Beginner here with dead fish

[diana888]

Hi, I am very new at this so please be patient. I have (had) 2 clowns, a yellow sailfin tang, a cleaner shrimp, a sally crab and a couple hermit crab type things. We have sand (not live), plastic plants and Texas holey rock. The tank is 55 gallons. The tank is in the middle of cycling. Yes I KNOW WE SHOULD NOT HAVE PUT FISH IN. But we have no where to put the fish now and the tank is almost done cycling. I bought a piece of live rock yesterday to add to help the cycling along. They sold me a rock out of one of their aquariums (the only way they sell it) and I thought it was okay since we bought a fish from that tank a few days ago. Well, my clown started acting weird. It's fin got lighter and then it's body got lighter and it had a long white string hanging from it. From what I can see it is some kind of parasite that clowns get. It died last night very quickly. My question is, is this from the new live lock? I have only had these fish less than a week, could this have happened even though the fish in the tank where the rock came from were healthy? Also, do I now need to treat my whole tank since I had one sick fish in there? We put the clown in a hospital tank before it died. My other clown and the tang look fine today. Please help, I do not want to lose my fish to disease and have to start this tank all over again. Thank you for any help you can give.

 

[perfectdark]

Originally Posted by Diana888
http:///forum/post/2715152
Hi, I am very new at this so please be patient. I have (had) 2 clowns, a yellow sailfin tang, a cleaner shrimp, a sally crab and a couple hermit crab type things. We have sand (not live), plastic plants and Texas holey rock. The tank is 55 gallons. The tank is in the middle of cycling. Yes I KNOW WE SHOULD NOT HAVE PUT FISH IN. But we have no where to put the fish now and the tank is almost done cycling. I bought a piece of live rock yesterday to add to help the cycling along. They sold me a rock out of one of their aquariums (the only way they sell it) and I thought it was okay since we bought a fish from that tank a few days ago. Well, my clown started acting weird. It's fin got lighter and then it's body got lighter and it had a long white string hanging from it. From what I can see it is some kind of parasite that clowns get. It died last night very quickly. My question is, is this from the new live lock? I have only had these fish less than a week, could this have happened even though the fish in the tank where the rock came from were healthy? Also, do I now need to treat my whole tank since I had one sick fish in there? We put the clown in a hospital tank before it died. My other clown and the tang look fine today. Please help, I do not want to lose my fish to disease and have to start this tank all over again. Thank you for any help you can give.
IMO I wouldnt treat anything unless you are sure of what the cause is. From what you are explaining the only disease I can see is stress, and ammonia poisoning. If you were still cycling and your fish were exposed to dangerous levels of ammonia they were most likely already stressed. Adding a piece of LR could of stressed them further and or added more ammonia to an already cycling tank. Not an easy diagnosis from a tank that was this unstable. Have you tested your water? if so what were the results for ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, pH, alk and salinity? Have you done a water change yet?

 

[jcarroll]

Sounds like you learned a very expensive first lesson. You have to be patient in the beginning. Let the tank complete a full cycle, which means ammonia and nitrites will test positive, then will come back as zero. Once that's done, you do a 10% water change and add a cleanup crew. Let them settle for a week or so, then you can add your first fish. You could probably get away with adding two, but it's better to be safe than sorry and just do one at a time. I did one at a time, every two weeks. If you don't start over, and test your water daily until you're sure it's gone through a cycle, then you're not setting yourself up with the proper tools for a healthy tank.

 

[diana888]

Originally Posted by PerfectDark
http:///forum/post/2715158
IMO I wouldnt treat anything unless you are sure of what the cause is. From what you are explaining the only disease I can see is stress, and ammonia poisoning. If you were still cycling and your fish were exposed to dangerous levels of ammonia they were most likely already stressed. Adding a piece of LR could of stressed them further and or added more ammonia to an already cycling tank. Not an easy diagnosis from a tank that was this unstable. Have you tested your water? if so what were the results for ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, pH, alk and salinity? Have you done a water change yet?
I am still cycling, my ammonia is very high, I have low nitrites but no nitrates yet. This test was done Aug 6th and we did a 20% water change after that which brought the ammonia down to a better 0.25. The clown died in a matter of hours. My first thought after reading around was ammonia poisoning too. I think I will just leave everything alone and continue to monitor the cycling process and hopefully things will be okay except that now my other clown is looking pale. Funny, but the tang is thriving.
Thanks for your input, everyone!

 

[diana888]

Thanks, I will do the water changes and stock the tank slowly. But this was not an expensive first lesson actually. We have had 2 other tanks (and one more that just my husband had) that were NEVER cycled and we did not lose a single fish. We used live rock and 3 types of filtering systems. So not cycling does not mean certain death. The mistake this time, I think, is that we did not use a tank full of live rock, we only have one piece in there. That is the only difference I see. Thank you again for the info, I will certainly heed you advice and if I lose all my fish I WILL be cycling!

 

[spiderwoman]

Please, please take the fish out and take them to your LFS for safe keeping. Otherwise those fish will either die or be permanently disabled because of the high ammonia levels.