Issues with adding new fish

[Super Fly]

I tried a mix of sinking pellets, flakes, mysis, and brine shrimp. I would feed during my normal afternoon time for my other fishes, and then do the other mix about an hour after lights out.

The fish had arrived 4 days before I picked up the initial 3, and the last one had been there for 10 days before I brought it home. The guy also dropped flakes in the tank for the last one to prove it would eat, it didn't seem interested and scarfed down a ton of fresh hatched brine shrimp when I brought it home in the bag.

Do u have any pix of tank showing the rocks and sand? At this point, if it was me I'd siphon out the sand and rinse it clean and leave tank alone to allow the 75% dry rock that was added to tank stabilize/establish & build up the beneficial bacteria prior to adding more fish. All fish that had come w tank had acclimated to the pre-existing tank condition so r surviving while any new additions cannot. Which leads me to believe the unrinsed sand plus dry rock are resulting in tank instability that any new additions cannot adapt to IMO. The Gobies disturbing a dirty sand probably didn't help either. Rinsing sand and waiting for rocks to mature is very boring but would be painless and less expensive then adding more livestock to watch them die. Also very important, please get a PO4 test kit and let us know the PO4 level.

There are lots of good folks here in R2R. Sometimes replies can come across harsher then intended esp in social media. However one thing I've learned from this hobby is that nothing good happens quickly and what works for others may not necessarily work for you. Figure out what works for ur tank and if ur having success, bravo. FYI - u can always block unfriendly users by clicking their name and selecting the "ignore" button, afterwards u'll never see their posts again... life is too short

GL

 

[Lavey29]

Do u have any pix of tank showing the rocks and sand? At this point, if it was me I'd siphon out the sand and rinse it clean and leave tank alone to allow the 75% dry rock that was added to tank stabilize/establish & build up the beneficial bacteria prior to adding more fish. All fish that had come w tank had acclimated to the pre-existing tank condition so r surviving while any new additions cannot. Which leads me to believe the unrinsed sand plus dry rock are resulting in tank instability that any new additions cannot adapt to IMO. The Gobies disturbing a dirty sand probably didn't help either. Rinsing sand and waiting for rocks to mature is very boring but would be painless and less expensive then adding more livestock to watch them die. Also very important, please get a PO4 test kit and let us know the PO4 level.

There are lots of good folks here in R2R. Sometimes replies can come across harsher then intended esp in social media. However one thing I've learned from this hobby is that nothing good happens quickly and what works for others may not necessarily work for you. Figure out what works for ur tank and if ur having success, bravo. FYI - u can always block unfriendly users by clicking their name and selecting the "ignore" button, afterwards u'll never see their posts again... life is too short

GL

Agree, or the OP could have introduced disease into the tank with new additions which resulted in fish deaths and the surviving fish may have strong immune systems currently and have not succumbed to the disease yet. Adding fish to a tank where 6 fish have died in short order is not responsible reefing. Having patience to determine the cause and ensuring you a providing a stable healthy environment is responsible reefing but to each their own. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

 

[dedragon]

I dont think anyone meant anything bad by what they wrote, sometimes it just comes off a little blunt when written out in text.
Losing 6 fish so fast actually is a cause for concern and just because 3 remain doesnt really mean that it wasnt due to disease (which isnt your fault, both new to this and bought a used tank that could have just had dormant disease). Clownfish are pretty resistant to a lot of diseases and royal gramma are very hardy as well. I also havent heard of engineer gobies being super aggressive but it will depend if you actually saw the fish attacking the others. Best thing to do for now would be what others have recommended; change out sand (or rinse really well) and take out fish to qt and medicate while leaving the tank fallow. This will help check off disease as a reason for fish deaths.

Just some other questions i dont think were asked;
Are you using tap water or rodi water?
Are you using a refractometer with 1.026 calibration solution to check salinity?
What are the current tank parameters (ones that matter for now are salinity, temp, nitrate, phosphate)?

 

[1112-425XL]

Just a thought... Clowns can be extremely aggressive. Especially if they consider the tank theirs. They may be the culprits responsible for all your lost new additions.

