i dont want my clown to die help please!

[mattt6511]

hello i just got a clown this morning put him in my tank and later tonight noticed he was swimming relaly funny in the back corner facing down towards the sand just like hovering there. is he oky??
I flipped out when i tested my chemicals my ammonia is 0.25 nitrite 0.25 and nitrate 20 the tank is only 2 weeks old its a 10 gallon i used cured liverock from my other tank and livesand is my fish going to die is there anything i can do to help it thanks
ps i thought my tank was done cycling the ammonia went all the way up and al the way down

 

[TeenReefer]

Mine does that too at night, i think that is how they sleep in the corner of the tank. He has been doing it for almost two years now. He should be all right. Keep us posted.

 

[Guest]

I have to agree, mine found a corner toward the top and sleeps there... sort of bobs up and down... funny really.

As well, keep us posted...

 

[mattt6511]

I have to say thank you very much i may be able to sleep now lol i was sooo upset i hope the little guy is oky, honestly i should of been more responsible and waited longer like i did with my other tanks... it was my own fault any advice on the ammonia at 0.25 i know it should be 0 but is that enough to kill my percula

 

[mattt6511]

i just check on him and he was like floating on the surface i thought he was dead then it look like he woke up or something and just moved a little???? is this oky do clowns sleep like this i have never seen any of my other fish sleep before i didnt htink they did

 

[StripesTheEel]

if they stay still they wont be able to get the oxygen through their gills.. and apart from that clowns always have that "wonky" swimming stroke about them..

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Are you sure you are done cycling? 2 weeks doesn't seem like a very long time unless you used Bio Spira to cycle it.

 

[mattt6511]

no it must not be dont cycling is there anything i can do or buy to help it finish

 

[demodiki]

You could try daily 1-2 gallon water changes. Do you have a bit of sponge or something that you could take from an established tank and put it in the new tank?

 

[lando]

Your tank is not done cycling yet. I suggest taking the clown back too the LFS and letting your tank finish the cycle. I can not garuentee that the clown will survive the cycle. Your tank is just too young for livestock yet. You can add another fish when NH3 and NO2 are at zero. In the meantime, you will need to doo daily water changes with aged SW to keep the NH3 and NO2 levels low enough so as not to posion your fish.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Another option is Bio Spira for saltwater, if you can get it. I've seen success stories with it cycling your tank, but at the same time, they first stocked fish that were a bit more hardy too. Then as the tank matures, slowly add more delicate fish.

 

[lando]

Another option is Bio Spira for saltwater, if you can get it

This would not be my first choice. It is pretty expensive and does not really prepare the tank for long-term habitation. Spend the money on more LR instead, your tank will thank you for it in the long run. Nothing good in this hobby happens fast. If bio-spira was truly the miracle product it is made out to be it would have much stronger backing by hobbiests.

 

[Brenden]

Bio Spira is garbage in my opinion. I have never heard a success story from its use. I have tried it on two QT tanks and I would have been better off burning that money for heat. Bacteria is to sensitive to be refrigerated then dumped into 75+ degree water and expect it to survive. Not to mention salinity and PH changes etc. You would be better off to do multiple WC and use something like prime to de-toxify the ammonia and nitrites.

 

[rubikcube]

I "cycled" my 29 gal with a bag of purigen from seachem. This basically filtered out all the bad stuff until my live rock was going strong. From day one I haven't been able to detect ammonia or nitrite. Also, using this method, I was able to bypass the curing of the liverock and add fish on day 2.

This isn't exactly a tested method of establishing a tank, but it worked really well for me.

 

[AMANIQU77]

Dude, I feel sorry for the clown swimming in partially cycled water. Actually, from his parameters, I can tell the cycle is barely kick starting. It's like me walking into a room full of carbon monoxide. That sucks. For the sake of the poor specimen, you might want to consider removing the specimen until the cycle finishes.

 

[Brenden]

I "cycled" my 29 gal with a bag of purigen from seachem. This basically filtered out all the bad stuff until my live rock was going strong. From day one I haven't been able to detect ammonia or nitrite. Also, using this method, I was able to bypass the curing of the liverock and add fish on day 2.

very VERY! bad information.

 

[lando]

I have to agree. It is very bad information. Quick-cycle products may give give you good water parameters in a short period of time, but they do very little to prepare the tank for a long-term habitation. The ONLY way to do this is to let the beneficial bacteria colonize over time. There are no exceptions.

 

[rubikcube]

I don't know how it's bad. I don't use the purigen anymore and the tank is fine. From day one I still haven't read more than 0 ammonia or nitrite.

 

[AMANIQU77]

Well the thing is, the quick cycle makes you think that you're going through a short cut. But you know what happens when you take short cuts, you will get cut short in the long run.

There is definitely no sense in making the cycle faster. The object is to have enough ammonia commensurate to the volume of your tank (and the future specimen) to let nitrifying bacteria flourish. Then, with that amount of nitrites, you can then have enough food for denitrifying bacteria to flourish. You need a good colony of bacteria to maintain a good biological cycle. What's the use of taking short cuts? Wouldn't that innacurately give you a reading of zeros but doesn't really guarantee that you have enough bacteria out there?

I treated cycling as a Right of Passage, back when i started a couple of years ago as a freshwater fan. The problem with making shortcuts to cycling is when you start adding some specimen, there's always this moment where you hold your breath because you don't know whether or not ammonia will start to show up again with the new "waste-creator" added. In my opinion, when people start saying "why did my tank go cloudy again" or "i placed a fish and a week later it died" or "i have ammonia OUTBREAK(is what the shortcutters call it)" that's a good possibility that they tried to either make short cuts or did an inefficient cyle.

Those are my two cents. However, I hope that the original poster's Nemo survived. cheers.