Save my false perc

[Guest Keyoke]

Ok, so I bought my first set of fish, 2 blue chromis (now missing) and a small false percula clown from Roozens yesterday.

 

I think the Chromis expired, and my cleanup crew.. well, cleaned up. There's no trace of the things in the tank.

 

Now my false perc is acting kinda funny.. it won't sit still, even at 11:45pm in the evening, it's swimming head up in erratic fashion, then sinking to the bottom, as soon as it touches something it spasms, swims and floats back down, ad infinum.

 

I ran a test of the water and came up with the following readings;

 

Nitrite: 0ppm

Nitrate: 0ppm

Amonia: between 0ppm and 0.25ppm (much closer to 0 than .25)

PH: Between 8.4 and 8.8, this darn test kit isn't very sensitive.

Temp: 79 degrees F

Salinity: 1.024

 

I'm a little concerned with the PH being as high as it is, especially since it's night time and the lights are off. IIRC, PH is supposed to _drop_ at night, right?

 

Uhoh.. as I was writing this, the little bugger just expired. :bigcry: It's being swarmed by pods... it took all of about 2 minutes for the 'pods to find it..

 

So what killed the fish? Anyone have any ideas? I realize amonia is there, but it's barely registering.. Chromis and false percs are pretty hardy fish, I can't immange that a small amount of amonia is what killed 'em.. ?

 

I know there's been some bad press about Roozens, I probably will never go back there, since the place kinda gave me the creeps. I could understand the Chromis, especially if they were cyanide caught, but falsies are usualy tank-raised, right?

 

-jeff

[Guest Keyoke]

Also, for what it's worth all the other critters in the tank;

 

1 Queen Conch

dozen-ish Narsius snails

half dozen blue-legged (tricolor variety) hermits,

one nice green/orange zooanthid cluster

about 4 or 5 2 to 9 polyp large purple zoanthid clusters

one small (2 tiny fronds) of 'waving hand' Xenia (non-pulsing type)

couple of Aptasia

1 capenella frag (2 sprigs)

More short-stalk grape calurpa than I can shake a stick at (I can't get it off either, it's threaded amongst the Zoa colony, gonna have to get a calurpa eater soon..)

 

All are doing pretty well. I had some brown/orange Acro, that came with the LR I got, but it's pretyt much dead, which is what I'd figure woul dhappen in a new tank with only 4x 96W PC for lighting..

[Grav]

Jeff,

 

Sorry to hear you lost some fish. Very odd to lose 3 fish right away.

 

How big is the tank? How long did it cycle. All the pods and cleanup crew doing okay indicate to me that the problem is not water quality. Your coral are doing okay, so I'd say your amonia is testing at zero and your test kit just isn't that easy to read.

 

How did you aclimate the fish? How long did you have them in total? When did the cromis disapear? Possible they jumped and are on the floor behind the tank?

Is your tank grounded? How big is the tank? Yer not new at this, what other tanks have you had?

 

I'm looking for grape Calerpa. Save me some for the next meeting?

[Lee Stearns]

Sorry to hear about the loss.

What are you using for skimmer and do you have some surface agitation with your return- Do you have a fuge- From the sound of the way the chromis acted it sounds a bit like O2 levels may be low.

I know you have kept salt in the past and it is obvious you are checking water params. And yes PH normally drops after light out.

The only other ting that I can think of is to run come carbon which could assist in taking out any spurious chemicals that might be in there. Just thowing out possibilities for now.

What is the tank size and configuration- would like to help you get up and running. I would not bet on Roozens carrying anything tank raised.

Actually these marine systems are pretty easily run once they get going, as long as they remain in balance, and the occupants are carefully selected for the enviornment- as the nano cube keeps showing me here at work.

[Guest Keyoke]

It's a 90 gallon tank, with a 20L tank as a sump/fuge. Drain is from a 1" bulkhead. The return is done by two 1/2" returns. One, is a Mag 5, the other is a Mag-3. It's an odd setup, I know, but until I get a SCWD or Squirt and a mag-9 or so (the sump isn't drilled, so no iwaski's or dolphins for me), it'll do. I actually kind of like the double-pump return, since if one fails I'll at least have a backup... (I'm a network engineer, redundancy is always good in my book) Returns go from each corner of the tank and point towards the middle with a slight cant torwards the top so there's plenty of surface agitation. I've also got a Rio 30 pointed down the back side of the tank (behind the LR) and one of those powerheads with the auto-rotating heads on the other side, pushing water across the front of the rock.

