Help, why are my fish dying one by one

[arvielee]

I have a 55 gal saltwater. I have lost 3 fish in 3 weeks. They swim around like they can not control their direction. The lost one yesterday and now another one is acting strange. He floats to the top of the tank, when it's normal behavior is to stay in mid tank. The water, temp, chem are all ok.
please email me at arvie.kennedy@yahoo.com if you may have any ideas. it is a pearlscale butterfly.

[SaltyJZ]

Have heard about that however i dont know enough about the disease. I am only a month old into satwater and i have my hands full. My first two clowns died. My new clowns, one has a white string which is parasites and the other hasnt eaten in two days. What is giong on. All other damsels are fine. Ph tests 8.2 no ammonia, low nitrates. ????? Help

[Reefing Madness]

I have a 55 gal saltwater. I have lost 3 fish in 3 weeks. They swim around like they can not control their direction. The lost one yesterday and now another one is acting strange. He floats to the top of the tank, when it's normal behavior is to stay in mid tank. The water, temp, chem are all ok.
please email me at arvie.kennedy@yahoo.com if you may have any ideas. it is a pearlscale butterfly.

If your water params are ok, what are they? Ammonia and Nitrites should be 0, if no, then that is your problem. Trates under 20 with fish and your ok. How long have you had the fish? How long had the tank been set up?

[Reefing Madness]

Have heard about that however i dont know enough about the disease. I am only a month old into satwater and i have my hands full. My first two clowns died. My new clowns, one has a white string which is parasites and the other hasnt eaten in two days. What is giong on. All other damsels are fine. Ph tests 8.2 no ammonia, low nitrates. ????? Help

What are your Nitrites? How long have you had these new fish? Do you run a skimmer or mechanical filtration? Have you cleaned the filter? Do you have Live Rock? What are you feeding the Clowns?

[Original Fin]

Salty, please start another thread...it's easier that way.Arvielee,Please provide us with you system details. How long has system been running?What type(s) of filtration do you use? Live rock (how much) wet/dry sump, canister, skimmer, HOB filter, etc...What are your ammonia, nitrite, PH temp and salinity?List all current livestock, and recent losses/addsDo you quarantine new adds?Does the angel, or any of the others that died, have any physical defects, discolorations etc...?

[BoogeryIcecream]

I have a 55 gal saltwater. I have lost 3 fish in 3 weeks. They swim around like they can not control their direction. The lost one yesterday and now another one is acting strange. He floats to the top of the tank, when it's normal behavior is to stay in mid tank. The water, temp, chem are all ok.
please email me at arvie.kennedy@yahoo.com if you may have any ideas. it is a pearlscale butterfly.

Sounds somewhat like a form of acclimation stress/some sort of internal disease (I can't remember the name at the moment) More likely, acclimation stress = low to high salinity.
Best bet is to see what your parameters really are IE: Ammonia,Nitrites should be prioritized right now and then pH, etc there after + Get some pictures to see if there's any form of noticeable sickness.

But basically to sum it up based on what I can assume
1. For unable to swim fish = fish going from low salinity to high/swim bladder problem/internal disease of sorts
2. Fish floating unusually = swim bladder problem/internal disease/lethargy from bacterial infection of sorts/parasite attack/ammonia burn/nitrite burn.

From my experiences having butterflies in the past, they need to be acclimated significantly longer than other fish since 90% of them are rather sensitive to any form of transition regardless of how hardy it is (Particularly of pH).

So hopefully this general thing helps out until you give us more of what we need to help you

[trustinno1]

could be heavey metal posiong what is your water source

[arvielee]

Addition to last post. My nitrite is 0, Amonia 0, Nitrate less lhan 5.oppm, salainity 1.022-1.023, temp 76-80. I have done all test possiable and the only thing that is over the top is the KH is high. On my 55 salt I have a 65g SmartfilterRena Bio/Chem/Mec forced filtration system, with 2 bio filters and I replaced one bio filter with Chempur after my Angel died last week. I have a 65g Super Skimmer, a 1050 and 425 gph wave makers.

Stock= 1 gama, 1 goby, 1 dragonnet, 1 pearscale butterly, 3 tang, 2 cloudy damels, 2 clowns. 1 Anemone
(Lost Stock) 1 white tang, 1 angel, 1 butterfly,

Inverts: 2 stars, 3 crabs, 1 clam, mis hermits, snails, 2 shrimp, cleaner clams
Coral: SPS, Mushroom (small qty
Live plants 2 small

Live Sand 55 lbs
Live Rock 55 lbs

[Original Fin]

Please dont take this as a slam, but IMO your tank is way overstocked. Again I ask, how long has thatsystem been running? Im sure the biofilter is struggling. Many of the fish you listed will outgrow the 55 if they havent already. With that kind of stocking plan, you should be looking at least at a 180 or bigger.I also have a 55 and I only have 5 small fish in it. I could stretch one or two more before I would expect to start having problems, so I suspect overstocking is at the root of your problem.

