Please Can Someone Help Me!

[dsage]

Hi Everyone,

my girlfriend and i just bought a clown fish yesterday and before we bought the fish, we did these tests Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate and Calcium and they all seems fine, around the 0 mark and the salinity level is also good. We did the tests again last night, and results were also good, but this morning when my girlfriend looked at the clown fish, the fish was lying on its side looking like he is going to die soon. He is also heavily breathing. He has white spots but we are not sure if this is actually a white spot disease or if it’s some sort of a salt residue… Please can anyone tell us what we have done wrong because we were told to get some fish to help the cycling of the tank. We added fully cured live rock about a week ago and it has been growing all sorts of stuff on it which i was told was a good thing. did we add the fish too early?

Any advice would be great and appreciated. thanks in advance.

 

[Gandelf]

There could be many reasons for this..

Introduced too early (tank not cycled)
Introduced too fast (just putting the fish straight in without acclimatising first)
Already a dying fish from the shop

to name but a few.

Clowns are a hardy fish and many people use them to cycle a tank, preference would be to cycle the tank without fish.

How long has the tank been set up?
How much rock has been added? 1 week would not be long enough to cycle the rock.

 

[dsage]

We just found out that one of the them died.. it was the one I was talking about earlier. Why did the test say that it's all okay when it's not fully cycled? How long do you reckon we should leave the tank to cycle?

We set the tank up on 2nd September, that's when we first put water in. But we had to change the water completely since the salinity went mental. I would say 4th September, then we added the live rock on 5th September I think.

We currently have an internal protein skimmer, heater, aerator, fan (because it is too hot here in Hong Kong), light. Our tank is left open... the water temperature gone down from 30 - 25C...

Since our tank is only a 20L 5US gal tank, we only have around 5 rocks which makes up into two tunnels for them... I am also worried because the water is not as spotless as the ones from the shops... it's just not as clear. i don't know if this is because of the skimmer, the sand, the salt?

Thanks for your help! looking forward to any further advice you may have...

 

[dsage]

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[dsage]

There could be many reasons for this..

Introduced too early (tank not cycled)
Introduced too fast (just putting the fish straight in without acclimatising first)
Already a dying fish from the shop

to name but a few.

Clowns are a hardy fish and many people use them to cycle a tank, preference would be to cycle the tank without fish.

How long has the tank been set up?
How much rock has been added? 1 week would not be long enough to cycle the rock.

what i mean by the water is that the skimmer is making the water look bubbly and not settled, does this matter? i think the sand may be getting distrubed a bit but not too much. the thing is too that we have two crabs in the tank too and they seem to be fine. when would you recommend the right time to get our first fish?
also when would i be able to tell when the tank is ready to add fish?

thanks for your help

 

[Gandelf]

A normal cycle for any tank can be anything from 1 week up to 5 weeks, depending on the conditions, but every time you add anything to the tank you will get spikes in your readings, as the micro organisms adjust to the new levels.

What you need to do is to test your water over a period of a couple of weeks, you should get a spike of ammonia/nitrite and nitrate, when the ammonia and nitrite levels become undetectable, and the nitrate reach an acceptable level then you can start adding.

I am not too good with the skimmer side of things but I am sure someone will help you out there.

The other thing to remember is not to add too much at any one time, I made this mistake and it was costly.

 

[dsage]

A normal cycle for any tank can be anything from 1 week up to 5 weeks, depending on the conditions, but every time you add anything to the tank you will get spikes in your readings, as the micro organisms adjust to the new levels.

What you need to do is to test your water over a period of a couple of weeks, you should get a spike of ammonia/nitrite and nitrate, when the ammonia and nitrite levels become undetectable, and the nitrate reach an acceptable level then you can start adding.

I am not too good with the skimmer side of things but I am sure someone will help you out there.

The other thing to remember is not to add too much at any one time, I made this mistake and it was costly.

Ok, thanks for all your help. i will wait for a couple of weeks then and keep testing the water until it is ok. yea we were told to only add one or two fishes at a time. so we will have to be patient and wait for everything to settle down again.

thanks again, you were a great help.

 

[Gandelf]

I have learned the hard way buddy, a marine set up is not to be rushed, when you see these beautiful flourishing tanks they have been built up over years.

But as they say perfection is never rushed.

 

[dannywrc]

I dont think the skimmer would be needed as long as you do regular water changes. shouldnt be a problem in a tank that size.

are you just keeping two clowns in there?

Definitely try not to rush it. i would learn how to keep the water levels stable before adding anything else.