New hobbyist and clownfish fluke...

[bugbum]

Well I am a new saltwater tank owner and before I decided to do this with my mother I made sure I knew everything about water care and saltwater tank care as well. I had worked on our water levels for about a month to make sure everything was perfect till I gave permission to my family to start adding fish.
First off we have a little 20g tank we bought from Petsmart in our local town with a power head filter which we bought plus the filter that came with the box itself as well as two live rock in our tank.
Now the issue with the clownfish was that it died in two days!! We also bought to red hump camel shrimp which are still alive. But what was bothering me was why this clownfish died on me. I did notice it was not eating and the way it was swimming in the tank was wierd. The clownfish was just swimming as hard as it could and not stopping at all. I am not yet familiar with clownfish behaviors. But then again I thought maybe I got the bad one but the clownfish in the pet store we got him from he was the most active one in the tank. Any ideas or suggestions on what could have went wrong?
Also nice forum board and hope to meet some great people here.

 

[kevindouglas3]

what are your parameters currently? usually when they swim like that it means there upset or distrot in some way did you just dump him in or let him sit in the bag for atleast 30 min. did you notice any white spots or slime on him? how long has your tank been up for? oh and one last thing welcome to the message board.

 

[bugbum]

my pH was set at 8.0 nitrite, ammonia and nitrate levels are normal as well. We acclimated the fish for an hour. We got the tank for my mom in christmas and forgot to mention we did have a mishap with some fish before but changed out the water added fresh filtered saltwater from our LFS and made sure all our levels were correct. I did not notice any white spots on him at all or slime on him as well. We were having some problems with the bottom and some red looking substance but the shrimp we got have basically cleaned that all up it seems.
Maybe the fish did get distrot as well....
also any special food for shrimp or they just live off the bottom??
Also the website here says flakes and pellets are good for clownfish but is their anything else to feed a clownfish?

 

[jayking232003]

What kind of Clownfish is it? I've got the Ocellaris Clown(false) and he is always swimming around. looking for the best tide! They eat Brine Shrimp as well,, mine tears it up. What type of equipment are u using, and/or media?

 

[kevindouglas3]

i use this pellet from ora that is made just for clowns adn they love it, mine also like mysis shrimp and plankton, second on the breed, i forgot what other fish do you have any inverts?? was there any redness around the gills? that you can tell atleast. other than that i really dont know what could have happened my clowns swim around to but not all the time at higher speeds was he itching himself at all or rubbing on the sand bottom?

 

[bugbum]

He was a false percula clownfish and I did not see any redness around the gills at all. We just have two shrimp, camel humps.
I also forgot to mention that our LFS also had told us to go ahead and pour the same water from the fish and shrimp bags into our tank since all our water was fresh saltwater and had no fish in there yet for this new cycle change. One person also told us to pour a cup of the saltwater from our tank into the bag every 20 minutes as well and not do a drip acclimate but another person from that fish store told us too do the drip acclimate as well.
When you say media what would that mean?
As far as equipment goes we have a Top Fin Power Filter, a undergravel filter and a Penguin 550 Submersible power head that says it is used for powerful constant water flow. Does it seem like too much? I was also wondering if you possibly knew if we should have that vavle open on the submersible power head so the bubbles come out of the power head?
I guess I wasn't sure of everything this tank needed. But I am a noob in this still and any help would be helpful.

 

[kevindouglas3]

equip wise your ok leave the power head open for the bubbles it will just help stir up the water a little more for media usually you can just get a filter bag from your lfs or a spa store and a bag of carbon media also at your lfs and it helps to clear the water up basically, also i know people say to add the tank water to your fish in the bag i have never done this before well i did once and that was when i first started with the seahorses but never eince and nothing bad has happend, i use to put the water from the lfs in my tank but then i noticed that my fish had ich all of a sudden and then i went back to the lfs and saw that all there fish had ich to so i stopped putting the water i get from the lfs in my tank it suck trying to battle their problems you know. other than that info i dont know of any reason he would die but given the amount of time you had him before he died i think it might have just been the stress factor, oh wait was he captive breed or wild caught?? that would also have a major affect on the fish.

 

[bugbum]

I believe more then likely he was captive bred. They get their fishes shipped to them from another store I believe in Houston they told us. I would hope they would mark it as wild or captive.
Also had an air bubble thing in this tank which we also decided to take out just now. It was a little house with a windmill that spurted air bubbles out of its chimmeny and read in the 101 fish tips from the owner of this site that could be bad news. so just took it out now just in case.
But yeah it baffled me. I guess next time I will do a drip acclimation to the fish and make sure it is done right.
Also the water poured from the bag was the same water the clownfish and shrimp had shared at the store. But we will never do that again.

 

[kevindouglas3]

yeah i wish stores would mark clearly too but some dont care what they give you i have encountered that myself a few times myself, i was in san fan a few weeks ago and saw a store that had a satl water croc which is very illegal, that was a little off topic sorry anyway yeah things that you would normaly put in a fresh tank shouldnt be in a salt setup i have one of those fake seaweed things in my seahorse tank but thats because they like to grab onto things. but to finish the convo i think you just had a bad luck buy try again in like a week or so also a good rule of thumb is to ask the lfs when they usually feed so you can see your potential buy eating and enteracting with the other fish (another lesson hard learned) good luck though i hope everything works for you. message if you need any future help.

 

[invertcrazy]

How long ago did you add the new water? How did you start your cycle? Do you know for sure that your tank cycled? Do you test your water or does the fish store test it?
Also you said you have an under gravel filter. These are no longer used in salt water systems. Eventually you won't be able to control the nitrates because of everything collected under the filter plate.

 

[bugbum]

The water was added almost 1 1/2 months ago.
Now as far as knowing if my tank was cycled then no I am not really sure then. *Again more info never told to me or didn't know of probably*
*EDIT - I read about the cycling process some more and did already go through this with some damsels with the nitrite and some of the other levels starting to get high. These levels have been brought to normal now already*
The water is tested by myself and by the fish store as well for back up reasons and since it is free it wouldn't hurt.
So the gravel filter should not be used at all then too??
I was always suspicious because some people say to get one but the LFS in our town never use a gravel filter as well.
All this information is very much appreciated!