can somebody help me, my parameters are all normal but all the new fish I add to the tank keep dying

[zeszes]

So I recently moved across the countrty and had to tear down my old 55, and as a result, I had to downsize.its an upstairs unit and our landlord said no big aquariums but I managed to get him to agree to a 24 gallon and I set it up using my old substrate, and live rock that I brought in buckets, most of the coraline didn't make it, granted it was a 12 hour drive and I had to fill 30 gallons (ato) of rodi on a 50gpd unit all while still trying to move everything else at like 3am so i'm not too surprised. regardless the tank cycled fine, and the coral and frags I brought with me managed to survive the cycling process too. A month later, everything is happy as can be, all the coral are doing great, I'm having some fantastic visible acro growth after just a month, only thing that didn't make it is a poor fox coral that's been holding on for dear life somehow but I don't think it has much longer, I got a new CUC, seeded some new coraline into the tank, things were going great.
As I have a good bit of nps coral in my tank and really wanted a mandarin, I decided I didn't want to wait the year for the tank to mature, so I began cultivating my own phytoplankon and copeopods in my office. after regular seeding of pods while I cycled the tank, I'm ready for my first fish, a red mandarin. great, name him Funkfreed because why not, and he's thriving, with weekly dosing of pods, he's eating healthy, and even taking on to mysis on his own when I feed.

I give the tank another 2 weeks, check my ammonia and see it's 0, and I decide to get my second fish.
It's only 24 gallons, so I didn't want to shock it with a full school of fish, so I planned on adding 1, waiting a week or 2 until things settled down, and adding the next one until I had a nice little school of 3 or 4, so I started buying them a week at a time, I'd do my weekly 25% water change, my temp may drop 1 or 2 degrees, get the fish, come home, everything would be normal by then and drip aclimate

week 1 - add firefish (name him puddle) - all levels are normal
week 2 - add firefish (name him Pond) - all levels are normal
week 3 - add firefish (name him pool) - all levels are normal
week 4 - I was satisfied for the time being
week 5- all of them died over night, one was twitching still hanging on, , funkfreed and the cuc are all doing well still
after the fish were removed, I ran some tests and here is what I came back with

salinity - 1.026
temp - 78
ammonia - 0
nitrate - 1
nitrite - 0
phosphate 0.02
Alk 10
Ca 475
mg 1350

another week, water change, tried a flasher wrasse
dead 2 days later
similar story, everything else in the tank is perfectly fine.

my only thought is that maybe it's just this store, because I got the mandarin at one store, and the wrasse and firefish at another. I've heard of stores keeping their fish at lower salinity to keep costs down, like 1.020 but I don't know, I wasn't testing their water

I'm really at a loss because my mandarin and all inverts are doing great, it was just those 4. fish add up fast and throwing 200 away like that does not feel good, i'd prefer to figure out whats wrong before I just throw money at more fish to see who survives, any advice would be appreciated.

 

[TX_REEF]

Do you have surface agitation for oxygenation? What is your acclimation process for new fish?

 

[bushdoc]

Puzzling, but there are few things to ponder:

• Drip acclimation of fish is not really recommended, especially if they are transported for long time ( which might not be your case)
• Parasites might be an issue as it seem as you didn't treat or quarantine your new additions
• Many fish from the ocean are not properly acclimated and habituated to Aquarium environment by wholesalers and LFS stuff- I am always trying to buy his which were in LFS for at least 2 weeks
• Yes, LFS keep their fish at lower salinity and bringing them up to higher one should take days, not hours

The last issue is most probable in my opinion, but what to do if you have coral in your tank?
I would suggest small QT, like 10 Gal or even less-match salinity there with LFS salinity and raise it slowly over several days. You could also quarantine fish there

 

[zeszes]

Do you have surface agitation for oxygenation? What is your acclimation process for new fish?

plenty of agitation from the skimmer, return, and gyre, I don't think that's the case. drip acclimation over a half hour to an hour, depending on how long I let it run.

 

[TX_REEF]

if you're going to drip acclimate, make sure to do so long enough to match salinity to your display. I started doing this rather than a specific set time, and haven't had any casualties of new fish since. Bushdoc is of course correct, a longer acclimation with quarantine would be better, but I'm not that patient... It's also possible that 1 fish per week in new additions on a tank that size is too quick. I'm not a scientist but I'm assuming the lower activity level of the mandarin causes less of a bioload on the tank, which is why he's doing fine.

