I am new to the Saltwater Hobby and my first mistake was probably going out and buying a 75 gallon tank. :dunce:

After a month I bought 9 Astrea snails and a couple of Damsels. A few weeks later when I thought the tank had cycled through, I purchased a Dog Face Puffer. In about two weeks I was shocked as my Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate levels had climbed. When I got my water checked I was told to do a water change immediately. I did as told and bought my own kit and three days later the levels had changed, but not much. I soon found out that using tap water was a big mistake after being mislead by a store associate. I had previously read the New Marine Aquarium, by Michael S. Paletta, and decided to set up a quarintine tank to save my fish. This time i used RO/DI and mixed the water with some Instant Ocean Salt and Let that sit in my 20 gallon tank with a Maxi-Jet 600. After 12 hours I put my Puffer in the tank, little did I know he had Marine ich. He had stopped eating in the 75 for a few days and I wanted him out of there stat. He still refused to eat the frozen Krill and frozen silver sliders so i bought live shrimp. At first he tried to catch them, but appeared to be to weak. I dropped in a dead one to fool him and he worked. I tried it again the next day and he wouldnt eat. In the 75 gallon tank I thought it had been cute seeing him roll in the live sand, but now I could see why he was itching. The White specs appeared and I bought him some treatment. I moved him to a bucket and moved the heater and pump in there for circulation and have been treating him for two days but he still refuses to eat. I would have left him in the tank, but i didnt want to kill the snails with the meds. I put a little cave in the bucket so the pump didnt blow him away but im afraid he is going to die if he doesn't eat..
Help???:cry:

I wanna know some reasons why the blue powder tangs is very hard to keep. I hope somebody can help.

Just yesterday I noticed one of my firefish in a location they don't normally go to. Upon inspecting it, it seemed "out of sorts". It's dorsal was a bit droopy and it was a tad lethargic, then I noticed it's tail looked like it had been chewed on by other fish. Fortunately it's still eating.

This is a bit alarming to me as I had a chromie drop dead a few weeks back with the same symptoms but it was done for in about 2 days and recently I had a tailspot blennie just disappear overnight (I think he got sick and croaked in one of his caves).

Does this sound like fin rot to you? Nitrates sit between 8-9, no nitrite or ammonia to speak of, Ph around 8.4 - 8.5. They all have been holding steady at those numbers for weeks now. I've been doing regular water changes using distilled water so I'm not concerned with any contaminents from the water unless it's the salt. I use the Marineland Salt which I was told is one of the better salts so I'm assuming it's not that.

All my other fish seem to be fine, the other firetail and the 2 clowns. Any thoughts or suggestions?

P.S. ( I do have some melafix to use if I need to but before dosing, I need to ID what it is)

so ive had a nano fish only tank for about the last year and had some clowns etc and recently set up a reef tank (2 weeks ago) and purchased a blue tang 3 days ago. he swims and acts normal when he eats and looks healthy but swimms up and down in one corner of the tank the rest of the time. ive never seen that behavior in any of my other fish in the past. his only tank mates r a yellow watchman goby and a purple stripe dotty back, but they stay to there own rocks. should i be worried?

Man, another problem. The tank has been stable for weeks now! 0 Ammonia and Nitrite. 5-10 Nitrate. {Varies} 8.0 pH. My occellaris clownfish has being denying food since last week.:thinking:I don't know why? It has a stringy like poop thats white coming from his stomach. I thought it was like constipation?!:rofl:It's just a weird thought. My cousin keeps freshwater fish and said that it was parasites. But then I was like thinking it was just freshwater and there different. Please HELP!!!??? This is the end so i'm :outtahere:

Hi, we just bought a Cleaner Wrasse because of a big infestation of ich in our 55g tank. We had gotten a kook tang about three weeks before and he came down with ich one week after. His condition is deteriorating slowly but surely. The cleaner wrasse has been in the tank for about an hour and a half but doesn't seem to be interested in the tang. He just has been exploring the tank. Is he trying to set up a cleaning station or is the tang not letting him clean. Any tips to get him to start cleaning.

I guess this is a set up question but is really directly related to the health of my tank. I have a 5 month old 29gal reef tank currently stocked with 1 false clown, 2 firefish, 1 blennie and Bob the sea anemone. There is about 30lbs of live rock and I have 2 jets keeping flow decent in the tank. I unfortunately have a hooded unit which has the normal flourescent lighting and mechanical filtration as one big unit. I'm eventually switching it to a T5 2 bulb lighting system with a different mechanical filter but that could be a month or so.

My question is, can I add one more fish and if I can, can I mix a black false clown with my existing normal (orange) false perc or do I need to keep the species exactly the same? My current clown does not host the anemone so if I do (or even can) introduce a new clown, will there be a battle royale in my tank?

Thanks in advance.

P.S (on a side note, I don't have a protein skimmer yet as I still had some questions I posted under a seperate thread)

my new clowns have been in for almost 2 days and all the sudden one is pacing the walls very fast and wont stop, the other is fine and normal, the water is almost perfect all coral is open, and the tank has been up for almost 7 months

please help, i dont want this fish to swim itself to death

I have a black clown fish and he is acting strange. First, his breathing seems labored, he breathes faster than normal and sometimes he has his mouth open for hours. He hasnt eaten in a couple days. Im not worried about him starving yet but I thought I would mention it. He has been hiding behind a lr at the bottom of the tank most of the day. At night he goes to the top of the tank and hides by my protein skimmer. I have seen some stringy poop clinging to him twice now and its clear on the ends with something in the middle. My tank is 85g, I tested my water today the sp is 1.025 the temp is 82f, ammonias and nitrites 0, ph 8.0, and nitrates are at 10ppm. The only tank mates he has right now are the cuc, and a arrow head crab. My tank is new I have had it up and running for a month and have had my clown fish for 2 weeks. Any ideas? :(

Looking for some feedback. I suspect it was brooklynella, but not positive, and I need some advice on how to move forward. Should I quarantine and treat the remaining four fish even though they show no signs of illness? First some background....

