2 More Dead Fish.....clown And Royal Gramma

[craigybaby37]

well ive knowtised for the last 4 or 5 days that my royal grammer has not been eating a lot and started to get very thin and not very active int the tank. I even tried to get it to eat by turning off all filters and powerheads and de-frosting some brime shrimp and placing it all right nest to it in the tank and it didnt even have to move to get any food and still it didnt want to eat and sadly last night it died.

2nd fish to die was one of my clown fish......yesterday morning i know they were both perfectly fine hosting my leather coral and when it come to feeding there was only 1 of them swimming about which was very odd as they are always together. Moved some rocks about in the tank and it was dead in exactly the same place as the spotted mandarin

everything else in the tank is fine.....the corals all open up fully and all inverts are fine and i fort if something is up the coral and inverts would be affected first.

Tank stats are as follows

PH 8.2
Temp 80F
salinity 1.024
Nitrite 0
ammonia 0
nitrate 0
calcium 420ppm

Even tested the RO water and its reading between 0 and 2ppm on the tds meter.

Have set up a bottle trap just incase there is a preditor of some sort but all ive caught so far is a silly nassarius snail.

 

[@ombomb]

I'd assume that if it was a predator there would be marks on the fish / nothing to find. As for the place you found them, it's likely that that's just a dead spot in the tank that the body drifts into and doesn't move.

Was the Royal Gramma eating previously?

Was the clown getting noticabley thinner?

My initial thoughts would be a bacterial infection.

 

[Colin_T]

perhaps whitespot. It will kill the fish but not affect inverts or corals.

 

[littleme1969]

I really feel for you, the only fish I have lost is due to carpet surfing through the tinyiest of holes If that was my tank I would do a 100% water change, and leave it 6 months with no fish. If there are any predators in there, they will soon come out due to hunger. Your inverts should be able to live off the algae/stuff growing on the rocks etc. and if feel you have a few too many to do that , then take some back to the shop, or put in a friends tank. Throwing good money after bad on fish is crazy, and to be honest, its not fair on the poor fish either as they deserve a good shot at a healthy life. This is the second tank that seems to have this problem with fish just dieing or disapearing and it must be so dishartenting. If you dont want to wait 6 months, then maybe sell on all the rock, do 100% water after a good tank clean and just start a complete fresh.
Ive only ever had one tank die out before and that was a fresh water. The gravel came with the tank and I made the mistake of not boiling it I lost a whole tank full of plecs, about £250 quids worth. All tank contents where thrown away, plants wood rocks and gravel, and the tank was thouroughly bleached disinfected etc. Then left to sit for 3 months before being cleaned again before use. I'm sure you can see where I'm going here, but its the only way to be sure, and the money you are wasting on fish would easily cover a shut down.
I hope it all works out for you, as if it where me I think I would have given u by now!

 

[craigybaby37]

Definatly not white spot as i would of spotted that for sure and the dead bodys didnt have any white spot on them either.

As for the Royal gramma is was eating perfectly fine everyday having more than enough food for sure. If i recall correctly i think it was eating fine up until last week on the thursday the 21st when i gave them some live food (some sort of shrimp the name began with an A) where it ate as much as it normally would and didnt eat anything for days after that until it died.

As for the clown it was also eating perfectly well and not looking thin at all and was always swimming around with its other clown fish tank mate. Then like i say it just went missing and i found it dead.......and it had been pulled apart by something for sure weather it be my peppermint shrimp or 1 remaining hermit crab i dont know.

And in reply to littlme1969 i know what ur talking about for sure it does get a little annoying when things happen and u cannot work out an explanation for it when everything else in the tank is fine (touch wood) And as for shutting down the tank ime kinda going to be doing that anyways within the next few weeks when i get my 5ft 36 gallon tank so in some ways ime going to be starting a fresh when it comes to setting that up. Ime going to use the existing liverock in the new tank along with some new stuff and will make sure i dip it all in ro water for a long time to make sure i get rid of any preditors.

Ime going to keep the bottle trap in the tank for a few more days and just see if i do happen to catch anything appart from my nassarius snails

 

[Colin_T]

peppermint shrimp and hermit crabs are scavengers and don't normally attack fish. they will definately pick at a body tho.