 

[zeszes]

Puzzling, but there are few things to ponder:

• Drip acclimation of fish is not really recommended, especially if they are transported for long time ( which might not be your case)
• Parasites might be an issue as it seem as you didn't treat or quarantine your new additions
• Many fish from the ocean are not properly acclimated and habituated to Aquarium environment by wholesalers and LFS stuff- I am always trying to buy his which were in LFS for at least 2 weeks
• Yes, LFS keep their fish at lower salinity and bringing them up to higher one should take days, not hours

The last issue is most probable in my opinion, but what to do if you have coral in your tank?
I would suggest small QT, like 10 Gal or even less-match salinity there with LFS salinity and raise it slowly over several days. You could also quarantine fish there

strange, I've always been taught drip acclimation is absolutely the best practice unless you've gotten fish shipped to you.

I'd quarantine my fish if I could but we really don't have the space unless I want to tear down my office, and move my computer off the desk for the time I'm quarantining, but I cant really afford to do that. this is kind of a fight between working with what I have, as to not tick the landlord off, given how reluctant he was to let me have the first tank in the first place.

 

[zeszes]

if you're going to drip acclimate, make sure to do so long enough to match salinity to your display. I started doing this rather than a specific set time, and haven't had any casualties of new fish since. Bushdoc is of course correct, a longer acclimation with quarantine would be better, but I'm not that patient... It's also possible that 1 fish per week in new additions on a tank that size is too quick. I'm not a scientist but I'm assuming the lower activity level of the mandarin causes less of a bioload on the tank, which is why he's doing fine.

I mean, I check my acclimation water, float him for temp, and then drip till everything is pretty close, which normally takes half an hour to an hour.
I was checking the parameters before my water change every week to see if I was getting any spikes and if the tank was ready
normally I'd add the fish Sunday, see some ammonia Monday/Tuesday, it'd lower Wednesday, be 0 by Thursday and stabilize the rest of the week. and see almost 0 increase in nitrates or algae in the tank

I'm actually trying to raise my nitrates a little bit but I want to feed food to stuff rather than just overfeed my cynarina until i'm left with shrimp decaying on the substrate, plus any kind of movement in a tank with a mandarin that's exploring behind my rock work and in my caves out of sight 80% of the time would be nice

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Welcome to Reef2Reef and sorry for your losses!

If this were a salinity shock/acclimation issues, I'd expect problems to arise shortly after the fish is added to the tank rather than weeks later. Personally, I'd guess disease/parasites, though the firefish all dying overnight while the mandarin is doing well is odd. I know flukes pretty rarely affect mandarinfish, so maybe something like that?

Maybe @Jay Hemdal would have some thoughts.

 

[Lavey29]

So you have a 17g system (24g with rocks) and you added 4 fish the first month believing that your existing rock from your prior set up speed cycled the tank.

What was your ammonia source for the new tank once you added your existing rock to it? There had to be bacteria die off during your travel and subsequent set up. The tank did not instant cycle.

What is your current filtration consist of?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I really do not think this has anything to do with acclimation - if I read it correctly, the fire fish were added over 3 weeks, and they all died at once on the fifth week. The mandarin survived. There are some parasites that mandarins are resistant to.

Did any of the fire fish show rapid breathing or not eating before they died?
Did any of the fire fish show ripped fins?

Jay

 

[zeszes]

I really do not think this has anything to do with acclimation - if I read it correctly, the fire fish were added over 3 weeks, and they all died at once on the fifth week. The mandarin survived. There are some parasites that mandarins are resistant to.

Did any of the fire fish show rapid breathing or not eating before they died?
Did any of the fire fish show ripped fins?

Jay

not that I know of, they were eating fine, behavior wasn't abnormal in any way. I woke up the next day, my lights kicked on at 10am like they do every day, and they were all lying on the bottom of the tank.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

not that I know of, they were eating fine, behavior wasn't abnormal in any way. I woke up the next day, my lights kicked on at 10am like they do every day, and they were all lying on the bottom of the tank.

Acute death in all fish of certain species can really only point to two things: protozoan disease or a transient life support system failure.

Probably not in your case, but we’ve seen cases where a pump got turned off and the dissolved oxygen dropped, killing the fish. I’ve even had a couple of cases where a person topped up their tank and all the fish died. How? Well, the tank lacked aeration. The water splashing back into the tank with the lowered water level made just enough agitation to keep the fish alive. They topped the tank up, the agitation stopped and the fish died from lack of oxygen.

In the end though, your fish likely died from Amyloodinium/velvet, that is the most common swift killing fish disease. The only symptom is rapid breathing and that is easily missed.

