i am at your mercy! please help

[am3gross05]

this is what i got... a 75 gallon with a 29 gallon refugium.... i have a little algea (about a handful) of calurpa. i have a hot magnum 350 also on the back. i have 1 p/h rated at 170 gph. i havve about 110 pounds of l/r which 50 of it i just added about 2 1/2 weeks ago. i have between 80 and 90 pounds of l/s. i got 1 175 watt light on 1 side and 250 on the other.
live stock is
1 kole tang
1 blue damsel
2 cleaner shrimp
1 manderine dragonette
5 peppermint shrimp
and your basic cleanup crew
corals i have
hammer
2 frogspawns
candy cane
open brain
star polips
mushrooms
1 bta
i have been testing my water and my trates is at 20...trites at 0 .......ph is 8.2....... and my ammonia is at 0.....my corals do fine however my fish i have been addig lately keep dying. i hade a pair of percs. a clown tang and an achilles tang... all of which only lasted a few days. i know the tangs should be in a bigger enviroment so i wont buy no more tangs unless i ask first. but what about the percs? they should not of died. is there something i can test for that might kill the fish? or is it where i am getting the fish from? they all came from 3 different stores.any help will be greatly appreciated.......i know about the tangs and in to small of a tank please dont flame me over that.... i learned the hard way.

 

[yosemite sam]

How old is the tank? What the LR you recently added cured? What are your water parameter, salinity, alk, etc? How have you been aclimating the fish? Did you add all of the fish at once? Did you quarentine them at all before putting them in your tank?

 

[am3gross05]

well i just changed from 55 to 75. the 55 was up for about a year. live rock was cured. salinity is 1.022.....alk i dont know. acclimation i did was float for 1/2 hour add some ofmy water and float for another half hour. no i did not add all the fish at once and no i did not qt them first. so with that said i need to get an alk test kit and set upan qt tank.....in the qt tank can i use water from my tank or should i cyle it first? also should i add any meds to the qt? any and all help greatly appreciated.

 

[fishieness]

the fish are probably dieing from poor acclimation. The drip method is considered the best. Use a small piece of airline tubing that you can pick up for about 75 cents at your LFS or a hardware store. Siphon it so that it will go form your tank to the other end. Then tie a knot on the end. A slip knot works well. Tie it tight enough so that a few dripps will come out a second and the amount of water in the bag will quadruple in however long you are aclimating your fish. 2 hours is recomended but some species need longer. Then tip up the bag and float it in your tank so the fish get used to the temperature. This will also give them time to get used to the water even more before adding them into a completely different environment. After about 15-30 mins of floating ont he top, release the fish into the tank. Do not add any of the water form the bag into the tank because the water form your LFS might have parasites or other things that you do not want in your tank. Leave the lights off in your tank for 24 hours if that is at all possible so taht the fish do not get too stressed. makse sure the levels in the bag and in your tank are equal for added security if you would like.

 

[andretti]

Yes you can use water from your tank. All a qt tank does is rid the fish from any diseases it may have sustained at the fish store. I did not see a protein skimmer in your list of equipment and a skimmer is a must for corals. Your trates are coming from your canister filter. Though magnums are great, canister filters are nitrate factories! The waste that they collect quickly turns into nitrates. It sounds like you've got pleanty of bio filtration with your rock and sand. If I were you, I'd get a good skimmer...Aqua C Remora or Bak pak and that's it. If you want to use the canister filter, use it for running carbon or other chemical media. I have a 125 and a 55 and rely strictly on live rock & sand for bio filtration. This is known as the "Berlin method" and it works great (with a protein skimmer)

 

[am3gross05]

andretti,
ok great i do have a protein skimmer in the refugium. i did forget to mention that. and i think it does a great job. so i would be ok taking the hot magnum off completely then right?
fishieness,
the acclimation you talk about........should i dump the fish in a bucket and drip water in to the bucket from my display tank? and then maybe rebag the fish and then float for a while?......sorry just a little confused!
however to the both of you i thank you for your support! i am tired of throwing my hard earned money away! this is sopposed to be a stress reducer and not the main cause of my stress!

 

[birdy]

Along with the good advice above, when you pick out clownfish, be absolutely sure they are aquacultured or tank raised, either of those will be much much healthier, wild caught clowns have a dismal success rate.

 

[ags]

Although the advice above is solid I seriously doubt the acclimation procedure you are using is killing your fish. I have never used the drip method and utilize something more closely to what you described. However, I typically allow longer for the bag water and tank water to level off.
You mentioned that you recently switched from a 55 to 75 and increased your LR by 50%. Depending on the curing process of the newly added LR this is a potential source of your tank re-cycling. Moreover, you transferred your DSB from your 55 to your 75. This more likely than not added to any die off from adding 50lbs of LR further throwing your tank's levels off.
I suggest doing frequent water changes to lower your levels and refrain from adding fish for a couple months. Let your tank balance back out and then go forward. Although some people prefer the drip method, your method is fine so long as you allow enough time to acclimate the bag water to the tank water and do several (ie 3) stages of adding small amounts of water (10-20% bag volume) to the bag over the next 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Good luck

 

[am3gross05]

ok thanks ... thankyou everybody for all the great advice! i am taking all of it in and for now on no more impulse buying.....i will do my research first.
am3gross05

 

[fishieness]

i use the bag that i get them in. Or course, if you buylarger fish, like tangs, you maynot hanv enough room in the bag to fill up enough. In that case, you can use a bucket. As long as the water doesnt get realy cold while they are in the bucket, you shouldnt need to do too much to temperature aclimate them.
and yes, the water you syphon is form your tank.