New fish didn't make it 12 hours

[blmurphy1982]

Background- SR60 (40 breeder with 20 sump). Have had a Midas Blenny in the tank for a month. Been doing great, have a few coral, also all doing well.

 

Today I added a small clown and a firefish around 1pm. Firefish immediately his but have seen him a few times and he's been eating. Clown went immediately to the bottom and didn't move too much. He didn't make it. Parameters are as follows:

 

Salinity -1.024-025

Ammonia/nitrite 0

Nitrate - 5

Mag -1400, calcium 470, alk 9 - all tested Wednesday other than ammonia which i just now tested to see if something strange occurred.

 

My only thinking is either bad luck with the fish or I messed up the acclimation. Salinity between the store water and mine was minuscule and it's a well regarded LFS so after a float I popped him in. He wasn't happy from the start.

 

Also added a few new cleaning crew members (snails and a conch) but don't think they'd have an impact)

 

I do weekly 10-15% and use Red Sea coral pro salt. I'm at a loss.

 

Thanks for any hints or ideas.

[epleeds]

Yea. From my experience if you don't drip acclimate the fish, the shock is normally too much for them.

Edited April 30, 2016 by epleeds

[blmurphy1982]

Thanks, that's my only thought is the change was too much for him. I'll drip next time.

[WCorbin82]

Strange for a clown to go that quickly. I would say acclimation gone wrong. Might have shocked him although the salinity is similar could have been the other water parameters? IDK just a guess. I always drip acclimate for an hour no matter the fish. Everybody says QT is the way and I agree but with the hardy fish like clowns I think you can get away with it. So I would say it was he acclimation

 

 

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[blmurphy1982]

Woke up this morning to a perky clownfish. He did pull through. Last night he found a cave to sit in. I expected to pull him out of there today, and good news he's already eaten this morning.

 

Lesson learned. Drip every time.

[overklok]

I never drip acclimate my fish, they get exposed to differences in salinity in natural conditions, I just toss them in!! I haven't lost one yet. 

 

I am now on the watch for the Tang Police...

[SunWyrm]

 I'm with overklok on this one. As long as your parameters are close... The only major thing would be going to higher salinity, that's a no-go.

A lot of LFS do keep their salinity a little lower, helps with stress and all that, but can make it difficult to transition at home. I usually keep my QT a little lower just bc of this. Make sure you always test what's in the bag.
 

Glad to see he made it!

[blmurphy1982]

Thanks everyone. Nice happy fish family going strong

[davelin315]

Drip acclimation is always a good idea, but consider that many fish get freshwater dipped so are going from one to the next to the next in terms of water so if anyone had died, it would not have been because of that.  More than anything, temperature or pH shock are the culprits for it laying on the bottom in my opinion.

[nextlevel808]

Imo there are just as many problems as you can run into with a drip acclimation as just dropping in. It's always good to have both waters very close so there is no shock from temp and ph. But if your not careful when drip acclimating you can run into aproblem I know a few people I know have. When you drip the water from your tank to a bucket or whatever the fish is in you lose a lot of your tank temp when the water slowly drips. If don't believe me test this out the water in tank will be a little different depending on your house temp. Now with people running heat and ac this isn't always a problem but can be. Best way if drip is to rematch temp by floating again in tank to match temp before adding. I find that this is a lot of work and personally only float to match temp with my fish and haven't lost one yet. I do same thing with coral only difference is I dip at least once with coral.