[Reefing Madness]

You may have a bully in the tank, beating up the others. You'll have to sit out of fish view, and watch the behavior for alittle time just to see whats going on in there. The bully will pop the others and chase them until they can't take it anymore and.......

[arvielee]

I do not take it as a slam, any advise is appreciated. I do not know what IMO is though. maybe it is better that I do not know. The tank has been up and running since March 1 2011. I need to be more careful who I take advice from. When purchasing equipment and fish, I was told that what I was buying would work just fine. Apparently not. We watch the fish all the time and there does not seem to be a bully in the bunch. The tangs are bold, but they do allow the other fish to feed just fine. and they do not chase them around the tank. The only fish that seem to chase each other are the 2 yellow tang. The blue tang is to busy picking at the rock looking for more food. They are feed 1 cube a day, with half being green and half being meat. I also have copepods and occasionally will feed mysis. The skimmer seems to keep be doing a great job at keeping the trash out of the water, and it is cleaned and emptied every day or so. So my bio load is to heavy and I need advice as to which type of filtration I need that would handle the bio load, or should I sell off some of my livestock.

[Original Fin]

The bad advice out of the gates thing happens to everyone I think. IMO is In My Opinion...hahah, not as bad as you thought hopefully.



I see that you have some corals in there, and that is an important consideration when weighing your options on the future direction of this system. If you were running a fish only with live rock (FOWLR) or a fish only with man made biomedia (FO), you could stock on the heavier side to your personal prefference, and the biofilter would probably handle it. The welfare of the fish being overcrowded...well, that's a contentious and debateable issue that I don't care to weigh in on here, but you might expect to get some flack for it in certain circles. Especially when it comes to Tangs. Just sayin.

Anyway, since you apparently wish this to be a reef system, my advice is to thin out your livestock. Otherwise, you will likely run into issues with excessive nutrients, some of which are poisonous to corals and inverts, and others that are fuel to nuisance algae and bacteria. There are certainly tricks to keeping a heavy bioload in a reef tank, but as a beginner, it's a lot easier to just stock lighter. When you get a few more miles under your belt, then you might want to look into some of those tricks, but a lot of them require specialty equipment and/or sump design that is almost impossible to retrofit to a running system. A lot of these things need to be built into the system before it ever gets wet.



So, to sum up...lighten the bioload, or lose the corals, or upgrade to a bigger tank.

[chrisfont23]

Stock= 1 gama, 1 goby, 1 dragonnet, 1 pearscale butterly, 3 tang, 2 cloudy damels, 2 clowns. 1 Anemone
(Lost Stock) 1 white tang, 1 angel, 1 butterfly,

Inverts: 2 stars, 3 crabs, 1 clam, mis hermits, snails, 2 shrimp, cleaner clams
Coral: SPS, Mushroom (small qty
Live plants 2 small

Live Sand 55 lbs
Live Rock 55 lbs

Tangs are notoriously ich magnets. Have you noticed black or white spots on any of ur fish? Any scratching or flashing?

[Reefing Madness]

The bad advice out of the gates thing happens to everyone I think. IMO is In My Opinion...hahah, not as bad as you thought hopefully.



I see that you have some corals in there, and that is an important consideration when weighing your options on the future direction of this system. If you were running a fish only with live rock (FOWLR) or a fish only with man made biomedia (FO), you could stock on the heavier side to your personal prefference, and the biofilter would probably handle it. The welfare of the fish being overcrowded...well, that's a contentious and debateable issue that I don't care to weigh in on here, but you might expect to get some flack for it in certain circles. Especially when it comes to Tangs. Just sayin.

Anyway, since you apparently wish this to be a reef system, my advice is to thin out your livestock. Otherwise, you will likely run into issues with excessive nutrients, some of which are poisonous to corals and inverts, and others that are fuel to nuisance algae and bacteria. There are certainly tricks to keeping a heavy bioload in a reef tank, but as a beginner, it's a lot easier to just stock lighter. When you get a few more miles under your belt, then you might want to look into some of those tricks, but a lot of them require specialty equipment and/or sump design that is almost impossible to retrofit to a running system. A lot of these things need to be built into the system before it ever gets wet.



So, to sum up...lighten the bioload, or lose the corals, or upgrade to a bigger tank.

[arvielee]

Not ich on any of the fish. The pearlscale is now lying on the bottom with fins in rapid motion like it is gasping for air. The fish ate this morning as normal with the rest of the other fish. Thanks for all the advice.

[Reefing Madness]

Not ich on any of the fish. The pearlscale is now lying on the bottom with fins in rapid motion like it is gasping for air. The fish ate this morning as normal with the rest of the other fish. Thanks for all the advice.

When disease and other issues enter the tank, its survival of the fittest. I am wonder though, with all those fish, if your O2 levels are down. the skimmer you are using is not exactly the best for that system. Have you modified the skimmer? Mesh modded the impellar?