 

The 20L has a small fuge, about a 12x12, I screwed up as I built it, and the water level is pretty high, and movement in the fuge section is pretty sluggish. I'm going to modify the glass that seperates the return section and the fuge and lower the lip a bit, see if I can't get more flow thru there and give myself more wiggle room, with two returns I run dangerously close to sucking the thing dry yet with the pumps off, I run dangerously close to overflowing the sump. I've got a 300W heater in there that I want to get rid of, and replace with a pair of smaller ones..

 

Skimming is done by a Won Brothers 125, it's a cheap skimmer I know, my son _stomped_ on my turboflotor and cracked it.. Powered by a Rio 2300, and it actually takes about a cup of gunk out of the tank every week or so, though I have to run it a little wet. Not bad for a $70 skimmer.

 

I've got about a 2-2.5" DSB, maybe 40-50lbs of LR. Fuge has about a 2" DSB with about 5 lbs of LR, grape and feather calurpa, and a few small strands of cheato, but it's by no means full of macro.

 

The tank has been running for about 3 months or so. I started the tank with no LR, about a 2.5" DSB, seeded with a bag of 'Agri Alive', it ran for about a week or so before I added a freebie peice of rock from Lee, and a scoop of his sand to help seed mine, (thanks again Lee, that Capenella is doing fine by the way) which sat by it's lonesome for about 3 or 4 days, then I added a 20-30 lbs of LR and a scoop of really dark sand from MichaelG's tank, it sat for another week or so, and I added some large chunks, about 20 lbs or so, of near base-quality LR.

 

I'm suffering from a light diatom bloom right now, which makes me wonder if I ought to test for silicates. I'll go drop a bag of carbon into the return section of the tank, and pick up a test kit for copper, silicate, and dKH tomorrow I guess. I'm going to do another PH reading at about noon or so (one of the benefits of working from home) and see if maybe PH is really high during the day.

 

I'm not seeing a lot of coraline growth, even tho the tank's been runing for awhile. I'd hoped to see at least some, but if its growing I can't tell. I was going to start dosing kalk thruought the day/night in my makeup water, maybe that'll help with PH, boost calcium. But I'm not doing anything until i can figure out where things are going wrong. (Speaking of, where the heck do you find pickling lime? I went to Shoppers, Food Lion, and Giant with no luck.. anyone know whwere to get some in Manassas? I found pickling salt, pectin, but no lime.)

 

I did have some rather large peices of Acro, that seemed to have just gone downhill almost overnight. They started to crash after I rearanged the tank last weekend, I emptied the tank, saved the water and moved it so I could finnish the plumbing on the sump/return. I kept the water moving and heated that the LR and other critters was in, then reruned all but about 15 gallons or so when I refilled the tank... I expected a small cycle after that, and saw one that lasted for about 2 days. I re-aranged the Lr they were on and I'm seeing better polyp extension on the bits that are still alive, so I'm hoping I can recover some, they won't be happy under my lighting. I'd give 'em away but it's growing like Monti almost, spread out along the rock. Only reason I know it's acro is because Mike busted the branches off before he gave me the lr.

 

I bought the fish from roozens Tuesday. The chromis dissapeared Tuesday evening, and the Falsie last night.

 

I acclimated the critters for about 3 hours, floating them in the fuge section of the tank and slowly added a children's medicine syringe worth of tank water to the bags (two bags, 1 for the clown, 1 for the two chromis) every 20 minutes or so. I probably should have done things a little slower. My 3yr old daughter was getting impatient tho, and wanted "nemo" in the tank NOW.. she was crushed that she couldn't find him this morning. I felt bad for her, she ran up this morning and woke me up screaming "Nemo's gone! Nemo's dead!". :(

 

So that's probably more information that y'all care to hear about, but I'm stumped..

 

Grav - if I can figure out how to harvest this grape calurpa I'll be happy to give ya what I got. I don't have a lot, what I do have seems to have threaded itself amongs the various polyps, and it's grwoing real close to the rock, looks like ground coverage.

[Guest Keyoke]

How did you aclimate the fish?

[Guest Keyoke]

whoops, wrong button.

[Grav]

Your aclimation process seems fine to me.

