My First Dead Fish

[lubeck]

I lost my yellow tang last night. i woke up this morning and my emrald crab was munching on him. i looked closley but could not find any obvious reasons for the death. i took some test and my amonia spiked to .50 and nitrates to 60ppm. i did a 10% water change and hope it goes down.
my plan is to do 10% water changes every day until amonia and nitrates go to 0. does that sound like a good plan????

 

[teresaq]

How old is your tank, what size, and what else is in there? Yess, you need to do those water changes, and see if you can get those levels down.

 

[oceanists]

that is a pretty big ammonia spike for a dead fish , i had a dead royal Gramma that was pretty big die , my crags ate him , and it did not affect my chemistry at all
I think something else cause your ammonia to spike , have you done anything with the tank recently ???
Did you just set your tank up ??
How long has your tank been running?
Whats the Temp ?
When i cycled my 55 G with 40 lbs of uncured LR my Ammonia didnt even get to .50
When i say uncured i mean it literally just came of the truck and was still in the fiji box when i went to my LFS

 

[criketnest]

So Sorry to hear about your tang. I would hate to lose a fish.
my 65 gallon has been up for 3 weeks and my ammonia has only gone as high as .25. I keep testing weekly and 2 weeks in a row ammonia and nitrite are 0. Nitrate was 20 last week and down to 10 this week. but I also took out 5 gallons of water because sg was 1.027 last week. down to 1.025 this week so I took out 5 more gallons and replaced with RO.
Hoping to get a larger clean up crew to help with icky brown algae.
chris

 

[lubeck]

Little late on the reply but......
It is a 110 gallon
5 months old
10 gallon sump
9.5 utility pump 950gph
150 seaclone skimmer (insump)
Built in overflow with drilled holes
265 Watt PC 10k 1 blue, 1 reg, 6500k 1 blue 1 reg,
80 watt standard 20k and 10k blue acintic
Stock
3 Emerald Crabs
2 Domino Damsels
2 blue damsels
1 cleaner shrimp
1 maroon tomato clown ; 1 pink tip anemone
1 carpet anemone
1 mandrin goby
1 sailfin tang
18 turbo snails
Water Specs;
Amonia .5
Nitrate 60
Nitrite 0
Ph 8.4
Calcium 450
If anyone has any ideas.... much appriciated.

 

[promisetbg]

I would keep an eye on the sailfin.They can get very aggressive,especially to fish added after them.
How much LR is in this tank?You need to beef up your clean-up crew to include some bottom scavengers,such as nassarius snails,cerith snails.An Atlantic spotted cucumber or fighting conch would also help your sand by cleaning detritus as well.
I recommend a better skimmer such as a Euro-reef,ASM,or Aqua-C.
What is your alkalinity?
Phosphate?

 

[lubeck]

Don't have phosphate, salinit is at 1.023
I have about 50 lr and 25 dead. rock and coral.