Help! Sick dragon wrasse not eating

[jlorah2006]

I have had the fish for one month it is still very small but here in the past week it's just been laying around the bottom and sleeping under the sand a lot. I did a water test and my levels are good 8.2ph, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, but my nitrates are high 40ppm I did water change but it's not going down. But all the other fish are perfectly fine. And today it had made no effort to eat. What should I do?


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[jlorah2006]

Btw I have it in a 37 column tank with a porcupine puffer coral banded shrimp small snowflake eel and a green chromis and yellow tang.


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[carey]

Dragon wrasses typically eat live food. You might try that. Ghost shrimp if he is big enough or live brine. The tank size is gonna play a BIG BIG role in the future though as a yellow tang has no place being in that small of a tank. The high nitrates are just the first symptom. The puffer also requires a HUGE tank as they get HUGE. That shrimp will also be dinner for either the puffer or the wrasse.
Good luck is my best advice at this point. I think you may have been given some bum information on your stocking.

 

[jlorah2006]

Thanks yeah all of them are fairly small I have a 55 already waiting for them and I'm in the process of a 200gallon build but I've been having trouble with the nitrate any suggestions on how to get rid of it?


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[carey]

It will be hard with that kind of bioload, but cut back the feeding and up the water changes. Only way to do it really. do you have any corals that you feed? If so stop that. You do not want to add anything that is organic to that tank cause it will break down into nitrates. Even if the fish/coral eat the food they poop it back out so it still stays in your tank.

 

[Salt H20 victim]

Do you have a protein skimmer? And what type if substrate do you have on the bottom? The skimmer will help you with your nitrites and if you dont have a good sand base for the wrasse to burrow under the rocks he's gunna be very stressed... Hence the not eating


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