 

Not ruling out voltage (every tank should be grounded IMO) I feel strongly that O2 is your problem. I would increase flow through the sump and/or upgrade the skimmer. Is all of the sump flow going to the skimmer, then fuge? If so much of the O2 added in skimming may be consumed before it gets back to the main tank.

 

The mag 5 is prolly pushing 250 GPH and the Mag 3, maybe 100?? I'd try to get in the range of a total of 900 to 1300 (10x to 15x tank volume.) The powerheads may help but surface agitation is not going to super saturate O2 levels like you want.

 

One Mag 12 or even better Mag 18 would do the trick. Keep the mag5 running if you want to have that backup system (an idea I like too)

 

I'd love some grape and feather. Trying to build a Tang food source. Will trade for double in Chaeto if you like.

[Guest Keyoke]

for what it's worth, I took another sample of the water and came up with nearly the same results. PH was at about 8.4 still...

 

I dont supose there's a disolved oxy test is there?

[ErikS]

I dont supose there's a disolved oxy test is there?

ORP is generally used to determine oxygen levels in the water.

[Guest Keyoke]

ORP is generally used to determine oxygen levels in the water.

30357[/snapback]

 

Duh. redux, orp.. duh, duh.

[ErikS]

Before you bother with a grounding probe, you should do a search if it's ever available on RC - lot's of pros & cons (I'm still undecided). You can easily check if there's voltage in the tank w/ a multi-meter.

[Grav]

Eric,

 

Please, what are the "cons" on a grounding probe? Other than the $9 cost.

[HowardofNOVA]

After reading a bit about ground probes, they are a MUST in my opinion. You may have read about my LITTLE shock this weekend, their where 2 issues that could have prevented me from curling my LONG BROWN HAIR....shut up Chip!

1. I had temporarily connected main electrical line to NON GFI hookup

2. I had disconnected my Ground Probe while putting on drywall and never hooked it back up!

 

So when I noticed the water cooler that day, the moment the GP touched the steel studs, it popped the circuit breaker!

SO, long story short, you (EVERYONE) NEEDS both a GFI and Grounding Probe to their system.

 

NEXT, I have a 90g setup and would STRONGLY recommend a MAG12 or equal as your main flow. I'm running about 2500gph flow in my tank, seems to be working fine!

 

Also, I like about 2 (1 for backup) 300watt heaters for the 90g tank. 3-5w per gal is recommended in the sump.

 

NEXT, I'm putting my vote in just started out with BAD livestock, from what I've read, seems to be the logical solution. I've only lost a couple of fish IMMEDIATELY after getting and I never have spent that my time acclimating them as you did. Usually, I float bag in tank for 15-20 minutes, add about a cup of water every 15-20 minutes, repeat a couple of more times, drain out 1/2 the water and repeat a time or two, then transfer to the tank. (I'm planning on setting up a full time hospital tank soon).

 

FWIW, I've lost a couple of fish over the years that just DISAPPEARED! It's amazing how fast the Cleanup Crews can clean up! I guess they are bucking for a raise? <_<

Howard

[ErikS]

Cons?

 

Electricity in a tank is isolated, it has no path to ground = it doesn't flow though the tank (& livestock). Much akin to the way birds sit on high tension lines or the way super high tension lines are repaired (the workers "clamp on" ). When a grounding probe is in the water the current flows through the water (& the livestock) to ground. It will travel from the source to the grounding probe. If the source is close to the ground then NBD, if it's at the opposite end of the water column then it will flow through all the livestock.

 

Another example, if you were in a bathtub FULL of water & a toaster fell in - if there were no path to ground you'd feel a tingle at best - you'd be dead if there's a metal drain...aka......a path to ground.

 

Without a path current doesn't flow.

 

In your case Howard a ground probe may have helped, or it may have killed you - it would depend on your location & the location of the probe. If you were between the source & the probe you might not be here to tell the tale.

 

You got a shock because you were mostly isolated from ground - if you had a good connection to ground, i.e. barefoot most likely you'd be dead. (w/o a GFI )

 

As I said, I'm still undecided - what I do believe is the best approach is to find the offending equipment & remove it.

[HowardofNOVA]

I don't know about dead, but sure put a zest into my step the rest of the day!

Howard

[ErikS]

Well do us a favor and don't work around the tank w/ stuff plugged into a non-GFI outlet