything else I can test for, check or change?