Hi, I'm trying to solve a mystery that almost (and maybe still will) kill my diamond goby. Sorry for this post being a little long, but you internet detectives need all the info you can get to try and help me solve this.... or maybe the answer is super simple and i'm a newbie with bad googling skills.
I have a biocube 32+skimmer. Its been up for a few months. Mostly through the ugly phase. Everything (was) rolling along pretty well. All fish and corals were happy.
Water: ph 8.2, am 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5-7, dkh 8.5, copper 0, phos slightly high (recently started gfo) I dont have exact because current test kit isnt accurate enough. Basically everything normal with slightly high phosphates
Fish: Everything are very small juveniles
2 clownfish
1 firefish
1 diamond goby
1 6 line wrasse
few blue leg hermits
2 nassarius snail
1 coral banded shrimp
Corals: I have a mix of cheap small frags to kinda figure out what is gonna work well in the tank (no zoas).... and up until yesterday all the frags were doing pretty well (even the sps frag and goni)
Yesterday I bought 2 more frags (picture of them attached). 2 types i didnt have. A leather (kenya tree i think?) and what was labelled at the LFS as a blasto, but didnt look like any of the other blastos next to it because it was like a translucent pink and like luminescent... So newbie me thought maybe it was some rare super pretty blasto, but in doing research after I was only able to internet one photo that matched from another r2r forum and someone replied that it was bleached and stressed and a normal blasto....which is kinda of sad because i think it looks 10x cooler like some kind of space alien... Anyway so I dipped and acclimated them and added them to my tank.
Anyway, here's the problem: All fish were good, then i come last night and see all the other fish were still normal but suddenly the diamond goby went from normal to sideways and gasping for air at the surface, trying to eat bubbles and flipping out of the water and smacking the hood.... I've done fish for a long time, this was a fish in agony he was not going to be alive in the morning. He had been in my tank for several weeks and up until then had been a totally normal, social, happy fish. I put in a bubbler thinking maybe it was air since it was so sudden, it didnt have any immediate effect on him. I tdont think it was air though since all the other fish and inverts are fine and I have good current and a skimmer.
I didnt have a QT, so tried to throw a 2am hail mary, I half filled a 5 gallon bucket with RODI I had and quickly mixed in some salt and threw in a bubbler and heater. The fish almost instantly swam down to the bottom of the bucket and hung out on the bottom (like a diamond goby would) as best as I could see in the bucket his gills seemed to slow down and he seemed much better. The only thing I had added that day was those 2 corals so I filled another bucket and did the same thing and took the 2 new frags out and put them in the bucket just to be on the safe side.
I retested all my parameters and nothing had changed in the water (that I could test for).
I did a ton of research on those 2 corals and, although the leather can kinda hurt corals near it they didn't seem to be toxic corals at all and I couldn't find anything on either of those corals hurting fish. Also, I should note that the goby was never particularly close to them when they were in the tank either.
Goby was still alive and seeming fine in the bucket today. So today I bought a small all-in-one to have a real QT and some prazipro thinking maybe it was parasites (I havent added prazipro to anything yet). Anyway, so I put the water from the bucket he was happy in, into the QT and bubbler and everything (no tank water) and then put those 2 frags into the QT with him since I didnt have anywhere else to put them and I was reasonably sure they were not to blame. Within a minute, in the QT, the Goby went to the surface and started gasping again, which he had not done all day. I immediately pulled him out and since (foolishly) I ran myself out of RODI water, I decided to chance it and put him back into the DT.....and he is fine again..... mostly happy, a little tired maybe, but eating, etc.
It seems to be these frags are somehow intensely toxic to him.... Any ideas guys? Were these corals misidentified? Am i missing something obvious? Should i just dispose of those frags and dose him for parasites in the QT? or maybe dose the DT? Trying to not kill any animals here and to also solve the mystery so I don't do it again.
Thanks!