 

[dedragon]

Just a thought... Clowns can be extremely aggressive. Especially if they consider the tank theirs. They may be the culprits responsible for all your lost new additions.

Highly doubt it tbh, OP would have seen them being aggressive to the cardinals if they were to do this. OP wrote that they think the clownfish could have done it at night when they couldnt see them but clownfish are not very active at night at all and dont usually view cardinalfish as threatening either so they dont usually attack them. There are some overly aggressive clownfish that like to kill anything but clownfish aggression is too obvious to miss in most situations

 

[Nemo&Friends]

I do not quarantine either. I guess I have been lucky, as I have not lost fish to disease yet, and i have a marine tank for about 10 years. I also think that drugging fish and putting them in a small bare tank is extremely stressing for them and causes many death. though, I do not add fish very often.
This forum has 2 firmly entrenched camps one for quarantine, one against. You may want to read the post from Paul B, his tank is over 50 years old, and he never quarantine. I think that both camps have valid points, and so you choose what is right for you.
I have 2 PJ cardinal. One of them is finicky and only like frozen brime shrimp. The other eats everything. I got them at the same time around 9 month ago from the same LFS tank. Surprisingly the finicky one grew the fastest and is quite a bit bigger. My cardinals never hide, though there are plenty of space to do it. I am suspecting that the clowns stressed or chase your last one. The royal Gramma is much less likely to be intimidated by the clowns than the cardinals.

Welcome to the Forum.

 

[pinkflamingo]

Just thought this might be a good fit for you. There are multiple online vendors that sell preqaurntine fish that get rave reviews on this forum. Ya the cost is higher but it is offset by replacing fish that die or setting up a Qt tank. It might be perfect for that must have fish.

Do u have any pix of tank showing the rocks and sand? At this point, if it was me I'd siphon out the sand and rinse it clean and leave tank alone to allow the 75% dry rock that was added to tank stabilize/establish & build up the beneficial bacteria prior to adding more fish. All fish that had come w tank had acclimated to the pre-existing tank condition so r surviving while any new additions cannot. Which leads me to believe the unrinsed sand plus dry rock are resulting in tank instability that any new additions cannot adapt to IMO. The Gobies disturbing a dirty sand probably didn't help either. Rinsing sand and waiting for rocks to mature is very boring but would be painless and less expensive then adding more livestock to watch them die. Also very important, please get a PO4 test kit and let us know the PO4 level.

There are lots of good folks here in R2R. Sometimes replies can come across harsher then intended esp in social media. However one thing I've learned from this hobby is that nothing good happens quickly and what works for others may not necessarily work for you. Figure out what works for ur tank and if ur having success, bravo. FYI - u can always block unfriendly users by clicking their name and selecting the "ignore" button, afterwards u'll never see their posts again... life is too short

GL

I am not an aquascapist, but I really tried to make sure that there are plenty of hiding spots and places for fish to swim in. The Gramma seems to enjoy the scape and all of the rocks are supported from underneath with rubble on the glass for when the engineer goby was moving a ton of sand around. I did like him a lot but I was afraid stocking with small fish would result in issues.

Thanks for the heads up on muting people. I am still trying to figure out the functions and have probably messed a bunch of stuff up on accident.

I have an API phosphate test that was sent to me accidentally a few months ago when I was ordering a different test for my freshwater aquariums. It is between 0-.25 but on the lighter side so probably .1 or slightly lower. I don't really feed anything the flakes right now, just mysis and brine shrimp because nothing is eating the flakes from what I can tell. I plan on getting better tests when I get closer to getting corals in 6 months, but right now I don't see a point in doing that quite yet.

 

[pinkflamingo]

Just thought this might be a good fit for you. There are multiple online vendors that sell preqaurntine fish that get rave reviews on this forum. Ya the cost is higher but it is offset by replacing fish that die or setting up a Qt tank. It might be perfect for that must have fish.

I have seen those but haven't looked too deeply into pricing. I like the idea of ordering through the fish store and letting them sit there for a week and seeing how they do and making sure they can be fed.

