my jawfish and my mandarine both died today.... what do you guys think????

[agoutihead]

ive had the jawfish for about six months now, he was doing great up until i put a snowflake eel in the tank. they would basically compete for the same hole, the eel obvilously would win.
ive had the eel for about two months now, and everything seemed to be fine for the most part up until a maybe a week ago, in fact i only noticed things getting worse over the last few days.
the jawfish's head seemed to be bruised and peeling like he had a sun tan. i believe this was coming from him jumping out of the water and hitting his head on the glass tops that i have.
today he was laying on his side in my main tank so i put him in my hospital tank, and with in a couple of hours he was dead.
about 5 minutes before i went to check on the jawfish, my brother told me that my mandarine fish was dead... well i didnt believe him at first because the madarine seemed fine to me today and last night, the only thing that i noticed with the mandarine was occasionally he would lose color on his body and turned white, but then seemed to go back to normal.
the only thing that i can think of why the madnarine died was because of starvation. ive had him for about a month.
nothing ever seemed to bother him.
my tank is as follows...
55 gallon with about 60 lbs of live rock.
established about 7 months.
fish....
flame angel
two clownfish
lawnmower blenny
scooter blenny (which ive actually had for about 4 or 5 months now and seems to be doing great so i dont know how the mandarine would have starved already if the scooter is doing great)
snowflake eel
firefish goby
yellowtail damsel
inverts....
peppermint shimp
couple turbos
few other smaller snails
several hermits, scarlet included
electric blue hermit
choclate chip starfish
corals....
frogspawn
hammer coral
super green shrooms
0 trites
0 amonia
7.9 ph
10 trates..... does anyone know what would make my trates alone go up????
temp is 79*
1.027
everything else seems to be doing great so far.... im going to go and get some STOP PARASITE in a little bit just incase there is something that i cannot see.
what do you guys think about this? thanks alot!!
i will probably do a water change tommorow, ill end up mixing up the saltwater tonight and letting it sit for a day.

 

[teen]

imo ur salinity is a little on the high side, but i dont think thats the problem. maybe the snowflake eel is stressing them out, and competing for food woth them. ur tank does seem a little overstocked, but if ur filter can handle it then thats not the problem. i wouldnt add the STOP PARASITE to ur main tank, especially if u have inverts and corals.

 

[slammy16]

I could be wrong.. but, dont scooter blenneys and manderins compete for the same food? Maybe thats what happened to the manderin.

 

[mrmaroon]

What kind of filtration are you using? That seems like a ton of fish for that size of tank.

 

[1journeyman]

I think your Mandarin starved (as they almost always do...)
I think the Snowflake probably stressed the Jawfish to death.

 

[agoutihead]

that is my guess about the mandarine and scooter competeing for food... and im thinking that the mandarine might have been a bit sick when i got him to perish so fast and the scooter is doing so great.
im also going with the fact that the eel stressed out the jawfish.
the jawfish was the only thing that i ever seen the eel mess with, if i see any more aggression i will take the eel out even though i do like him as an addition very much.
also some of my fish have what looks like white dust brushed on them.... i dont know if its ick or now... i think my flame angel came down with ick and it looked totally different.... kind of like white zits.
what does this sound like to you guys????
does having trates at 10 mean anything?
what can i do do lower to zero other than a water change?
the salintiy is what ive had my tank at since about the second month. i dont think it is dangerously high and has anything to do with the fish deaths as they lived in it for several months and my corals and everything else are flourishing.

 

[agoutihead]

oh yeah sorry i am also running a ehiem canister filter.... works WONDERS!
i have no skimmer or anything else.
its a very simple set up and runs beautifully, water quality is not an issue even with as many fish as i have and an eel.
i never half to worry about a film on the top of my water as i always have water surface aggiation.
my tank is viewable from both sides so i didnt want any kind of large pieces of mechanical filters hanging off in the way of the view.

 

[who dey]

Originally Posted by slammy16
I could be wrong.. but, dont scooter blenneys and manderins compete for the same food? Maybe thats what happened to the manderin.
too much competition in an under-established tank IMO

 

[agoutihead]

yeah that is what im guessing. im going to wait a few more months, get about another 25 lbs of live rock... and im actually waiting on about 500 pods from someone. so hopefully that will boost my numbers.
ive been feeding cycloopeeze in hopes that would sustain it... but obviously no luck.
also i believe what i have after reading my book is marine velvet.
how serious is this? will it kill the fish regardless of treatment?
i plan on using STOP PARASITE tommorow... i tried to get it tonight but they were closed already.
just really weird two within a minutes of each other.
everything is still doing fine several hours after the initial occurance.