Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

Just when we were getting brave, a setback. Actually two. On Tuesday we lost one of our yellow tail damsels. They have been in our tank for about two months with no problems. Steve said that he noticed it acting funny that morning, by the afternoon he was hiding so that the other two fish could not get him, if he was removed from his hiding place, he sunk to the bottom of the tank. Steve decided to take him out and flush him since it seemed very evident that he was going to die.

We went to Progresseve with a water sample in hand, had it tested and bought two domino damsels. The only problams we had with it were slightly elevated nitrites and phosphates. We bought the sponge to put in the filter for the phosphates and begun running it on Tuesday. We had a little territory issue for the first day, but everyone seemed to be getting along okay all day Wed and Thurs. Did a small water change last night (about 2.5 gallons- all the RO water we had on hand) to try to eliminate some more of the nitrites. We fed them some brine shrimp last night and everything seemed fine. No sick acting fish. When I went in this morning one of the domios was dead at the bottom of the tank. He was white and looked to have a little red under his dorsal fin on one side, but I don't know if this was post mortem.

We also have the remaining domino, and yellowtail as well as a dragon goby and a cleaner shrimp. They all seem okay but since this is the second fish in a week I am getting quite concerned (the domino seemed fine too). Anybody have any ideas or suggestions?

Well quit freaking out first.

Second, fish come in sick or die from transit, it is also really hot outside, this does not help.

Do a partial water change, do not add any more fish at all for at least a month. Wasting money when you have a problem really sucks. Salt and water are cheap, do water changes till problem subsides.

Nitrites are particularly deadly. However, if that was really your problem, most likely your other fish would be stressing.

I agree, Don't freak out. In addition to water changes, run some carbon in case it is contamination of some sort.

Check you salinity and temperature. Remember that swing arms are particularly unreliable to measure salinity.

Are you using a calcium supplement? if not you could be having sharp PH drops at night that could severly stress out any fish. Also Domino damsels can get pretty agressive. Have you noticed him picking on the other damsels that have died?

My wife is kind of freaking out. It just sucks to lose fish and not really know why. I have done 2 partial water changes in the last week. Salinity was at ~1.025 last it was checked. The other fish in the tank seem very healthy and the domino we lost this morning seemed okay last night when we fed them. I thought that perhaps since we had a yellow tail in there he might have killed the domino ( he was acting pretty aggressive the first day the dominos were put in). I don't know, we'll test the water again and see what happens.

If you are finding them in the morning it sounds like it could be a PH problem.

Just don't rule out the fact that the fish may would had died anyway. What is it 9% or less of fish collected actually live to make it in the aquarium ?

Good call NM354, we took some water by B&B this morning. It is indeed a PH problem, it was 7.6. Don't know how it got so low, we aren't doing anything different. Unfortunately B & B was out of CB except in the gallon bottles. We tried the other pet stores with no luck. I'm going to try progressive when they open later today. Wish me luck.

Sorry we were out of Tech CB i guess it didn't come in yesterday like it should have or they just didn't put it out yet. Hopefully Progressive will have what you need though.

Uh... just wanted to jump in. If you have pH problems you need to be adding a pH buffer, not a calcium buffer like Tech CB.

Also we always have Tech CB A & B in stock

Thanks
Michelle
Fat Fish

Please correct me if i am wrong but if your Calcium and Alkalinity are where they need to be then you shouldn't have a problem with any pH swings at night. So if you are using Tech CB you won't need a pH buffer. Their pH was probably too low becuase the buffering capacity was low letting the pH have a drastic drop at night and not letting it stay high enough. Tech CB will help bring your pH up gradually where buffers sometimes can bring it up to fast stressing the fish out even more.

NM354 wrote:Please correct me if i am wrong but if your Calcium and Alkalinity are where they need to be then you shouldn't have a problem with any pH swings at night. So if you are using Tech CB you won't need a pH buffer. Their pH was probably too low becuase the buffering capacity was low letting the pH have a drastic drop at night and not letting it stay high enough. Tech CB will help bring your pH up gradually where buffers sometimes can bring it up to fast stressing the fish out even more.

Tech CB does help with buffering but it has almost nothing in it to help with raising PH... PH must be brought up. An item such as Super Buffer DKH will raise the PH and also help with the buffering system of your tank.

We carry this item also.

We added something to raise the pH as well as the tech CB. pH came up some yesterday, we will continue to watch it.