 

[pinkflamingo]

I dont think anyone meant anything bad by what they wrote, sometimes it just comes off a little blunt when written out in text.
Losing 6 fish so fast actually is a cause for concern and just because 3 remain doesnt really mean that it wasnt due to disease (which isnt your fault, both new to this and bought a used tank that could have just had dormant disease). Clownfish are pretty resistant to a lot of diseases and royal gramma are very hardy as well. I also havent heard of engineer gobies being super aggressive but it will depend if you actually saw the fish attacking the others. Best thing to do for now would be what others have recommended; change out sand (or rinse really well) and take out fish to qt and medicate while leaving the tank fallow. This will help check off disease as a reason for fish deaths.

Just some other questions i dont think were asked;
Are you using tap water or rodi water?
Are you using a refractometer with 1.026 calibration solution to check salinity?
What are the current tank parameters (ones that matter for now are salinity, temp, nitrate, phosphate)?

The sand has been in the tank now for 5 weeks, wouldn't moving it again cause more disturbance?

I'm using tap water currently because it comes out at 15 tds. I do plan on sending it in at some point for icp(?) Test.

Refractometer for salinity, nitrate around 10 and phosphate somewhere around .1 from the looks of it. 78 temp, 1.023 salinity.

 

[pinkflamingo]

I do not quarantine either. I guess I have been lucky, as I have not lost fish to disease yet, and i have a marine tank for about 10 years. I also think that drugging fish and putting them in a small bare tank is extremely stressing for them and causes many death. though, I do not add fish very often.
This forum has 2 firmly entrenched camps one for quarantine, one against. You may want to read the post from Paul B, his tank is over 50 years old, and he never quarantine. I think that both camps have valid points, and so you choose what is right for you.
I have 2 PJ cardinal. One of them is finicky and only like frozen brime shrimp. The other eats everything. I got them at the same time around 9 month ago from the same LFS tank. Surprisingly the finicky one grew the fastest and is quite a bit bigger. My cardinals never hide, though there are plenty of space to do it. I am suspecting that the clowns stressed or chase your last one. The royal Gramma is much less likely to be intimidated by the clowns than the cardinals.

Welcome to the Forum.

The 3 cardinals I originally got would bob around in the back and hide very slowly of you approached the tank. The last one immediately hid and never came out even though it seemed quite peppy while drip acclimating. I would be leery to blame the clowns, but the fact that it was one death one day, then another the next, then one 2 days later was really weird and it seemed like something was picking them off one by one in the nighttime. No signs of disease, but also no signs of eating.

Is it ok to keep 2 together? I would like to try again, but may hold out for some larger ones in the future.

I am deeply aware of the two camps for quarantining/not quarantining and I think it was here I found a poll where it was split almost 50/50. It irks me when the knee jerk reaction is immediately about not quarantining without any further introspection or thoughts on other possibilities.

 

[Lavey29]

The 3 cardinals I originally got would bob around in the back and hide very slowly of you approached the tank. The last one immediately hid and never came out even though it seemed quite peppy while drip acclimating. I would be leery to blame the clowns, but the fact that it was one death one day, then another the next, then one 2 days later was really weird and it seemed like something was picking them off one by one in the nighttime. No signs of disease, but also no signs of eating.

Is it ok to keep 2 together? I would like to try again, but may hold out for some larger ones in the future.

I am deeply aware of the two camps for quarantining/not quarantining and I think it was here I found a poll where it was split almost 50/50. It irks me when the knee jerk reaction is immediately about not quarantining without any further introspection or thoughts on other possibilities.

Having had my tank wiped out by brook early on, I can tell you it is a humbling experience and really makes you rethink the QT process. Imagine your tank looking beautiful with all the fish and coral you want and you add that one last fish and bam. Velvet or brook strikes and wipes out your dream. There are quality vendors that QT fish for you. My LFS runs copper in his tanks and prazi treats before sale and it's no extra cost. There are probably some LFS in your area that do the same which ensures you get a healthy fish rather then rolling the dice. Take your time. Make your tank beautiful with fish and coral.

