So, as I had posted earlier in both here, New to the Hobby and Emergency 911 I got some new fish this weekend. Problems showed up right when I started to float the bags to equalize the temperatures. I noticed that one of the fish was missing an eye, then a couple hours later I found one of the other fish was now missing an eye. I split the fish up into three bag and started to research online if I had done something wrong during the acclimation.
I knew that there was an affect called Ammonia burn if you dropped a fish into a tank with a high ammonia but I knew that my levels were good and checked them again just to make sure. I posted in the Emergency 911 topic to see what everyone thought and the only reply I got was "Damsels are evil little guys. They could be fighting even just fast when you turn away " (Thanks Echolancer for that reply.) By this time one of the fish with the missing eye had died and I was not sure about the other one. So I dropped in the one fish that still had both of his eyes and kept the other two in the bags. I took them back to DNA yesterday morning and got replacements. The asst manager there asked me a couple times about which tank I got them from and we pointed them out to him.
I figured out why he kept asking when I got home with the two replacement fish. After getting the new fish floating in the tank it became real obvious that the one fish from the day before was not the same as the new ones. Apparently, when on Friday Alex asked one of the kids to get our fish for us and then we went back to look at the live rock rubble he got the fish out of the wrong tank. When we came out of the back room the kid took the bagged fish up to the register and when we walked up she rang them up and dropped them into the shopping bag for us to carry out. We never really took a good look at the fish until we got home. But once we started floating the bag I did not notice the difference because they were all stressed out and colors fading.
So, while we were wanting basically the most passive Damsels available we actually received three very aggressive Damsels which were described to us as "Evil Little Bastards" (ELB). Both are blue and yellow but the body shape is a bit different with the colors blending differently too. Now my dilemma was we had two fish that we wanted and one ELB that we did not want. We called DNA back and the manager we talked to that morning told us that we could bring him back and swap him out for the other. It ended up taking us about two hours to catch that ELB and I really just about destroyed the entire tank in process. I put some of the water from the tank into a 5 gallon bucket and had to start putting the rock out. This meant moving the coral frags back to the sand bed, and then pulling out the rocks and checking for snails and crabs and putting them back in the tank while putting the rock in the bucket.
We finally caught the ELB and got him in a bag and started to try and put the tank back together. This meant trying to move the sand out of the way and setting the rock down on the glass without dropping it onto a coral frag, a fish, or a snail or hermit crab. The firefish were no help at all, they kept swimming into the holes in the rocks or under the rocks while I was trying to put them down. They seemed to have no fear at all. By the time I got the third rock back into the tank the water was so cloudy that I could no longer see where to put the two remaining rocks. I ended up taking them to the big tank and adding them there. (They might as well help with the cycle there.)
We took the ELB back to DNA and got the fish replaced. We told the assistant manager there that he owed us because we had to destroy our tank to get the ELB out of the tank. Basically, with out being this direct, that it was our fault by not checking the fish when we bought them. Basically he is correct, but I just though it was a bit uncalled for. He did say that if he went to the grocery store and bought bread that was out of date that it would be his fault and not the stores. Then told us that he buys lots of fish that if one dies or gets killed when he puts them into his tank that he has never taken them back to the store to get a replacement or to get a credit. He must make a lot more than me because if I get a fish that does not even make it to my tank or is the wrong fish, I'm taking it back. While I should have checked the bag before we left the store, If the other employee had not gotten the wrong fish in the first place we would not have had any problems.
We did ask what the best way of acclimating the fish were before we left. In my Emergency 911 posting Marc had replied as to why I was taking so long to acclimating the fish. I tried to reply to you Marc but apparently the topic was marked as resolved after you posted your message and it locked the thread and I could not reply. But we talked to DNA and was told that I could really do it like I used to do my Freshwater fish, where you float them for a while so the temperature balances and then start adding about a 25% equivalent of the water volume about every 15 minutes or so until most of the water is from the tank and then net them out and put them in the tank. I was under the impression that we needed to do a drop cycle like on the coral and inverts until we got the salt level the same as in the tank. That was an incorrect assumption.
So here is what I learned this weekend.
1. Never leave the area while someone is getting fish out of the tanks for you.
2. Check the fish in the bags before you leave. (Make sure they are the correct fish and that they have both eyes.)
3. Don't drop a fish into your tank that you question.
4. Don't expect to catch a fish in your tank unless you are ready to take the tank down. (Thankfully this is only a 20 gallon)
5. How to acclimate fish into our tank without having to take forever and a day.
6. It is going to take at least two full days for the sand to clear out of the water. Still looking for one of the firefish since the hurricane.
