What in the ?*!@ just happened!

[davemerr]

I have never ever seen or heard of anything like what happened to me today. I am hoping that someone can enlighten me as to what happened.

I received a powder blue tang from flying fish today. I acclimated him etc.... in my established 180 reef tank. He looked great. He was swimming around checking things out and wasn't showing any signs of stress. The other fish were curious with the new addition but were not picking on him. A good 8 hours went by. I was watching the tank and everything looked ok, when it was time for dinner. By the time I got back (10 - 15 minutes) the tang was lying on the bottom pumping hard. Within an hour he was dead.

I have never seen a fish die so fast. What happened? Anybody have any ideas.

My tank is 180 G reef.

I have in the tank

Star polps
Leather toadstool
scroll coral
candy cane
frogspawn
Xenia
Banggai Cardinals
Regal Tang
Perc Clown
Foxface
Flame Angel
Scooter Blennie
Misc snails and hermit crabs

Everything else seems ok and checks out. Any ideas? I am stumped with this one.

 

[Anonymous]

#1-how did you acclimate him?(exactly)

#2-please- stay away from powder blues-their survival rate in captivity is abysmal.even if they survive the initial acclimation, their long term success is almost guaranteed to not happen.

 

[davemerr]

Acclimation - I had them sitting in the water for approx 30 minutes for temp. Once that was accomplished, I put 1 cup of tank water into the container every 10 minutes. When the container was full I dumped out half of the bag and continued. When the container was full then I scooped out the fish and placed him in the tank. etc......

I know that powder blues have a high mortality rate. I have been very successful in raising difficult critters. The price was right, I thought I would give it a try.

My question is: Has anyone ever had the experience of having an apparently healthy fish die in an hour or less?

 

[esmithiii]

These fish are difficult to keep. Sounds like you got a sick one to begin with. You should get some credit for the fish, and I would recommend that you stay away from this species in the future. They have terrible survival rates, which should have kept you from buying one in the first place.

Keep in mind that for every fish that we buy and kill, another one is taken from the ocean to replace it. Every one that dies in a LFS makes the LFS less likely to buy more in the future.

Not a flame, just an opinion. Sorry about your loss. They are truly beautiful.

Ernie.

 

[skilos1]

first of all i don't blame you for buying a hard to keep fish, it's a challenge to keep fish that don't do well in a home aquarium but that's part of this hobby. I have a friend of mine that owns a LFS and he keeps rare species alive for long periods of time, he even had the dreaded moorish idol eating out of his hands and living for a couple of years. I myself have had a PBT in my 125(see the pics on my website) that was kept for 4 years before i aquired it and has been moved 3 different times into different tanks. He is doing great and never had a problem with it. I think for something to kill that fish that fast it had to have been either disease or extreme stress. I recently got a foxface from that same LFS that was eating out of his hands and swimming great in a 75 gallon when i bought him. He had been there for about a month due to his size. I brought him home, acclimated him the same as you did and as soon as i put him in the water, sank to the bottom and died within 30 minutes. So stress had to have been what killed it, and this was a real hardy fish. So it's not only the "difficult" fish that die from stress or disease it's all fish. FFexpress has great customer service and will refund your loss i'm sure. Next time if you feel confident in your abilities to take care of a fish like this i say go for it and good luck. I think it's hard to steer someone away from a very attractive looking fish as this one and if they want it they are going to get it anyway so why not help them in telling them what to do to care for it. Just feed him lots of Seaweed and meaty treats soaked in vitamins.
Skilos

 

[davemerr]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I would normally agree with it being stress. But usually one of the first signs of stress is rapid breathing (aka pumping hard) This fish wasn't displaying this. Also he/she was in the tank behaving like a healthy fish for approx 8 hours. Now granted I wasn't looking for signs of stress by that time, so I can't say 100% that it wasn't. It just caught me off guard and is going to bother me for awhile. One minute he/she is being a happy fish and the next, crash.

 

[Anonymous]

well, don't forget, that fish can also get embolisms, strokes, heart attacks, sudden organ failure, like we, or any animal can.what appears to be healthy on the outside may not always be on the inside.nor are there necessarily always indications(external)available..

you know,- like the patient who leaves the doctor's office w/a clean bill of health and has a heart attack as he opens the door to leave the office..

 

[davemerr]

Good point. I didn't think of that. Thanks