Fish tank problems

[Happy Reef]

Ive had my 65 gallon tank set up for about 2.5 months. I keep my temp around 79.0-80.2 Pretty consistent around 79.5 though. I get my water tested about 2 times a week and everything is fine. I had a yellow tang,2 ocellaris clownfish, 4 green chromis. However, recently ive been having a lot of problems. My yellow tang randomly just died. I fed him a marine pellet mix and switched that off with brine,krill, klams and some other meaty foods. A couple of days later one of my clownfish got caught in my maxi jet propeller and died. The next day my other clownfish came down with ich. He is getting treated at the lfs and looks way better. Then just today one of the chromis died. Im getting very frustrated because everything was going perfect for like 2 months and now all these problems are arising and i dont know what to do or whats wrong. Can someone please tell me whats wrong or what i can do to prevent future problems. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Happy Reef]

Also when the lights go out i got these little clearish greyish bugs on my sand and rocks.

 

[garys reef]

pics would help with the bugs might be coepods but without pics cant tell for sure also post your water parameters

 

[Happy Reef]

i tried gettings pics. as soon as the lights go on theyre gone. cant even see em. could the bugs be causing the damage to the fish?

 

[Happy Reef]

As i was testing my water once again i found another dead chromis. Salinity 1.023, Nitrite 0 Nitrate appears to be 10-20 and on my Alkalinity tester i dont have the chart but it went from blue to yellow at 13 drops.

 

[saltwaterinbrooklyn]

I went through the same thing bro , its a normal event when you start a new saltwater tank , its almost like a curing state , and i had that happen to me when i started as well except for the ich part but dont be discouraged it will take off for ya when you least expect it, dont get brainwashed by some of the self proclaimed pros out here that will tell you that it never happened to them , or that they still have the first fish they purchased 4 years ago lol be easy bro its gonna rock once its all settled.

 

[Happy Reef]

lol thanks man its just so aggravating seeing all my hard work just slowly fail now.

 

[Happy Reef]

Both chromis are hiding breathing very rapidly and opening their mouth a lot. any advice anyone?

 

[ecchybridLE]

Do a good water change. Is this a fish only tank?

 

[Happy Reef]

yes fish only

 

[Happy Reef]

Just did a 5 gallon water change

 

[thirty6]

Sorry your struggling.
Are you using ro water? If so i would prepare more water for a bigger water change. Qt set up or hospital tank possible? Maybe one of fish was not doing well when placed in dt. Could be several reasons why sometimes it could be out of your control like said few posts ago

 

[Happy Reef]

yeah all ro

 

[B.BASH]

Sounds like new tank syndrome a lot of us went through the same thing at 2 months your tank is still brand new it sounds like you have an ich outbreak are there white spots on the fish? Try soaking your pellets in selcon it a vitamin supplement for your fish don't add any new fish for a while at least 2 months. Your tank has to naturally build its bacterial filtration. Also sounds like your alk is a little high if its api test kit it should be from 8-10

 

[skene]

This is part of the nitrogen cycle which your tank was still going through... and having all that livestock in a tank that did not have enough biological filtration to keep up with the bioload on your tank... you sent your wet pets on a one way ride towards uncertain death.
When starting a tank you should not have put such a large bioload with all of those fish. IF you were testing properly... you would have seen all of this coming.

 

[Reef Fixations]

I know you're frustrated at the moment but we've all been thru it so don't stress too much. Get your hands on a Reef Safe product called MEDIC for ich and give it a try. Most other RS meds are 50/50 or less as far as their success rate. It isn't cheap but if it works it's better than the stuff that you'll buy that doesn't usually work at all.

It's typically even safe for difficult SPS corals and people have had great success as compared to anything else it seems.

All the advice that everyone is on the money so go with it as far as feeding selcon/additives & setting up a QT so that going forward you can observe the new fish and treat them accordingly. To add to their advice, I'd reccommend Tiny Spectrum Anti-parasitic pellet forumla, PraziPro, Quick Cure and if you choose to use copper than also get a SeaChem copper test kit for accuracy. Other test kits aren't that easy to read and I don't know of any that are as easy to read. Copper should only be used in your QT tho unless you never intend to get into reefing and/or keeping inverts.

 

[rbtwo4]

5 gal water change on a 65g tank is nothing u should do at least half

 

[shmibly]

I would agree with skene, always add fish at a slow rate, and when you are certain your filtration can catch up with what you are putting in. I learned this a hard way when I first started freshwater a couple of years ago.

 

[NanoAquatic]

Get all your fish into a QT and treat them. Either hyposalinity method or pimafix. Certain fish, some wrasses and mandarin gobies,etc. don't work well with hyposalinity. Pimafix works well for ich. Look into prazipro and other medications for different treatments.

Make sure when you drip acclimate your fish... do not put the water that came with the fish in your tank... wherever you bought your fish might have ich in the water and it could've spread like wildfire in your tank. And as Skene said, it was too much on your bioload. If all your fish are dead, leave the tank empty of fish and inverts for about 3-4 weeks so that all the parasites in there die off on their own with no host. Add budget friendly fish first. If it does well, add another after 3 week intervals just to be safe. Hope that helps! GO KNICKS!

 

[felix tesler]

yea sounds like new tank syndrome i had a bad case of ich when i set my tank up i actually feed all my fish with mysis shrimp soaked with garlic extract and if you dont have a uv sterilizer get one tomm and put that thing on it really works

they way that ick works is it runs through a cycle if not broken the cyst will fall off the fish and then rycle if you have a uv light and the cyst passes through the light it will kill it and hopefully break the cycle