[Yvonne]

We have had 5 green chromis for about 2 months. We just noticed today that one of them has a discoloration problem. He looks like his scales are darkening, or small spotches are lightening. They are not white spots, just lighter in color than the rest of the fish. He eats fine, swims fine, still hangs out with his little fish buddies- looks pretty normal, except for the discoloration. It also seems that another chromis may be starting to get the same thing. Does anyone know what this is, and how (if) we can fix it?
Thanks!

[leebca]

Thanks for posting, Yvonne. Welcome to this new Forum on Reefland

The green chromis is a particularly nice fish. I use five of them in my quarantine tank as dither fish.

I've had the same thing happen to them as you've described. As dither fish I wasn't paying too much attention to them (My Bad). I let their diet and water quality diminish.

Once I improved their diet to what I recommend in my post (you mean I wasn't following my own advice? Yes.) AND improved the water quality, they recovered nicely.
Feeding Marine Fish and Fish Nutrition

They need good water quality. Check that you've got a clean tank without excess detritus around in the system. Have you checked chemistries lately? They don't like prolonged exposure to nitrites, even low nitrites over a long period of time; OR short high spikes of nitrites.

Lastly, boost their nutrient intake by providing vitamins and fats in their feedings per the above reference. You should see improvement in a week. If not, then the situation may be more bacterial oriented that they are not able to fend off.

Keep us informed of the progress and if the above approach doesn't show positive results in a week or so, let us know AND provide a photo if you can.

Good luck!

[BubbaWPB]

I've noticed my green chromis have temporary blotchy colors at night and when stressed. Sorta calico looking at times.

[newtothis]

we've had 7 or of them [in twos and threes] but they have all died and people say they are so easy to have in an aquarim. no reason discernable.

is that common or unusual? newtothis asks? please & thankyou

[leebca]

The blue-green chromis is a 'lively' fish. Very lay back and swims mostly in the open. They are still marine fish and as such do carry the stigma of needing good water quality and the proper nutrition in their lives.

If they were quarantined properly, acclimated properly, fed properly, and given the best environment, the fish has been known to live from less than a 0.5 inch size to a 3 inch size in the home aquarium.

My 0.5 size have doubled in size these last two years.

[Yvonne]

Did a water change, and the little guy looks a lot better. Thanks for the advice. I find that it is very hard for us to keep our nitrates down. What causes this, and how can we fix it? The water change was done last Tuesday night, and already by yesterday we had nitrates up to 15 or so!
Thanks again for the help!

[leebca]

The water change improving the fish indicates a water quality problem. I don't think it is a nitrate problem.

Have you routinely been checking for ammonia and nitrites? What is the pH of your tank water? What are the actual results you've gotten from these tests and measurements? How frequently do you perform water changes and what volume do you change out?

You can continue to do frequent water changes, but the fish (and you) are probably not going to like this for long. I suggest you find the source of the water quality issue. And, like I mentioned above, it isn't nitrates.

[Yvonne]

Sorry that it took me so long to reply leebca. Our pH is always around 8.3, the ammonia is always 0 and the nitrates are usually 0 but never above 0.03. The nitrates, on the other hand, are usually between 5-15!!!! I just don't know how to get those down. When we do water changes, we usually take out about 10-20% depending on how bad the nitrates are and when we last did a water change. We usually just do the change when the nitrates seem way too high- about 15-20. This happens about twice a month I would say. But even right after the water the change, the nitrates are still around 5-10.... never near 0. What are we doing wrong?

[leebca]

Yvonne,

The nitrates in your tank aren't a problem. As far as fish are concerned, nitrates up to 50 ppm are okay. The primary concerns for fish that are measured by home test kits are: ammonia and nitrites (notice the "i" there).

Your tank still may have water quality issues, but it may be something you can't measure with a home kit. Usually, if you make a large water change and the fish seem to improve, it is a sign that the problem is water quality.