Here is a picture of the 2 frags in the QT now. I didnt think to get any other pictures beforehand. The leather is more closed up than it usually was after acclimating due to being moved around a bunch.
I have a biocube 32+skimmer. Its been up for a few months. Mostly through the ugly phase. Everything (was) rolling along pretty well. All fish and corals were happy.
Water: ph 8.2, am 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5-7, dkh 8.5, copper 0, phos slightly high (recently started gfo) I dont have exact because current test kit isnt accurate enough. Basically everything normal with slightly high phosphates
Fish: Everything are very small juveniles
2 clownfish
1 firefish
1 diamond goby
1 6 line wrasse
few blue leg hermits
2 nassarius snail
1 coral banded shrimp
Corals: I have a mix of cheap small frags to kinda figure out what is gonna work well in the tank (no zoas).... and up until yesterday all the frags were doing pretty well (even the sps frag and goni)
Yesterday I bought 2 more frags (picture of them attached). 2 types i didnt have. A leather (kenya tree i think?) and what was labelled at the LFS as a blasto, but didnt look like any of the other blastos next to it because it was like a translucent pink and like luminescent... So newbie me thought maybe it was some rare super pretty blasto, but in doing research after I was only able to internet one photo that matched from another r2r forum and someone replied that it was bleached and stressed and a normal blasto....which is kinda of sad because i think it looks 10x cooler like some kind of space alien... Anyway so I dipped and acclimated them and added them to my tank.
Anyway, here's the problem: All fish were good, then i come last night and see all the other fish were still normal but suddenly the diamond goby went from normal to sideways and gasping for air at the surface, trying to eat bubbles and flipping out of the water and smacking the hood.... I've done fish for a long time, this was a fish in agony he was not going to be alive in the morning. He had been in my tank for several weeks and up until then had been a totally normal, social, happy fish. I put in a bubbler thinking maybe it was air since it was so sudden, it didnt have any immediate effect on him. I tdont think it was air though since all the other fish and inverts are fine and I have good current and a skimmer.
I didnt have a QT, so tried to throw a 2am hail mary, I half filled a 5 gallon bucket with RODI I had and quickly mixed in some salt and threw in a bubbler and heater. The fish almost instantly swam down to the bottom of the bucket and hung out on the bottom (like a diamond goby would) as best as I could see in the bucket his gills seemed to slow down and he seemed much better. The only thing I had added that day was those 2 corals so I filled another bucket and did the same thing and took the 2 new frags out and put them in the bucket just to be on the safe side.
I retested all my parameters and nothing had changed in the water (that I could test for).
I did a ton of research on those 2 corals and, although the leather can kinda hurt corals near it they didn't seem to be toxic corals at all and I couldn't find anything on either of those corals hurting fish. Also, I should note that the goby was never particularly close to them when they were in the tank either.
Goby was still alive and seeming fine in the bucket today. So today I bought a small all-in-one to have a real QT and some prazipro thinking maybe it was parasites (I havent added prazipro to anything yet). Anyway, so I put the water from the bucket he was happy in, into the QT and bubbler and everything (no tank water) and then put those 2 frags into the QT with him since I didnt have anywhere else to put them and I was reasonably sure they were not to blame. Within a minute, in the QT, the Goby went to the surface and started gasping again, which he had not done all day. I immediately pulled him out and since (foolishly) I ran myself out of RODI water, I decided to chance it and put him back into the DT.....and he is fine again..... mostly happy, a little tired maybe, but eating, etc.
It seems to be these frags are somehow intensely toxic to him.... Any ideas guys? Were these corals misidentified? Am i missing something obvious? Should i just dispose of those frags and dose him for parasites in the QT? or maybe dose the DT? Trying to not kill any animals here and to also solve the mystery so I don't do it again.
Thanks!
Here is a picture of the 2 frags in the QT now. I didnt think to get any other pictures beforehand. The leather is more closed up than it usually was after acclimating due to being moved around a bunch.
