Get home form work, my fish are dead / dying...

I recently added three damsels to my tank (about 4 days ago) until then I just had my corals, snails, hermits, feathers ect in there doing great for the past say 6 months. The fish i put in were one female (solid blue) , a white/black striped damsel, and a domino damsel. The blue went immediately into hiding not eating, nothing. The other two seemed in perfect shape. Eating healthily, swimming all around having a ball....Yesterday I noticed out of the blue the blk/white and domino decided to hide all day under a cave in the LR, but they came out to eat, then back into hiding. Havent seen them until a few min ago....striped is dead, domino is about to croak any second, and i cant find the blue one anywhere. What could have caused this? I did a water test two days ago and like I stated in another post, my nitrates were way high @ 80ppm. Did the high nitrates kill my fish? Everything else was great...ammonia was 0, PH was 8.2, temp at 78 deg....Thanks in advance.

 

could be the nitrates. especially if they were in a low-nitrate tank at the LFS

 

how big ig your tank? i think either u have a mantis shrimp, or most likely the fish killed each other

 

did you acclimate them? IMO nitrates won't kill fish as fast as it will corals. I added 6 damsels to my tank a few months ago and within a week I was down to 3. Still at 3. sorry for your loss anyway!

 

You said your tank is 6 months old - did you see it cycle?

I would do a water change ASAP... Get a air stone going, and think about offloading those fish to another tank so they dont die!

 

I never saw any aggression between them, believe it or not....I just removed the striped one....no signs of bites or anything....poor little guy. Ive had those monster mushrooms in my tank for well over 6 months, they do awesome. Done been through a red and a brown algae outbreak during cycling...I know my test kit for nitrates is way over a year old...maybe its just a bad test kit if they go bad after awhile. Im sure I have nitrates, but my ammonia is dead nuts 0. After doing some reading, I realize i didnt acclimate them properly....I now know floating the bag in my tank for 3 hours doesnt count as acclimating....I found the blue one, she is still hiding under LR, but darts back and forth every now and then, but i cant find the domino....

 

Alot of people just float the bag to temp acclimate, but I'd rather do the drip method, that way I know the fish are really getting acclimated to my water. I do it for an hour or a little more. It might just have been the shock of the move or just being in a different tank. You never know. IMO ammonia will kill fish quicker than nitrates. Can you call where you got them from and tell them and ask if they have a replacement or guarantee?

 

Could a sudden SLIGHT increase in salinity cause the two active ones to become very stressed?I remember two days ago I did a partial change and my salinity was borderline low, so I gave it a boost to bring it up to where it should be with the water change...could that be the culprit for the sudden change in behavior? Because they were (seemed) to be doing fine until yesterday.

 

how slight is slight? IMO, not unless you went from 1.019 to 1.026. Even then I'm not sure it would. Are they breathing heavily?

 

Ok, just pulled the domino out.....I hate this....I moved the LR around, out comes the blue....not breathing as heavy as before, now she's staying out and not really swimming too much, but looks like shes trying to eat finally...color looks good....she hasnt eat since going in the tank, so thats a good sign shes trying now...No, the salinity jump wasnt that much more like 1.020 to 1.022.