 

[Geebs19]

The 3 cardinals I originally got would bob around in the back and hide very slowly of you approached the tank. The last one immediately hid and never came out even though it seemed quite peppy while drip acclimating. I would be leery to blame the clowns, but the fact that it was one death one day, then another the next, then one 2 days later was really weird and it seemed like something was picking them off one by one in the nighttime. No signs of disease, but also no signs of eating.

Is it ok to keep 2 together? I would like to try again, but may hold out for some larger ones in the future.

I am deeply aware of the two camps for quarantining/not quarantining and I think it was here I found a poll where it was split almost 50/50. It irks me when the knee jerk reaction is immediately about not quarantining without any further introspection or thoughts on other possibilities.

No one’s knee jerk reaction was about you not quarantining. No one has bashed you for not doing it. We as hobbyist are more concerned with what could be going on with your tank.

15 TDS is still high. Most don’t even want 1-2 TDS in their tank. Who knows what that 15 TDS could be. Is there a store that you could get water from instead? The issue with tap water is one day it could be 15 and the next day it could be 200 depending on what they put in the water those days. I know my local water supply fluctuates a ton.

the scape looks great as far as providing plenty of room for hiding places. You are lucky your gramma comes out, I only get to see mine at feeding time other that that I just see his head now and again.

If you do decide to go with a vendor that quarantines fish I highly recommend @Dr. Reef

 

[dedragon]

I'm using tap water currently because it comes out at 15 tds. I do plan on sending it in at some point for icp(?) Test.

Refractometer for salinity, nitrate around 10 and phosphate somewhere around .1 from the looks of it. 78 temp, 1.023 salinity.

15 tds is usually fine for most fish only tanks but will matter what is causing the 15 tds. What are you using to measure this and have you calibrated it recently?

 

[dedragon]

Refractometer for salinity

Have you calibrated it with something like these

Refractometer Calibration Solution

Keep your refractometer readings accurate! A refractometer is easily one of the most important tools to have if you own a saltwater tank. Without a refractometer, we would be guessing at how much salt is in the water, and more than likely would not be correct! Even if you have a refractometer...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

or
Amazon product

 

[dedragon]

The sand has been in the tank now for 5 weeks, wouldn't moving it again cause more disturbance?

In a lot of situations it can be worse but reusing from a tank that probably wasnt great to begin with can also cause more problems down the line. Easier to remedy this by just rinsing the whole thing and running a good amount of carbon

 

[pinkflamingo]

No one’s knee jerk reaction was about you not quarantining. No one has bashed you for not doing it. We as hobbyist are more concerned with what could be going on with your tank.

15 TDS is still high. Most don’t even want 1-2 TDS in their tank. Who knows what that 15 TDS could be. Is there a store that you could get water from instead? The issue with tap water is one day it could be 15 and the next day it could be 200 depending on what they put in the water those days. I know my local water supply fluctuates a ton.

the scape looks great as far as providing plenty of room for hiding places. You are lucky your gramma comes out, I only get to see mine at feeding time other that that I just see his head now and again.

If you do decide to go with a vendor that quarantines fish I highly recommend @Dr. Reef

Ya know what, I have screwed everything up. I'm just gonna break it down and get rid of everything. Obviously I am not capable of doing this hobby and will just stick to freshwater tanks.Thanks everyone for the advice!

 

[Super Fly]

Ya know what, I have screwed everything up. I'm just gonna break it down and get rid of everything. Obviously I am not capable of doing this hobby and will just stick to freshwater tanks.Thanks everyone for the advice!

sorry to hear that but r u sure bc ur about 90% there in establishing a reef tank IMO. Don't let the fervent fish mortality comments get under ur skin, some folks take animal protection very passionately that can result in fervent debate/comments just like reef keeping methods. There's endless debate about QT or Not... FYI - there r plenty of folks who dont QT, myself included. Here's a pix of my tank taken 2 yrs ago (which hopefully encourages u not to give up), now the entire left front corner's completely filled by hammerheads that desperately need pruning.

