Nemo help!!

I bought two clowns on Monday and one died on Tuesday morning. no idea why. maybe due to stress? maybe killed by anemone? anemone is already returned to the fish shop today.

The other survived one has not taken any food. (bryne, mysis nor pellet).

It is now swimming on the surface of the tank and try to get air? it pops out of the water for every couple of seconds......It seems like it is very weak as the current make it flow to the water intake from time to take and clown gets scared and swim away from the intake.

My water is not very good now due to waste and other reasons.

Ammonia is 0.1 and others are about regular.

I just did water change today trying to improve the water a bit.

WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?

 

use ammonia detoxifiers, what is normal? zero is what i consider normal lol.
go slow in stocking from now on. how long was your tank set up?
do you have LR

 

Bluepill it sounds typical of poisoning to me -ammonia needs to be 0 - you have done a water change but dont have enough beneficial bacteria to deal with the fishes waste products and she/he is succumbing to the effects of its and any other inhabitants waste

the fact its not feeding has probably caused you to try and feed it more often? thus adding to your existing water quality issues

I know from following other posts you have had various other things in this tank - Nem, damsels etc

can this clown be saved? honest answer - I dont know, but IMO it does need moving to better/ more mature/ thus stable water quality , maybe a return to the LFS and then 1 months wait before you add anything else, is the best advise I could give now

or maybe someone would suggest a chemical filter medium short term (poly filter/ Amo lock etc) to try and improve conditions in the tank its in

good luck

Steve

 

I have got 1 small and a large LR

tank is 8 gallon biocube

3 snails
3 hermit crabs
1 turbo snail

1 anemone but now removed.

tank is 3.5 months old

 

I had a problem recently with water quality causing my fish to die. I tried buffering the PH but that turned out to be a very bad idea that resulted in high alk. What did work was this. I started using Kents Amonia detox. I used it for a week then realized i should know more about what i put into the tank than what the directions tell me. I found out the detox formula binds the ammonia but does not get rid of it. Then i found ammo-carb by marineland at petco. So i figured now i have somthing to keep ammonia from harming the tank and somthing else to absorbe it, i should be good. I used ammo-carb mixed with regular carbon. The directions are on the back of the boxes. I purchased pantyhose, followed the directions rinsing it until i dit not see any dust filtering into the tap water then placed the hose filled with the mixture in my sump onto of the sponge leading to the 3rd chamber to ensure maximum penitration of the pouch. I did this at midnight. The next day when i woke up around lunch time I noticed the fish that were left were pecking at the reef feeding and were swimming reguarly. I did a water test and the ammonia was non existant. The nitrates still showed up but over the next few weeks deminished with water changes. I learned from people helping me on here that constant water changes or more than 15% deplets the good bacteria the tank needs prolonging the cycle. I hope this helps, it's worth a shot if you do not currently have carbon in your tank.

 

well the tanks been set up long enough to develop some bacteria and go through a cycle. but adding 2 fish at once was just to fast for the bacteria to grow and consume the waste. you realize that you will only be able to keep those two clowns in a tank that size?

 

i know. I had a Damsel to test it out at first. no problem then I added an anemone. realized that an anemone is not suitable. added 2 clowns and now returned the anemone.

anything else other than the ammonia detoxifier? i don't know if it's going to make it thru tonight

 

prime, detoxifies ammonia nitrites and nitrates.

nitrites are almost as toxic as ammonia, so there very important to watch too.

 

Lr

I believe you would need 10 lbs of live rock in an 8 gallon tank to be self sustained. Maybe someone else can add to this but if i remember correctly the max is 1.75 lbs per gallon and 1:1 to be sufficiant. if the 2 rocks you have are 8 lbs it would make sense the feeding would have caused the water quality decline.

 

well i really don't think theres a max as long as theres proper movement room for fish.

i think his tank has a biofilter in the back, biomedia is inferior to live rock(most doesn't have anerobic zones) but it has been used in FO for along time. Since he does have some lr his filter should be seeded, his tank probably doesn't need more live rock(although more is better) assuming he has biomedia.

but your right for reef tanks 1-1.5 pounds per gallon is usually recommended.

edit: most tanks now no longer use bio media anymore so, if a FO doesn't have a filter i recommend the same as if it was a reef tank