Mysterious sixline death

OK so I got a sixline for my birthday on 7/11 (a little juvenile), and I was pretty ok with it since he was the last fish i was planning on getting, although I didn't think I'd get one so soon. The acclimation went fine (took an hour with him) and did a sort of drip acclimation. He took to the tank and its inhabitants just fine. Not 24 hours later I found him dead in the back of the tank. I did notice a weird spot on him when i put him in the first day (not ich, just something funny with his scales on one said) but didn't think much of it.

My tank is a little over 6 months old and all the other inhabitants are doing just fine. I did add a jawfish about two weeks ago (from the same store) and hes doing splendidly. The inhabitants include two false percs (the 1st additions), an LTA, a month or so later i got a scarlet skunk shrimp, and I waited another 2-3 months to get the jawfish. I was planning on the juvenile 6 line to be last addition.

My parameters are the following

temp: always 75-77
salinity: 1.022
Nitrate:between 0 and 5 ppm
Nitrite: 0
Ammonia: between 0

28 gallon


My question is, is there a condition of my tank that could have killed the 6 line, or was there most definitely something wrong with it? Is my nitrate level high enough to kill one?

The LFS demanded I bring back a water sample before they would refund my friend his money, I just want all the info i cam get on this/

 

Ammonia is 0 *

 

Yeah , the poor guy was sick when you got him ? Who knows ? That nitrate level is no where near enough to kill the little guy. Take the store your water sample and get your money back. Sorry for the loss.

 

I had fish living in a tank with 100ppm nitrate levels... trust me... from my short experience... your nitrates are not the culprite. The weird spot is definitely something of a red flag...

 

What about your pH?

 

did you float the bag in the tank with the lights on. i found this out once with a cleaner shrimp i floated the bag in the tank for a lil and my lights heated the water up really fast in like 10 min. oops. that was the only thing i ever had die in my tank. in the year ive had it.

but i would say he was already messed up and the stress of being bagged killed him. or if you have inexperienced people catching your fish, they could have injured him while netting.

 

ok so i didn't test the pH but I did have it tested at a different LFS than where i got the fish (they said everything else checked out fine); they said it was a little low and asked how i acclimated. I told them it was a slow one hour, adding tank water gradually etc. I asked them if that would have been low enough to kill the fish and they said that it was most likely a sick fish. So what do you guys think. Frankly im more than a little miffed at the other LFS; they refused to admit that it could have been that the fish was sick. Even after taking my water to them. How should you expect an LFS to treat this kind of situation?

(and more importantly, i would like to bring my pH up a little bit, how can i do that?)

 

I would be extremely wary of taking one LFS's opinion of another into high consideration. Think about it what's the best way to get rid of competition? Insinuate that the fish was sick. I have a hunch that your water pH was lower than they would have liked (remember if a LFS says its low it can be 7.8 or below, normally anything above that and they say 'oh, it's fine'). They probably said the fish was sick when it may not have been. There are many things that can stress out a fish, a lower pH is one of them.

It is foolhardy for a LFS to check your nitrates and say, 'oh they're good, the fish must have been sick'. There are so many other things that could have happened to have caused the six line's death.

 

first i would ask your lfs what they keep their salty tanks at salin, temp, ph.
my lfs fish store keeps their tanks at a very similar parims as mine. so i only acclimate for 15 min now.

you really should only have to drip acclimate if they are coming from a long distance or from the ocean to a captive tank, this is already done usually at the lfs or the place that collects them. the more time there acclimating the more stressed they get.

all my corals and fish have came home healthy and still all healthy. never had to wait days for a coral to open up always open within few hours of introduction, never lost a fish or coral (just that shrimp, and he was befor my new practice). some may seriously disagree, so ill say in my opinion an hour is way to long to acclimate.

sry for the blabbling

 

well the salinity at the store is kept lower than it would be in a normal tank; so it takes more time to acclimate than normal. In fact the recommended a longer one