Atlantic blue tang died

I lost my first fish today and I have no idea why. My young Atlantic Blue Tang was breathing hard and 1 hour later is now gone. :-[. It was doing well but was a very picky eater. Probably because it was so young.

 

Sorry for your loss. It's never easy

 

i have noticed that when a fish is breathing hard is like a pre death thing. So sorry! Well, as my parents always say, "When a fish dies, go get another one. It is a fish for cryin out loud! Not a death in the family." haha go getcha self another one but first always find out what happened so you can fix it! Turn that frown, upside down!

 

I am already planning my next fish. Powder brown tang. It's funny cuz when one of my freshwater fish dies I am like don't really care that much. But with saltwater is a different story. It could be the price or maybe is the effort I put on that tank. One thing that I noticed that was kinda of interesting. When the tang was on her last breath and was laying on the side in the substrate she got attacked by both the cleaner shrimp and the serpent starfish so fast that by the time I got my hand in there the starfish had dragged her in a hole undert the biggest rock in my tank. I spend the next 30 min trying to get her out.

 

seriously, with that attitude, just don't keep fish.

 

have you checked ammonia levels normally when ammonia is high fish will breath heavy what are all your levels and how long ago did you cycle your tank also how often do you do water changes?

 

I have not checked amonia recently. Last check was on Saturday and it was 0. It has been like that for 5 months. The tank has been running for 6 months and I only feed every other day. Nothing has died recently and everything else is doing fine. I will check it tonight but I doubt that I will find any amonia in the water. And even if it was an amonia spike it's probbably gone by now.

 

What were you feeding? were you supplementing the tank with nori?

 

I fed formula 2 flakes and also frozen green veggies for fish. I had nori and red gracilaria in there. I also put in some culpera from my sump. I never saw the tang eating the nori or the gracilaria but she loved the flakes and also grabed meaty pieces from the other fish.

 

Question!!

I believe i do have some dinoflagellates growing on my rocks. I have seen the tang before picking on it and I have read that this stuff could be toxic. Could it be that this is what caused it to die. No other fish touches the stuff and my CUC seems fine.