My Dottie was doing fine

[SadaAesix]

ack, my tank has been cycling for a few weeks now. I added a dottieback about 8 days ago and all has been fine, he nibbled a bit on the blue devils fins but a-ok. I noted a few days ago that I had a little white thing creep out from the live rock. I wasn't able to get a picture but I wanted to submit it for someone to tell me what it was. I can only describe it as a white pineapple, if you took a pineapple and stretched it, you'd have this thing. It was about 1/4" long, white and seemed to have little bumps or raised ridges all around its trunk and the nose had little fans. I noted that this was gone last night and then I noted the dottieback acting a bit strange. He is usually an active swimmer but this morning he was hanging near the surface. He ate great today, munched on two krill tails and tonight he seemed weak and was caught between the glass and the powerhead. Not sure if this is connected in anyway but no one else seems to have problems, only the purple dottieback. Advise if you can.
Water perameters are fine, so the tests say. Did a 20% water change with appropriate water bought from Fat fish, that was Friday.
My Nitrates are .20 and staying there. In this 29 gal. I have: one blue devil, a sick purple dottieback, a large mexican turbo snail, 8 red legged hermits and one emerald crab. I might add that this is about the third week of its cycle.

[sb1227]

My question would have to be: were the nitrates 20 after the water change or before? Are your ammonia and nitrites both at 0 now?

I don't know about the "pineapple", but you will see lots of different worms and things as you go that most of the time really don't bother the fish or corals in any way. It's really pretty amazing just how many different things live in the rocks and sand. My guess would be your problem to be a water issue and not a critter issue. What kind of water flow do you have in this tank?

Cycling a tank with fish is generally pretty stressful. If he doesn't have any obvious physical signs (injury, spots or fungus on the body, ect.) I would have to attribute his problems to stress from the cycle. I'm not a dottyback expert though. Hopefully he'll make it thru this. BTW, what exactly is a "Blue Devil"?

Sue

[SadaAesix]

Thanks for your input. A blue devil is a saphire damsel or blue damsel. Last night I lost about 5 hermits as well. The dottie is again showing no signs of stress and the little salt size granuals are all but gone. The nitrates were .20 before the water change and have stayed the course sense it. No phosphates to be seen, Nitrites are 0. PH 8.4, Temp. 76 degrees, I am running a HOB-penquin300 made for 75 gal or more. I am also running a sea clone 100 protein skimmer with nothing being produced. I have caribsand substrate and I can't think of anything else to state, need more information ask me and I will share.

[sb1227]

This might be disagreed with, but I would bump your temps up a bit to at least 79 or 80. Do the temps go up much during the day?

I would also wait to run the skimmer until at least the cycle is completely over. You're trying to build a base to feed the bacteria, and skimming and water changes can just prolong the cycling period.

[SadaAesix]

And I agree and have already raised the tank temp to boost the fishies immune responses. Plus it'll make him feel better. This morning the bad dots were all gone but I know they are lurking to jump on him again so as stated before and since you think it is a good idea I will let my local Fishie store keep them and leave the inverts to fend for themselves. 6 wks and no fish should do the trick, thanks for your input. When your new to this sometimes you like to have someone with more experience back your decisions. Thanks