Help Please!

[gadgad]

I recently placed 2 good size orders from swf.com for corals & fish to help stock my new 37gallon tank.
I ordered 3 percs, flame angel, royal gramma, and some corals. When i opened the packages I was impressed with the quality of shipping/packaging. I acclimated the fish/corals over the period of 45mins likei have done the past 3years, after floating the bags for about 30-45mins.
The fish seemed healthy, swimming together with a clown that has been in the tnk for about 2months & doing good. The next few days they seemed to eat, but swam very hard, stayed near top of water and not act calm like the existing clown. They are all about the same size, small. Within next day, clowns dead, flame dead, only survivor was my existing clown. I placed my 2nd order to replace the dead fish & the 1 that came doa, spent extra time acclimating them very slowly, placed in tank, seemed to be doing ok, the yesterday the smaller 1 died, & today the other 1 died. I placed an order for a Chromis & he is doing fine, as is the original Royal Gramma.
All my parameters are good: nitrates 10, trites 0, amon 0, ph 8.1, salinity 1.024. I don't know why they died & would like to order these fish, but am afraid to kill them again. I don't like killing fish.

 

[neptunes ghost]

That is one drawback to mail-order. You should try to quarentine any mail-order fish for two or three weeks to make sure they are healthy and eating. You also don't want to contaminate a stable system if they are sick. This is especially important with an older system due to the investment of time and money. I have seen mail order places with an average 50% die off within a week of shipment. It could just be stress.
You should also keep Chromis in groups of 3 or more.

 

[fedukeford]

I know this is going to sound kinda harsh, but in such a small tank you NEVER add more than one or 2 small fish at a time. You need give time for the bacteria that breaks down fish poop to catch up to the extra bioload you add with more fish. Pretty soon you will probably be seeing a spike in Ammonia, if you do, start doing small, well airated 5 gallon water changes until the ammonia reaches 0.
Feduke

 

[gadgad]

ok, i will look into getting him 2 buddies..
I check my paramteres every other day & all the fish were no bigger than 1-1.5 inches big & i do weekly water changes.

 

[myrtle beach]

I wouldn't order online a third time, invest the extra money you would blow on shipping on gas to drive to a LFS. It must be frustrating to have fish keep croaking, I have read of people who had snails dying by the handful from SWF, so I would hesitate to try expensive fish. Best of luck.