New Tank Owner in Mourning

[dhata]

I've been trolling on this site for a month now and encountered a problem to post. I don't know what to do.

I bought a used 29g bio cube on March 29th and filled it with saltwater and 30 lbs of lr. The temperature has always been at 80 degrees. The protein skimmer has always been on but never worked until yesterday when I filled the tank with fish.


On April 27th I did a water test:
ammonia:0
nitrite: .2 or lower
salinity: 31 ppt

I do not have a test for nitrate. I also did three water changes between today and April 27th, the most recent one being the 20th.

I put 2 percula and one blenny in the tank on April 27th. I fed them on Sunday and put half a mysis frozen shrimp cube in the tank. I put it in a scoop and waited 15 minutes for it to dissolve before turning the scoop over. THe shrimp flew everywhere and it seemed the fish were able to eat the shrimp. I fed them on Monday in the same manner. One of the percula died monday night. I removed him from the tank but I don't know what to do. I tested the water and found I have 0.2 ammonia. I am not sure what to do at this point.

I'd really appreciate any advice or opinion on what happened.

 

[Anonymous]

Water changes, get that ammonia level down to ZERO. Your biological filtration is not up to par for the load you have.

 

[dhata]

Thank you, I will do so when I get home. I assume three fish at one time was too many. I should have started with one or should I have waited longer to add any fish?

 

[Anonymous]

There are a few ways to handle incoming fish. Waiting longer to add all the fish you did would have been best in my opinion. But you also need to get some basics down first, too. First, address the issues concerning a new setup.
1) Biological filtration, a.k.a. nitrification. You need a biological filter, and you get that with good amounts of live rock. However, that filter needs something on which to live, or the excess bacteria will die off. You may not have given them sufficient food before introducing the fish, but waited too long TO introduce the fish, and too many bacteria died off. Does that make sense?

How do you solve the problem? Add fish as slowly as possible, and have many changes of water on hand. Also, start feeding that live rock (the bacteria) before you add fish. As far as I know there is no hard and fast regime or recipe, but I've just added a very small bit of fish food a few times a week, then added fish after 3-4 weeks. Someone else may have something easier for a newbie to understand and utilize, but basically I'm giving the lemmings food so all the lemmings don't die of starvation. Make more lemmings, then when the "real" lemming food becomes available they're already there to eat it. I hope that makes sense. :lol:

2) Disease control. You need a quarantine set-up, and the first time you don't introduce that inevitable disease to the main set-up is when it will have paid for itself.

Solve that problem by having any container you can find set up, bare with a few pieces of PVC or something for the fish to hide in with filtration and a heater (temperature stabilization is the issue), keep all new specimens in QT for a minimum of 30 days.

3) Overload (kinda ties into first issue). BEST way to solve that problem is to first have all the test supplies you actually need. There is, at this point, no good excuse to not have at least these kits or tests available at this most important of times; pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, salinity, temperature. And make sure they're decent kits. Again, have lots of water already made up for water changes that is at temperature and proper salinity so you can do a water change in emergencies.

 

[dhata]

That was good knowledge, thank you for the advice. My plan of attack is the following:

1. Test PH and Nitrate levels, maybe one of these was the culprit
2. Do a water change
3. Check the PH and Nitrate again. If either are high battle the PH with a bottle solution of some sort, if the Nitrate is high, use micro algae and put a bag of carbon in the back.

 

[Anonymous]

You previously listed an ammonia level of 0.2, and to be clear, almost any reading of ammonia should, for all intents and purposes, be interpreted as the lethal agent. That is not to say that nitrite (the 2nd phase of nitrification) is not also a lethal agent, just that it can take less ammonia to be so.

Plan on water changeS, multiple. Do not vacuum any substrate or scrub anything down, do nothing more than gently vacuum over the surface.

 

[ElMonoCalvo]

what method and how long did you acclimated the fish before releasing them into the tank?

 

[dhata]

15 minutes. I did not use the method of putting the tank water in the bag every x minutes. I wish I did that so I could isolate this better.

 

[ElMonoCalvo]

That'd be my guess, especially since your parameters were a little off. I ran into a similar problem when I first started...was mixing in the water but was cutting corners on the time and paid the price. Since then I have used the float method from the LiveAquaria.com with good results: http://www.liveaquaria.com/PIC/article.cfm?aid=157

 

[Anonymous]

Um, the SG is way high as well folks.

 

[ElMonoCalvo]

On April 27th I did a water test:
ammonia:0
nitrite: .2 or lower
salinity: 31 ppt

Wouldn't that equate to about a 1.023 S.G.?

 

[Anonymous]

Oh...duh. I glossed right over the ppt vs SG . Disregard my blonde moment! Thanks ElMonoCalvo.

 

[dhata]

Tank Update: Things are good.

I brought back five hermit crabs and a tank raised percula and used the drip method to acclimate them (took two hours). That was last Tuesday and they are all still alive. I also put a yellow tail damsel in on sunday and he is alive as well..but shy.

I now have a ton of brown algae growing on the rocks and on the sand. I'm going to fight it by cutting down on the lighting and feeding.

My next residents will include some turbo snails and a cleaner shrimp.

Thank you for your help everyone!

 

[sidd129]

How many gallon water changes are you doing? Also make sure that your water change water matches in temp, ph, and alk. You should let your water change water mix up for at least five hours before you use it, Some will suggest overnight or 24 hours.