Ugh... help, Tang died in under 24 hours?

Agreed! but i drip for 1 hour and splash the water (controllably) to keep the oxygen flowing! 600 post

 

It's tough to guess what happened, in addition to Jason McKenzie's comment, I might guess ammonia in the bag. Lowering pH, reduces ammonia, so, some LFS when they have ammonia problems will try to drop their pH to compensate. You get the fish, drip acclimate, it raises then raises the pH in the bag and also the ammonia and shocks the fish. If you do drip acclimate, it's therefore good to use some sort of ammonia detox product. Some people swear by drip acclimation, but personally, I tend not to spend too much time acclimating when getting fish from an LFS. Like Jason, I've had better luck without extended acclimation.

 

Very interesting, I take it then that your LFS have salinity comparable to your tank? I have gotten water with a SG of 1.019 with fish in it. I keep my tank's SG at 1.026.

I think I might adopt Jason's technique somewhat but also aerate the water and drip acclimation if the SG is greatly different.

 

Suggestion then would be to wait to get a larger tank before trying again? Sucks for a $40 fish to die that fast! Ugh. I've seen lots of people do tangs in 55g, etc. And the recommendations I've seen for this tang said it would be ok for tanks 20g and larger. My concern was him looking like he was breathing heavily...

 

no way at least a 85 gallon

 

Wait until you have at least a 75 for a blue tang. There are a few that can go in 55 gallon tanks. You will want a tank that is at least 4 foot long to give the tang swimming room.

 

Inverts tend to be very sensitive to sudden salinity changes, but fish can be supprisingly tolerant. Sometimes it's the lesser of two evils....

 

For future reference: if the LFS has a SG of 1.019 and mine is closer to 1.025, in what way should I acclimate the tang? Should I quarantine him in a smaller tank closer to the LFS's salinity and slowly raise to 1.025 before placing in my main tank?

 

I just remembered another thing that you could do. R.H.F. on RC recommended this to me a while back, is to set up a temporary tank for acclimation. Basically, take some tank water, and put it in a small tank. Add fresh water to drop the salinity, to match the salinity in the bag. Move the fish from the bag to that tank and slowly raise the salinity in the small tank. THEN transfer to the larger tank. This should eliminate pH, ammonia, O2 issues etc... Honestly I never tried it, because I've never had an issue with the simple acclimation method.

 

My way may not be the best way, but I order all my fish from 1 store (a friend owns it) I know his practises are very good. But I've never even asked him what the SG of his fish systems are. I would imagine it's around 1.019. I keep my system at 1.026
I float the bag for about 20min. I then slide my hand into the bag and lift the fish out. For some reason the fish always just lay against my palm. I then place it into the tank.
This method I adopted from Tangster and Amcarrig

J