Urgent help needed Fish Dying for no reason

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lloyd18

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Big Bay, Cape Town
Hi Guys,

I posted a thread last week and for some reason it has dissapeared, anyway.

I am now at my wits end, last week I woke up to find one of my fish dead, an Anthias, did not think to much of it because they were never really great eaters, anyway a day later I woke up and found my juponicus tang was also dead, he had only been in the tank for three days.
My water parameters are all within limits

Calcium= 360 ppm
Magnesium= 1350 ppm
KH= 9,6 dKH
Nitrate= 5 ppm
Phosphate= 0 ppm
Salinity= 1022
Temp= 25 Deg C
Ammonia= 0 ppm

My tank is around 400 Litres and sump is around 80 Litres. I am running a TS2 skimmer, DSB with Aragonite & NSS, Phosphate Reactor with Phosgaurd.

My Zoa's are also not opening and extending fully.
I have been dosing the tank with Stability since Saturday as it definately seems there is something wrong although we can not detect it.

Last night I decided to add a yellow headed sleeper goby as part of CUC and to check what is going on with the tank, well guess what this morning I woke up and he is also DEAD.

There are currently two yellow tail damsels and one lawnmower blenny that are in the tank and surviving nicely.
Please help me with any suggestions possible.
 
Has there been ANY element that has varied? are there great fluctuations in Temp since summer has begun?

you said the tang died 3 days after introduction, the anthia the day before that and then the goby last night? i SUSPECT that the tang may have brought in a disease perhaps and that is what is killing things.... Damsels are notoriously hardy, and anthia's have very specific feeding requirements which i encourage you to read up on should you consider them as additions in the future......

your SG is a little on the low side, i prefer 1.025, that being said, a lower salinity is a good thing when trying to fight disease without using a copper based medicine (which would kill invertebrates and corals alike) this lower salinity MAY be why the Zoa's are grumpy

did you notice anything strange on the fish, a change in coloration, white spots on them anything out of the ordinary

i would not add anything for at least 3 weeks maybe even more after 3 weeks i would slowly raise the sg over a couple days to 1025
 
Neil H said:
Has there been ANY element that has varied? are there great fluctuations in Temp since summer has begun?

you said the tang died 3 days after introduction, the anthia the day before that and then the goby last night? i SUSPECT that the tang may have brought in a disease perhaps and that is what is killing things.... Damsels are notoriously hardy, and anthia's have very specific feeding requirements which i encourage you to read up on should you consider them as additions in the future......

your SG is a little on the low side, i prefer 1.025, that being said, a lower salinity is a good thing when trying to fight disease without using a copper based medicine (which would kill invertebrates and corals alike) this lower salinity MAY be why the Zoa's are grumpy

did you notice anything strange on the fish, a change in coloration, white spots on them anything out of the ordinary

Neil, thanks for the advice, there was no difference in the fish at all, thats what seems so strange, the temp fluctuates between 25 - 26 Deg so not much variation.

i would not add anything for at least 3 weeks maybe even more after 3 weeks i would slowly raise the sg over a couple days to 1025
Click to expand...

I am in the process of increasing the Salinity at the moment.


gMAN said:
Hey lloyd, firstly don't add any more fish... how long were the fish in your setup before they died? how did you acclimatize them?
Click to expand...

Gman, the Anthias had been in for three weeks, the Tang for around a week and then last night the Goby for one night, strange thing is the Damsels and the Lawnmower Blenny are fine.


Surely it cant only be the SG that is doing this to the fish, how do I find out what is wrong?
 
Where did you buy the fish that died. PM me the shops name and I might can tell you something about it. I dont think it can be white spots, but brooklynella can do the job within one day.
 
As i said, i suspect you have a disease brought in from one of your new fish, most likely the tang, you are more than likely going to have to find out the most likely suspects, understand their lifecycle and act accordingly !
 
Were these fish all bought from the same source or from different sources?
 
listen to Luckyfish
 
Quite sure, I have the answer to your problem.
Never add the juice from the frozen food to your tank. Always rinse the food after defrosting. Never ever add the juice from frozen brine shrimps. This juice is full of bacteria and diseases. At one stage you started to add the whole block of frozen brines to your tank. This will cause not a direct problem. So you carried on doing this. The bacteria and diseases accumulated in your tank and your existing fish will build up their immune system over time. Any new arrival will die within a short period of time without any visible signs. The longer you use the juice from the brines, the faster the new arrival will die.
If you would feed the brines and juice for a year on a daily basis, the new arrival will die within hours!
Stop feeding brines, the nutritional value is kak anyway.
Do water changes. Use food such as omega one or something with similar nutritional value. In between you can use food such as flakes or frozen well rinsed mysis. Wait a few weeks before adding new fish.

Thats it! Spread the word! Do not add juice from frozen brines and help others to avoid this terrible mistake. Inform Trevor as a supplier as well to make sure he tells his customers about it.
 
lloyd18 said:
Thanks a million Luckyfish, would you also suggest I possibly do some water changes to clear up the problem?
Click to expand...

Read my post again. I did write, do water changes!
BTW, the thanks button is on the left below my avatar.;-)
 
So how do I know about this brine shrimp juice story?
15 years ago, I was just as lazy as the majority who feeds frozen brines. Every new arrival died within the first 24 hours. After I added a new huge mandarin to my system, I could clearly see there is something wrong in my tank. The mandarin was acting like he touched high voltage. I use to blame my supplier, but after the mandarin died within minutes, I had a very long chat with my supplier. Honest as I am, I told him that I was blaming him for selling sick fish. He apologised to have forgotten to tell me to rinse the brines before feeding.

I really would like to know if anybody here knows about the problem with brine juice as I believe the majority doesn't. I've read so many threads about dying fish, but nobody mentioned the brine shrimp juice as a cause.
How can we make sure that everybody gets to know about it? I think this would save many fish lifes and good reputations our LFS.
It is always easy to blame somebody for the mistakes we make as we don't know any better. I'm sure not every LFS knows about the brine juice, so speak to your LFS about it.
 
Quite correct. Anthony Calfo advise this in his books as well, to thaw frozen food with cold RO water.
Take a piece of frozen food, thaw it in cold RO water.
Then pour the RO/food mixture through a plastic tea strainer so that the food stays behind. Flush with a bit of tank water. You can now add the food to the tank and chuck the RO/juice mix away.
Apart from the problems cause mentioned above, juices from frozen food can also cause nuisance algae and high nitrates and phosphates in the long run.
 
Ive been using the block frozen foods, mysis to be exact. Always thawing it and removing the juice, so just the shrimp go in the tank
 
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