Sounds like the shrimp that started with A might hav ebeen bad, gone off. It might have poisoned the fish.
were the shrimp Artemia, because that's just brineshrimp and unless it was a bad batch or had been defrosted they shouldn't cause any problems.

 

[SkiFletch]

The fact that the fish are ending up in the same spot is likely just a coincidence of the flow patterns in your tank. And the lack of marks/bites rules out predators. Shrimp scavenging on dead bodies really means nothing, that's normal. Lack of visible marks on the outside rules out Ich, fungal, and many bacteria infections.

I'd lean towards an internal parasite which are exceptionally hard to treat things. How many other fish are currently left alive in the tank?

How long was it between when you got the fish home and when they finally died? And were the clowns captive raised (tank bred), or wild caught

 

[craigybaby37]

not to sure about weather the clowns were captive bread or wild caught ill have to check with my LFS on thats 1.......what are difference between the 2 then??

The clowns have been in the tank since august last year and the royal gramma was added to the tank about 8 weeks ago i think.

There is currently 1 clown fish and 1 watchman goby in the tank and thats it for fish. but inverts there are 2 large snails 1 peppermint shrimp and about 20 nassarius snails.

Then the 4 corals in the tank aswell.

 

[SkiFletch]

Was asking to rule out cyanide poisoning. But 8+ weeks is too long for cyanide poisoning, that usually happens within 2-4 weeks. Anyway you could rundown a quick timeline of fish purchases/deaths?

 

[craigybaby37]

sorry ime not with you on the timeline of fish purchases/deaths??? can u explain what u meen. thanks

 

[@ombomb]

as in:

day 1 - bought fish
day 2 - eating normally
day 3 - not eating
day 4 -

 

[SkiFletch]

Heh, yeah as in:

Aug-07 bought clownfish, looked/ate fine
Sept-07 bought some other fish
Oct-07 bought another fish
Oct-07 first fish looks ill
Oct-07 ill fish dies
Nov-07 another fish gets ill/dies

etc, etc

The idea being to figure out if there's a good possibility for the entrance of a pathogen (disease) or if we're dealing with something else here. You don't have to be totally specific here, but guess as best you can

 

[craigybaby37]

ok so here goes.

15/07/07 Tank first set up
22/7/07 tank finished cycling
27/7/07 tank moved into a 20 gallon tank
14/8/07 Purchased 2 clown fish
20/8/07 Purchase bangai cardinal and red firefish and various CUC
17/9/07 Purchased pulsing zenia and green star polyp frag and also a fire shrimp
25/9/07 purchased zoos frag, mushroom frag and leather coral
5/11/07 Purchased spotted mandarin goby and yellow watchman goby
10/12/07 Started having various problems with tank and lost bangai cardinal, red firefish, fire shrimp and cleaner shrimp
23/12/07 Problems still around and lose all corals appart from 1 zoo frag.
13/1/08 Problems solved and brought new leather coral which is going well to the day and royal gramma
21/2/08 Spotted mandairin dies (eating fine everyday)
26/2/08 Clown fish dies. alos ate perfectly fine.


What are the chances of the live food i fed them having some sort of infection that then killed the fish??

 

[SkiFletch]

Very low but possible. Was the food ever allowed to fully thaw out while in your care? If so, then it goes from very low to a moderate chance. There's also a possiblity (albeit exceptionally low) that you had a contaminated batch of salt mix...

The bangai and firefish deaths... Were they similar to the mandarin and clownfish? As in were they also eating and looking fine?

And are you now, or have you ever run carbon on the tank?


Wish this were an easier mystery to solve

 

[craigybaby37]

the bangai and firefish died from oxygen deprivation if you can remember back a while ago.......my ph was very unstable and we worked it out to be that there was a lack of water movement in the tank causing a build up of co2 in the tank so was nothing to do with eating.

As for the salt mix being contaminated i cant see it being that as ive been using this salt since the 8th december last year (good job i wrote on the lid when i started using it) And the lid is very air tight.

And ive been running carbon in the tank since i changed to an external filter which was at the end of november last year .

I was thinking prehaps i just got unlucky with the fish.....i meen they wont live forever will they and who is to say they will die in 2 years or so and no sooner or no later.....if you see what ime getting at its a possibility i guess.

And no the food wasnt able to fully thaw out at all when in my possesion.