help

[kken318]

I have a 37 reef tank, 35lbs of live rock, for the past 6 months everything has been going great untill a week ago. At that point my 2 clown fish died within a day of each other. Now two day ago the 3 damsels I had all died within the past 2 day. None of the fish showed any sign of sickness untill they were about to die. then there eyes look swollen and there breathing picked you rapidily. I using a skillter 400 filter. All reading were good and still are nitates a little high near 40. any ideas.

 

[predator]

What where he readings exactly?Did you add anything new to the tank?Start doing anything different?new chemicals?I could'nt be sure by your desciption.You might want to post this sight on the disease and treatment board.

 

[kken318]

thanks will try posting it there. add the clown fish about 1 month ago other then that did nothing different check the readings weekly and they stayed steady except nitrates went up to 40. thanks for the help

 

[dad]

hummmm. could be alot of things. But my first thought was: What type of circulation do you have? The heavy breathing points me to beleive that they were deprived of air.
You need circulation in a tank for many reasons. One of which is make ripples on the top of the water. This adds air.
Sorry, but maybe this helps.

 

[kken318]

Thanks I have the skilter hang on filter and also a woden air stone in the protien filter which they suggest, also have two power head at the top for water movement.

 

[kris walker]

I wonder if they got dropsy. I hear that dropsy is deadly, and kills fish very quickly unlike parasitic infections (dropsy is internal bacterial infect.). If I remember correctly, the symptoms seem typical of dropsy: swolen body, heavy breathing.
In any case, if the nitrates are "too high", I suspect that the immune systems of the fish were affected, and thus the outbreak. But the question of how high is too high is always there, and the answer not agreed upon.
sam

 

[josh]

Hi, the heavy breathing can mean lots of things. Did you have swings in your salinity. The more concentrated the salinity, the harder time they have breathing.
Josh