help my naso

[sleasia]

If your water parameters were all good salinity 1.020-1.024 ph 8.0-8.4 temp 76-78, and you are sure your alkalinity and calcium are ok then it may be something you are not testing. The white spots look like the normal stress color change of naso tangs which means since they didn't go away, it wasn't the usual fear thing but actually something contaminating the fish. Do you have a protein skimmer, a uv? what are you filtering your water with? ro/di or carbon or purigen. The fish may have had a bacterial infection. UV is the only way to wipe that out short of treating the whole main tank and wiping out the biological filter (which if its a new tank, the uv may do anyway). If you are filtering with carbon, perhaps the ph dropped, or the trace elements were filtered out. Perhaps the phosphate or silicates are high in your tapwater if you do not use r/o di filtration?? If you filter with purigen and are reclaiming it with bleech, perhaps the bleech was not thoroughly removed from the filter media before reusing. What I have seen to be true especially with tangs is they cannot tolerate changes in water quality. They can adjust to something which is consistently slightly off, but changes shock them right out and once severely shocked they do not survive. I am very sorry about your loss. Before adding more fish, be sure to test all parameters. Your tank is still relatively new isn't it? Isn't it less than 4 months old? I think tangs especially need to be added later. I only know because obviously I have made the same mistake, not just once, but a few times....

 

[sleasia]

Also how long had the fish been in the tank before it died? Was it a new fish? It takes a few days for a fish to get sick and die from water quality problems unless its obviously so bad. So if you just added the fish and it died the next day, it was either sick to begin with or it may have been acclimated too fast.

 

[hoycetee]

well thanks for your response first off. well my tank is about 4 months old now and i have setup a sump a week or so before i got the naso. i have used a fluval canister before that where i ran carbon there it, but i ran carbon for a day after i got sump completly running. i've always thought about buying a uv steralizer but heard you really don't need one(i guess i'll look into them and read more about em now), but i use ro/di from my kent marine maxima. i had her for a little over 2 weeks before she died, she was fine doing well untell those last couple days there. i acumulated her for 3 hours when i got her.
but could my mh lights stressed her out, cause i did not run them for over a week after i got her cause i did not have em hooked up yet. now that i think about it, that could of brought alot of stress to her. if i didn't acumulate them to her, right.

 

[sleasia]

Well it sounds like you are doing alot of things very right. I don't think it is the lights stressing the naso out to such a degree that it died. Its most likely something about the water. Just a thought, make sure your testing stuff is accurate. Once everything of mine tested perfect despite the fact that a tang was getting sick. so I took the water to the lfs and there were nitrites!!! Probably the stuff I used was on the store shelf too long or something. Another time when I used meters, it gave a different reading everytime I put it in the same water! so I dumped the meters and went back to chemicles. Carbon sometimes causes drops in ph, coconut carbon tends not to though. but you are using r/o water, so its pretty good to begin with (I'm using tap water, filtered and then mixed with the salt. I just ordered a typhoon III r/o which has been held up because of wilma) Are you checking alkalinity and kh? probably you are? Changing the sump may have caused a fallout of your biological filter and allowed nitrites to develop. Its hard to know, but I doubt it was the lights unless they heated up the water too much.

 

[scubadoo]

You have a couple possibilities that come to mind boith possible ...fish caught using cyanide are usaully goners in a few weeks. They eat but cannot process the nutirtion which leads to death due to malnutrtion and exposure. Also, you mentioned an anemone...quite possible the fish hit the anemone while swimming and was stung leading to death. That could be sting marks in the pic...hard to tell though.

 

[scubadoo]

I forgot to mention a few addtional possibilities ......tangs require lots of water movement and mature systems of at least 6 months or older. They also need PLENTY greens in their diet. The animal could have been injured in tranpost or while catching and developed infection or was damaged internally. Possible given the two week timeline.

 

[hoycetee]

well thanks for your respones. i proboly should of waited a few more months to get the naso, but i thought i would try. but if my calculations are right i have atleast 660gph running through my display. and she was eating, so what you say about cyanide could be part of the problem. but i highly dout the spots were stings from anemone cause they would come and go the last day it was alive untill the final few hours where they just stayed solid white spots, but then again it could have been stung.
but there is so many possiblities and i like to here them, but it so hard to tell what exactly happened since i'm not a marine expert, i will proboly neveer know what exactly happen.
i will try another naso cause it's the fish i really want to have, but i will wait a few months before getiing one, and hopefully all things go good this time.