From ur pix, it looks like previous owner may have been using Deep Sand Bed (DSB) method based on amount of sand I see. DSB can contain toxic gases if not maintained by livestock like snails, worms, and fish (wrasse). I'm pretty certain if u siphon out as much sand as possible and rinse them clean (u'd be surprised how dirty the sand can get) while letting the rocks mature in the tank u'd be good to go. Better yet if u don't want to deal w cleaning the sand, just throw out the old sand and replace w new (just make sure to rinse the new sand first prior to adding to tank). If u replace w new sand, don't need much maybe 1-2".

Also highly recommend getting a RODI water filter too.

whatever u decide, GL.

 

[Nemo&Friends]

I am not an aquascapist, but I really tried to make sure that there are plenty of hiding spots and places for fish to swim in. The Gramma seems to enjoy the scape and all of the rocks are

I like your tank, you really have fish in mind, and gave them many hiding places and rocks, instead of just a few arches. Your fish should be doing well.

 

[pinkflamingo]

sorry to hear that but r u sure bc ur about 90% there in establishing a reef tank IMO. Don't let the fervent fish mortality comments get under ur skin, some folks take animal protection very passionately that can result in fervent debate/comments just like reef keeping methods. There's endless debate about QT or Not... FYI - there r plenty of folks who dont QT, myself included. Here's a pix of my tank taken 2 yrs ago (which hopefully encourages u not to give up), now the entire left front corner's completely filled by hammerheads that desperately need pruning.

From ur pix, it looks like previous owner may have been using Deep Sand Bed (DSB) method based on amount of sand I see. DSB can contain toxic gases if not maintained by livestock like snails, worms, and fish (wrasse). I'm pretty certain if u siphon out as much sand as possible and rinse them clean (u'd be surprised how dirty the sand can get) while letting the rocks mature in the tank u'd be good to go. Better yet if u don't want to deal w cleaning the sand, just throw out the old sand and replace w new (just make sure to rinse the new sand first prior to adding to tank). If u replace w new sand, don't need much maybe 1-2".

Also highly recommend getting a RODI water filter too.

whatever u decide, GL.

The sand is deceptively deep. The engineer goby moved all the back stuff out to the front along with the pistol shrimp excavating the other side of the tank. All the sand was there with the intention of keeping the goby until I realized he may be a murderer. He was my favorite fish and it was not an easy decision to let him go, but I do think it was best under the circumstances.

Your comment does bring me some hope, but a lot of frustration comes from how harsh people are on things. I saw a post on here this morning while viewing your comment about someone adding 6 or so cardinals and 2 other fish (maybe clowns) and they were dying and people handled them with kid gloves compared to me. I was honest about everything I did from the get go and I felt like people were bringing a hammer down on me compared to how I see and have seen other posts on here. It's very disheartening.

Despite what others think, I do take the fish deaths quite seriously, otherwise I wouldn't be asking. I have learned with freshwater fish that sometimes you just can't keep certain things either no matter how hard you try. It took me 7 years to work back to getting freshwater shrimp and even though I also don't use rodi water with them, they have still turned from 20 to over 100 now.

I researched the heck out of all saltwater things. I know that there is a hard book standard to doing things these days, and there are outliers to this as well. I also know that things have come along way from the undergravel filters, bubblers, and fluorescent lights that I saw as a kid in dentists offices 20 years ago.

I also know that at this point, I'm kicked down and beat up and not sure if I even want to continue investing more time and money on this. I feel like even if I do switch to rodi and take out all the sand and replace it, and start quarantining it's going to be too much of a process and not be even slightly enjoyable when the ultimate "success" (according to this forum) is accomplished. The goalpost will move and then it's going to be blaming any other multitude of factors. I'm just defeated now and it's best to just step out while ahead.

 

[Nemo&Friends]

I use tap water also. My oldest fish must be around 12 years old. But I do not keep corals. My smaller tank has macro algae, which are doing quite well.
If you enjoy your tank, ignore the harsh comments. Your tank success will be your reward. They may have been trying to help after having a bad experience, and did not phrase it nicely.
Over all this is a nice forum and most people try genuinely to help each other. Being honest is good, it is the only way we can help you and we all learn from each other mistakes.