Jay

 

[zeszes]

So you have a 17g system (24g with rocks) and you added 4 fish the first month believing that your existing rock from your prior set up speed cycled the tank.

What was your ammonia source for the new tank once you added your existing rock to it? There had to be bacteria die off during your travel and subsequent set up. The tank did not instant cycle.

What is your current filtration consist of?

it's an aio with a skimmer,
I added the first fish after a month, but I also started with turbostart and microbacter, and was regularly feeding my nps corals.
I was checking regularly my ammonia, nitrate and nitrite levels,
as per a normal cycle, my ammonia went up until it went down and I saw nitrates, then I started seeing nitrites. and did water changes accoringly.
this was within the first 2 weeks. everything was stable at for the following 2 weeks, and I was seeding pods so I added 1 fish after the first month. everything was well cycled by that point. and the fatalities happened over the course of the NEXT month, no fatalities until 2 months in
lets not forget, you can buy live rock that's been shipped in a damp paper towel and it maintains the denitryfing bacteria too, my rocks were kept in buckets of saltwater

 

[zeszes]

In the end though, your fish likely died from Amyloodinium/velvet, that is the most common swift killing fish disease. The only symptom is rapid breathing and that is easily missed.

are mandarin immune to velvet?
i'm not particularly familiar with marine fish illness, I've always been more involved in the coral and just use fish as movement livestock to give the scape some energy.

 

[Lavey29]

it's an aio with a skimmer,
I added the first fish after a month, but I also started with turbostart and microbacter, and was regularly feeding my nps corals.
I was checking regularly my ammonia, nitrate and nitrite levels,
as per a normal cycle, my ammonia went up until it went down and I saw nitrates, then I started seeing nitrites. and did water changes accoringly.
this was within the first 2 weeks. everything was stable at for the following 2 weeks, and I was seeding pods so I added 1 fish after the first month. everything was well cycled by that point. and the fatalities happened over the course of the NEXT month, no fatalities until 2 months in
lets not forget, you can buy live rock that's been shipped in a damp paper towel and it maintains the denitryfing bacteria too, my rocks were kept in buckets of saltwater

sounds like you covered your basis well but there is still die off with live rock even more so in wet paper towels as you mention. Not complete die off but enough that you get a brief spike in ammonia before it cycles through it but based on your detailed reply here I do not think that was a factor now.

However, quick and multiple fish deaths typically mean disease or something was off in the tank environment such as 02 depravation, ammonia spike, water chemistry way off. etc...

 

[Rick's Reviews]

Too much to go through, should be easy tank/ aquarium transfer.
Start with basics, initial setup to transfer to another.
I'm assuming 'bot' in this case

 

[zeszes]

sounds like you covered your basis well but there is still die off with live rock even more so in wet paper towels as you mention. Not complete die off but enough that you get a brief spike in ammonia before it cycles through it but based on your detailed reply here I do not think that was a factor now.

However, quick and multiple fish deaths typically mean disease or something was off in the tank environment such as 02 depravation, ammonia spike, water chemistry way off. etc...

plenty of surface agitation, ammonia is 0, parameters are normal, thats kind of why I made this post in the first place, see the main post, I provided the parameters, because everything looks normal, i'm just getting fish deaths from everybody except the first fish that in the tank

 

[zeszes]

Too much to go through, should be easy tank/ aquarium transfer.
Start with basics, initial setup to transfer to another.
I'm assuming 'bot' in this case

definitely not going to restart, I do not want to live cycle all my coral again and have to figure out how to get all my pods moved over so my mandarin can still regularly eat
No idea what you mean by 'bot' unless you're trying to say i'm on bot on here (no clue why)

 

[Rick's Reviews]

definitely not going to restart, I do not want to live cycle all my coral again and have to figure out how to get all my pods moved over so my mandarin can still regularly eat
No idea what you mean by 'bot' unless you're trying to say i'm on bot on here (no clue why)

Too many things to go through in regards to your aquarium.
honestly I would take a step back and review the information provided.
Information here is so great and invaluable, so vast that you may need a day or two to look into.

One problem at a time instead of all problems at once.
Start with basics. 1 2 3

 

[Lavey29]

plenty of surface agitation, ammonia is 0, parameters are normal, thats kind of why I made this post in the first place, see the main post, I provided the parameters, because everything looks normal, i'm just getting fish deaths from everybody except the first fish that in the tank

Then perhaps one or more of the fish you added had disease such as velvet which kills quickly. This disease would remain in your tank until the tank went through a fallow period. The mandarin may have some immunity because they have a thick slime coat on their body which is why other fisk don't nip at them.