Sorry for the long and drawn out message here. Just had to get this weekend off my chest...
Tim Sapp
I knew that there was an affect called Ammonia burn if you dropped a fish into a tank with a high ammonia but I knew that my levels were good and checked them again just to make sure. I posted in the Emergency 911 topic to see what everyone thought and the only reply I got was "Damsels are evil little guys. They could be fighting even just fast when you turn away " (Thanks Echolancer for that reply.) By this time one of the fish with the missing eye had died and I was not sure about the other one. So I dropped in the one fish that still had both of his eyes and kept the other two in the bags. I took them back to DNA yesterday morning and got replacements. The asst manager there asked me a couple times about which tank I got them from and we pointed them out to him.
I figured out why he kept asking when I got home with the two replacement fish. After getting the new fish floating in the tank it became real obvious that the one fish from the day before was not the same as the new ones. Apparently, when on Friday Alex asked one of the kids to get our fish for us and then we went back to look at the live rock rubble he got the fish out of the wrong tank. When we came out of the back room the kid took the bagged fish up to the register and when we walked up she rang them up and dropped them into the shopping bag for us to carry out. We never really took a good look at the fish until we got home. But once we started floating the bag I did not notice the difference because they were all stressed out and colors fading.
So, while we were wanting basically the most passive Damsels available we actually received three very aggressive Damsels which were described to us as "Evil Little Bastards" (ELB). Both are blue and yellow but the body shape is a bit different with the colors blending differently too. Now my dilemma was we had two fish that we wanted and one ELB that we did not want. We called DNA back and the manager we talked to that morning told us that we could bring him back and swap him out for the other. It ended up taking us about two hours to catch that ELB and I really just about destroyed the entire tank in process. I put some of the water from the tank into a 5 gallon bucket and had to start putting the rock out. This meant moving the coral frags back to the sand bed, and then pulling out the rocks and checking for snails and crabs and putting them back in the tank while putting the rock in the bucket.
We finally caught the ELB and got him in a bag and started to try and put the tank back together. This meant trying to move the sand out of the way and setting the rock down on the glass without dropping it onto a coral frag, a fish, or a snail or hermit crab. The firefish were no help at all, they kept swimming into the holes in the rocks or under the rocks while I was trying to put them down. They seemed to have no fear at all. By the time I got the third rock back into the tank the water was so cloudy that I could no longer see where to put the two remaining rocks. I ended up taking them to the big tank and adding them there. (They might as well help with the cycle there.)
We took the ELB back to DNA and got the fish replaced. We told the assistant manager there that he owed us because we had to destroy our tank to get the ELB out of the tank. Basically, with out being this direct, that it was our fault by not checking the fish when we bought them. Basically he is correct, but I just though it was a bit uncalled for. He did say that if he went to the grocery store and bought bread that was out of date that it would be his fault and not the stores. Then told us that he buys lots of fish that if one dies or gets killed when he puts them into his tank that he has never taken them back to the store to get a replacement or to get a credit. He must make a lot more than me because if I get a fish that does not even make it to my tank or is the wrong fish, I'm taking it back. While I should have checked the bag before we left the store, If the other employee had not gotten the wrong fish in the first place we would not have had any problems.
We did ask what the best way of acclimating the fish were before we left. In my Emergency 911 posting Marc had replied as to why I was taking so long to acclimating the fish. I tried to reply to you Marc but apparently the topic was marked as resolved after you posted your message and it locked the thread and I could not reply. But we talked to DNA and was told that I could really do it like I used to do my Freshwater fish, where you float them for a while so the temperature balances and then start adding about a 25% equivalent of the water volume about every 15 minutes or so until most of the water is from the tank and then net them out and put them in the tank. I was under the impression that we needed to do a drop cycle like on the coral and inverts until we got the salt level the same as in the tank. That was an incorrect assumption.
So here is what I learned this weekend.
1. Never leave the area while someone is getting fish out of the tanks for you.
2. Check the fish in the bags before you leave. (Make sure they are the correct fish and that they have both eyes.)
3. Don't drop a fish into your tank that you question.
4. Don't expect to catch a fish in your tank unless you are ready to take the tank down. (Thankfully this is only a 20 gallon)
5. How to acclimate fish into our tank without having to take forever and a day.
6. It is going to take at least two full days for the sand to clear out of the water. Still looking for one of the firefish since the hurricane.
Sorry for the long and drawn out message here. Just had to get this weekend off my chest...
Tim Sapp