Tell us more about your system:
Tank size
Equipment: Skimmer? Refugium? Sump? Kind of filtration going on? etc.
Maintenance schedule
When did the tank originally cycle? Did it cycle again recently? How long ago?
How old is the tank/system? When was it set up?
What kinds of foods do you feed the fish?
What other things do you put into the tank (food, chemicals, additives, etc.).
When you make up your saltwater, what water do you use? tap water? RO water? DI water? Distilled water? RO/DI water? or ?

Don't worry about the nitrates. Be more concerned about the fish.

How are the Chromis doing now? Do they look like they've returned to health or as they still looking like they have problem?

We're here to help!

[Yvonne]

Well, the tank was started just last January. IT cycled around the middle of Feb, and hasn't cycled again since. We used to test the water every week, but now only test it about every two weeks. The tank is a 75 gallon tank with a Rena Filstar XP2 sump with some biostars, 2 Whisper power filters, 1 Prizm protein skimmer, and one powerhead blowing through the live rock. We have sand for our substrate. We try to mix up what we feed the tank, but here's the list that we work from: Formula One, Formula Two, Frozen Mysis, Sally's Emerald Entree, Omega One flakes, and occasionally a couple of shrimp pellets. We try to add one meat based and one veggie based food each day. And we usually feed the tank once in the morning and once in the evening. We also add iodine every week, calcium every day, and phytoplankton (or some type of plankton) for a couple of our crabs and our long tentacle anemone. We use well water for the water changes. We usually do a thorough cleaning maybe once or twice a month. What I mean by thorough is we actually have to remove some rocks to get rid of the hair algea (the fish really don't like that), perform a water change, clean any fake plants or shells if they need it. It's just an algea problem that I thought maybe was coming from too many nutrients. I'm not really sure what's going on.

The Chromis are doing pretty well. There is one of them (out of five)that just tends to get stressed about every little thing. It is not too uncommon to see him have those spots, and then an hour later he is fine. It makes me wonder if it was really the water at all the first time that I freaked out. But based on all of the hair algea we have I have to believe that something is out of whack in our tank. What do you think?

[leebca]

Hi! I didn't connect it before. You posted the thread about hair algae? Is that the tank we're talking about here? I thought you had two different tanks! Stupid on me. :slap:

Now we're getting somewhere. Something is definitely 'out of whack' as you say. Now I understand why you kept writing that. You have low nitrates but that could be because the hair algae is 'eating' it. Your nitrates are good, but maybe they should be higher if the algae wasn't there. But in this case, hair algae just doesn't eat nitrates. They like phosphates and organic material in the water, best.

Check to be sure your skimmer is sized for a 125 gallon tank or larger. Make sure it is in fact pulling junk out of the water. If not, you need to adjust this or get a different skimmer.

I'll bet there is a chance there is a problem with the well water. Have you ever tested it for everything you can think of? At least test the well water for:
ammonia
nitrites
nitrates
and very importantly:
phosphates
silica

If the test kits are only for saltwater, then make up some fresh saltwater with Distilled water and adjust it to your specific gravity. Then make up some fresh saltwater with well water and adjust it to your specific gravity. Test both and record results to see if there are any differences in the concentations/readings.

There are test kits for both phosphates and silica, or have your LFS carefully test for both in the well water you use to make up your salt water.

Even if those two tests come up negative, I'd still suspect something in the well water is the contributing to the hair algae and maybe even your fish problems. I know the tank is 75 gallons (and that is large for what I'm about to suggest) but I think you need to perform an experiment. I'd like you stop using the well water for 12 weeks or so. A summer project?

Make a large water change (50% if you can) as soon as you can comfortably do so. This time, to make up the fresh saltwater I'd like you to buy either:
RO/DI water, or
Distilled water

I know it won't be cheap. And it will be a pain to handle it.

After that water change, give the aquarium one of your very thorough cleanings to get rid of the hair algae. Continue to make weekly water changes with RO/DI or the Distilled water of no less than 7 gallons at a time.

I like the variety of foods you are feeding, except the pellets and flakes. Often, wheat and wheat products are used to bind the pellet and flake slurry. Check the ingredients. Also, pellet food usually adds a lot of phosphate to your water, which you want to avoid during this experiment. If the flake and/or pellet foods contain wheat or flour, don't use them for the time being. If they contain phosphates, we want to be sure they are bound into the food and not 'soluble phosphates.' If you need help with this, let me know.

