Lost both my clowns

G

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:sad:

I have had my 140 gallon reef up and running for about two months so I decided that it was time to add to the 5 Chromis that I have swimming around so I decided to pick up a pair of Ocellaris Clownfish clownfish and placed them in my 20 gallon quarantine tank.

Last night they were playing in the PVC pipe that I placed in the tank and both of them made little pigs out of them self when fed some frozen brine with Garlic extreme added. This morning they were swimming around but when my wife got home after jury duty she found them both dead in the bottom of the tank.


Parameters of the quarantine

Salinity: 1.024
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate .25
PH 8.24
 
I am now taking off work early. My wife took a sample of the water and the fish back to where we bought them from. They checked all the parameters and said that my salinity was 1.028 :shock: which I find hard to believe, because she checked the water with a refractometer and a hydrometer and both were between 1.024 and 1.0245 and last week when they checked vrs my display there was less then .005 difference.

Now I am in panic mode because the water for my quarantine came from my display tank which has live rock/sand, full clean up crew, 5 Chromis, button polyp and a new torch which I also purchased on Saturday.
 
That salinity is ok - I've seen it up to 1.032 without much issue. How was the temp? With this weather there's been a lot of fluctuations.

Really, that's what a QT tank is for. Perhaps they were extrememly stressed from transport. Perhaps the influx of good food was to rich for them so soon?
 
It seems that several things resulted in the death of the clowns :sad: The first is that the calibration fluid that I bought for my refractometer caused it to be .002 off. :x

The shop where I got the clowns runs their tanks at around 1.022 (my fault for not asking when I bought the clowns). The water sample that I took over read just under 1.025 on my tester which actually was 1.027 after we corrected the refractometer. A .005 jump was more than the poor clowns could handle :cry:

I got lucky that my display tank is only reading 1.025 (Correct) or things could have been a lot worse than they were. Right now I am in the process of SLOWLY lowering the salinity in my display to give me more of a buffer.

Lesson learned but still a real bummer.
 
1.025 isn't high for a reef tank and in fact it's about right. There are a lot of people who recommend 1.026 since that's close to average in natural sea water where reefs are present.

Turn your head to the left and check this out...

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream//ocean/images/avg_salinity.pdf

And here's a tool to make sense of the numbers if you need it:

http://www.saltyzoo.com/SaltyCalcs/SgPptConv.php

Of course, I am not a Marine Biologist... But I did sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
 
What you are saying makes sense but the mistake I think I made is that I did not do a drip to acclimate the clowns. I used around 1/2 cup every four minutes method so instead of a slow increase from 1.022 to 1.027 :sad: I managed to stress them a lot more then I should have.

I will not make that mistake again from now on I will always ask what the shop keeps their Salinity/s.g at and I will check the bag to make sure before I start the process of acclimation.

As far as my display I am only going to drop it to around 1.024
 
I will leave the post-mortem to the resident professionals since I don't know the effects of salinity swings on particular fish. Slow acclimation is always my default setting not only because it's safer for the livestock but because it's just plain easier in my opinion. I always set up a drip-line into a bucket and let it run for an hour or two (at least double the water volume and remove water along the way).

A .005 difference is only 6 parts per thousand. I would think that a quick acclimation would stress them out but it will surprise me if one of the gurus chime in and says that is what killed them.
 
The latest findings in acclimation indicate that a quicker acclimation may be better for the fish, especially on shipped livestock. Fish are usually fairly tolerant of salinity changes in the range you are talking about. If you acclimated them for 30 to 60 minutes they should have been OK. Keeping them in crappy water with out circulation is more of a problem. I have never seen a LFS or wholesale operation do drip acclimation for newly arrived stock and I have seen a few dozen livestock arrivals at both type of operations.
 
I just float the bag and then give it a turkey baster of water from the tank every ten minutes or so for about an hour, discarding water at needed then top off with freshly mixed water. No problems so far but I'm still a beginner at fish.
 
First thing you learn in this hobby is that fish die, especially the wild collected ones. You just never know what parasites or diseases they may have, or how they were collected (cyanide). I learned the hard way with a wild caught percula death recently. It refused all food in quarantine and died for no apparent water-quality related reason.

I would encourage you to try again, and when you pick up another pair try to get some tank-raised specimens (best advice I've gotten from other members). ORA is a company that breeds clownfish, and many of the local fish stores buy ocellaris from this company. Frank's Tanks (a DFWMAS sponsor) should have some in stock now.

http://www.orafarm.com/clownfish.html

These are extremely hardy fish, and I'm happy that I have two of them. ORA breeds solid stock. I like the fact that my fish were raised in a commercial vat somewhere rather than taken from a pristine reef. The fish have adjusted well to my tank, instead of being miserable and stressed due to the capture and confinement.
 
Hi Todd,

You are less than 10 minutes away from a local breeder. Try sending tradosz a pm to see if he has some ready for sale. He's right in Murphy. :)

Cheers,
 
^^^ Those are nice fish! Very nice eyes on them.

Buying local is a great idea, the fish aren't going to be stressed or weakened by days in shipping transit. I doubt 30 minutes in a bag in your car will hurt them much.
 
A change in salinity from low to high, I’ve read, shuts their kidneys down. Their own body turns against them. I've read that going from high to low isn't as bad. Even though your reading was close, they may have also been a bit stressed.
I 'burned' some zoas in QT once because I didn't do that final test and learned my lesson then because the water was only a bit above the QT water. I was able to bring them back but they lost all of their skin. I had to really practice sterile techniques to keep them alive.
If you test the stores water from the bag when you buy something (or something from a member) and compare it to yours you will know how much time to acclimate.
 
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