I had this little guy for just 18 days. He looked healthy and vibrant when I purchased him. I kept him in my 55 reef which was born May 9th, 2010. There are no corals yet, besides a couple mushrooms, palys and a Kenya tree branch. The clownfish was the 4th fish addition to the tank. All ready in the tank was a Diamond Goby, Spotted cardinal, and a six line wrasse. Everyone got along great. A week after adding the clown, I also added a bicolor dwarf angel...that was all I was planning to stock for fish in this tank. There are also quite a few different inverts in this tank...hermits, shrimp, urchin, hawaiian feather duster, snails and a very recent quadricolor BTA, meant for the Perc. The perc however was more interested in being hosted by the feather duster than the anemone. As for feedings, I feed twice a day rotation of mysis shrimp, marine pellets, and marine flakes. All fish eat well. The wrasse, angel and clownfish can't or won't take the pellets.
The clown was doing great until the morning of the 11th day, and he always ate well except for the last two days as his disease/infection progressed. The main symptoms were muted colors and a thick slimy white membrane that would shed off. There was also what appeared to be a wound centered in his left side middle white stripe. It was visibly swollen the first day I noticed it, and the center of the wound was discolored brown. He was also swimming uncharacteristically high in the tank, and had lond stringy white excrement.

Water quality has been stable the whole time at the following:
PH 8.2-8.4
Temp 78-80f
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0-5

Based on the symptoms, it didn't appear to be marine or black ich or velvet. Brooklynella seemed more likely. In performing the research, I realized that I was not at all prepared to properly treat as I do not yet have my quarantine tank set up. I now understand the importance of quarantine before introduction to the main tank, and I will not make that mistake again. What I was able to do that seemed to buy a little time, was to perform RO water dips. I made sure that temp and PH were adjusted, and dipped the clown for 5 minutes on three seperate occasions. This seemed to bring him great relief, as his appetite and vitality immediately came back upon reintroduction to the main tank. Within an hour, his slimy coating was gone. The next day, his wound appeared to be healing, and was no longer swollen. This seemed to work for about 48 hours before all the symptoms (except the wound) came back. Sadly, this morning, he succumbed to the stress of the third RO dip and died shortly after reintroduction. A post mortem examination did not reveal any discernable external parasites.

Looking forward, I know that I must institute a quarantine procedure as a proactive measure for not only the new arrival, but more importantly, the main tank. Considering the threat of an unknown parasite, bacteria or virus remaining in the main tank, should I pull the remaining four fish out and quarantine/proactively treat them? I don't want to stress them unnecessarily and they are not showing any signs of illness, but my concern would be if they could be potential immune carriers that might infect the next clownfish I add? BTW, it will probably be an occelaris this time as they are known to be hosted by a much wider range of anemones than the percs. The true percs natural hosts like carpets are generally too large, or too difficult for my system.

Aloha,

My questions stems from a debate about marine ich and never being able to keep it out of the display when using NSW.

Here in Hawaii (Oahu) we have two main sources we get our NSW from. One is Waikiki Aquarium and the other Anuenue Fisheries. Both of these sources are pumped up from a saltwater well into a storage tank where they are aerated. From there they are pumped as needed by the end user.

Will there always be a chance of marine ich using NSW?

AC-KEvin

I found it in the Gulf of Mexico. Im kind of worried because I'm sure by the time someone replies here it'll be too late. Any suggestions? I have him in warm freshwater because I have no marine aquarium setup. Should I add table salt?? I'm clueless; please help.

Hi All,
I need help. I had 5 ocellaris clownfish in my aquarium. 2 of them became a breeding pair and were laying eggs once every 10 days. I have successfully raised 6 clowns of which 3 clowns are 4 weeks and the remaining 6 weeks old. I have them inside a hang on tank in my aquarium.

5 days back, suddenly one night the breeding male fish started moving away from the female and was on the opposite side of the breeding spot with another juvenile clownfish. the following day, it died. 1 day later, one of the juvenile jumped out of the tank (this one was in the tank for more than 2 yrs and has never jumped). day before yesterday, another one turned up dead and this morning one more died. My tomato clown has gone missing for more than 2 days now and I assume he is dead as well. The only clown in my tank is the female clown and he doesn't look healthy. he stands vertical with head upwards in the middle of the tank near where it laid eggs and doesn't eat at all. My other fishes (1 Yellow tang, 1 damsel, 1 watchman goby, 1 banded pipe fish) are fine and eating well. The juveniles are also fine and eating so far (they share the same water). I tested water this morning and found the following readings.

sg 35
PH 8.0
temp 26
Ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate low/high 10/50

(i will be doing the alk test tonight and will post readings)

(same as readings last month and a month before). I make 10% water change every week and I use RO water.

I found a sea urchin in one of the live rocks I bought a few months back (very small one) and it has grown up now (1 inch now including the spine length). Not sure if he is poisonous and to be blamed. but other fishes look fine so am not sure what is causing this.

any help will be much appreciated.

Regards / Sashi

We just bought a Kole tang from an LFS and when we started to acclimate it, it just lay on it's side. I know that Blue hippo tangs sometimes do this but I'm wondering if Kole tangs do that too. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.