Please read the phytoplankton ingredient list to make sure it is all marine organisms AND read what the phosphate content is. Please tell me what the ingredients say, the name brand and manufacturer if you can't find the phosphate content and I'll see what I can do to get the info on the phosphate content of that brand.

You can't stop putting phosphate into the tank. Marine life uses phosphates, especially fishes. What you want to do is stop putting extra and unnecessary and wasted phosphates into your tank. To reduce the 'wasted' phosphates, I'd like to be sure you're doing a couple of extra steps in the feeding process:

When you want to feed mysis, choose a frozen, saltwater mysis. Thaw some in freshly prepared saltwater (as made up from the above directions). When it is thawed, strain it with a brine shrimp net. Pour freshly prepared saltwater through the mysis in the net to rinse away all the juice they came in. Put that drained and rinsed mysis into some freshly prepared clean saltwater and then feed that to your fishes.

I'd like you to substitute every other Formula 1 feeding with some frozen gut loaded brine shrimp (Sally's/San Francisco Brand makes two different kinds of these, and there are others to choose from too). Prepare this to feed the fish just like the above instructions for the frozen mysis. The brine shrimp can be gut loaded with: spirulina, HUFA, Omega-3 Fats, vitamins, etc. just so long as they are not just plain brine shrimp, but gut loaded brine shrimp.

With both the mysis and shrimp feedings, add very little into the tank, and only what the fish will actually eat.

You didn't mention if you're feeding frozen, dry, pellet or ? of the Formula 1 and 2. If you're feeding the frozen, you don't want tiny pieces of it going uneaten. Arrange the feedings to introduce the minimum of uneaten or wasted foods. If its pellet, read the ingredients list.

Every other day, soak one feeding in vitamins; every other day soak one feeding in a fat supplement.

On all feedings, remove any food from the tank that isn't eaten, after each feeding.

If you can do the above for 12+ weeks, I would not be surprised to see your algae problems diminish or go away AND the problems with your fish go away.

I don't see the reason for the frequent additions of iodine. Have you been measuring iodine and determined it needs to be added? If not, add less -- maybe only add the same amount once a month -- or start measuring it to see if you need to add any at all.

I know the above is a lot of extra work. But it is worth a try to do all these things to see what impact or effect it has on your fish and algae problem.

What do you think? or . . . . Want to give this a try?

[Yvonne]

I have tested the well water for nitrates, but not for the rest. I'm going to be gone for the weekend, but next week I will test the well water for all of these things you mentioned (I am particularly interested in the phosphates) and we'll go from there. I'd like some evidence that the well water is a problem before we go crazy. I'll definitely keep you posted (I really appreciate your help) and I'll check out all of those ingredients in the food in the meantime. Oh, and the Formula One and Two are both frozen. I'll have to check on the protein skimmer to see what it is rated for.

[leebca]

Smart move. My concern is that the well water can have many things in it that you can't test for. The home tests for saltwater are pretty limited, when you think about it.

Have a good weekend! Travel safely.

[Yvonne]

Well, Leebca, I've been waiting for my pet store to get in a phosphate test so I could answer all of your questions at once, and still no luck. But I did look at the ingredients of the pellets and flake, and you were right about the wheat in the pellets. You know, I've been A LOT more careful about how many pellets go in the tank and how long they stay in there, and so far the algea is doing so much better- I can't believe it. We also had an occurence that has made me feel a bit better about the water quality. When we finally got home from our trip- it was a little longer than anticipated- our poor little long tentacle anemone was sucked up into one of the filter intakes!!!! We actually had to break the tube to get him out because he was really in there. Well, I just can't believe how well he came back and how fast he healed. He looks as beautiful as ever with a little bit of one side still smaller than the rest. I figure that if our water was that bad, he probably would have had a much tougher time coming back. Anyway, thanks for your help, and I will keep the DI water in mind if we continue to have trouble, but I'm hoping that we can make this work without the hassle and the $$$$$$$$$$$.

[leebca]

That was good news. Welcome back! and if you have any other concerns, we're here to help!