Kurt_Nelson
Aquarium Advice Addict
Question about O.Clown behavior while acclimating to a new tank...
So I finally get the QT cycled and am ready to quarantine my first residents for my main tank. Last night I go out and buy a cute little 1" long O.Clown and a good sized cleaner shrimp from the same tank at the LFS. Get home and water parameters in LFS water were nearly exact to my QT! (SG 1.024, my tank ph 8.3-8.4... LFS water maybe 8.2). I do a drip acclimation on both clown and shrimp for about 60 minutes since the parameters matched fairly close, and put them both in the QT. Temperature difference might've been 2 degrees at the most.
Once in the QT, the clown stayed about half way down in the tank, and was swimming vigorously in one spot. Kind of looked like me treading water. After the lights went off (dimmed 15W in the QT, with a night light in the fairly dark room) the clown pretty much drifted up towards the top, staying in one place just barely under the surface. This morning (about 12 hours after going in the QT) he's still in the same spot, near the surface - not swimming as hard as last night, but still seems to be swimming harder than he needs to, to stay in one spot.
I guess I'm just looking for others experiences to know if this is "normal", or if I should be doing something that I'm not. Can't think of what that something would be offhand, but figured I'd see what folks had to say.
I haven't fed him yet, but plan to tonight. The shrimp - the one I was most concerned with - is just one happy go lucky guy. He's bebopping all around the tank, seemingly pretty happy. He goes over and checks on the clown every once in a while and then seems to have a little obstacle course route through the PVC couplings and over to the filter intake.
As a side note, I finally put substrate in my main tank, will probably add a cleanup crew this weekend once things settle back down in there. Will finally get some pictures up soon as well as a "lessons learned so far" writeup that I promised a few weeks back.
So I finally get the QT cycled and am ready to quarantine my first residents for my main tank. Last night I go out and buy a cute little 1" long O.Clown and a good sized cleaner shrimp from the same tank at the LFS. Get home and water parameters in LFS water were nearly exact to my QT! (SG 1.024, my tank ph 8.3-8.4... LFS water maybe 8.2). I do a drip acclimation on both clown and shrimp for about 60 minutes since the parameters matched fairly close, and put them both in the QT. Temperature difference might've been 2 degrees at the most.
Once in the QT, the clown stayed about half way down in the tank, and was swimming vigorously in one spot. Kind of looked like me treading water. After the lights went off (dimmed 15W in the QT, with a night light in the fairly dark room) the clown pretty much drifted up towards the top, staying in one place just barely under the surface. This morning (about 12 hours after going in the QT) he's still in the same spot, near the surface - not swimming as hard as last night, but still seems to be swimming harder than he needs to, to stay in one spot.
I guess I'm just looking for others experiences to know if this is "normal", or if I should be doing something that I'm not. Can't think of what that something would be offhand, but figured I'd see what folks had to say.
I haven't fed him yet, but plan to tonight. The shrimp - the one I was most concerned with - is just one happy go lucky guy. He's bebopping all around the tank, seemingly pretty happy. He goes over and checks on the clown every once in a while and then seems to have a little obstacle course route through the PVC couplings and over to the filter intake.
As a side note, I finally put substrate in my main tank, will probably add a cleanup crew this weekend once things settle back down in there. Will finally get some pictures up soon as well as a "lessons learned so far" writeup that I promised a few weeks back.