Marine FIsh Problem

[Disney Trivia Ron]

Hi I am having trouble with my salt water tank. It is a 72 Gallon bow front
tank, I have it set up as a marine/fish tank with approx 75lbs of live rock,
sand substrate, wet/dry filter with submersable protein skimmer, 3 power heads
in tank for water circulation. Tank was established approx 2 years ago and
inside I have several corals, blue leg hermits, turbo snails, 2 sand sifting
stars, 1 cleaner shrimp, 1 coral banded shrimp. 1 velvet damsel and 1 neon blue
damsel.

The Problem is.....Lately it seems that every time I put new fish in the tank
they dies not too long after. Last week I placed 2 percula clowns in the tank
(Which died within 5 days) Now, last night I put a new fish in (Kona Tang) and
tyhis mornign he has ich. I took all necessary precautions to acclimate him
including usugn a stress coat treatment in the tank. The salinity is perfect,
all other water tests came out fine (PH good) zero ammonia, zero nitrates)
And, my current fish are alive an well and have been for the past year (At
least) It just seems new fish dont make it.

I know I should probably have a hospital tank to treat the fish as soon as I
bring them home but I just dont have the means to set one up right now so I
would appreciate any ideas or suggestions on what is going on .

Pl,ease email back to me at captai...@aol.com

[Dragon Slayer]

just a suggestion............you may want to get a new test kit and recheck
your parameters (NO3 especially) to me it sounds like the fish in your tank,
over the past year they have been in the tank as you stated, have slowly
become accustomed to the tank conditions. the only "fix" I can recommend,
without knowing the exact cause of new fish deaths, is to do some water
changes over the next few weeks. do 25% a week for a few weeks and this
should remove any buildup in your tank that "may" be the cause. id remove
the wet portion of the wet/dry if not both and just use it for circulation
as your LR and DSB (you didn't mention depth of sand so this is just an
assumption) do a more efficient job of the nitrogen cycle, and the wet dries
tend to build up NO3. although you mention having "several corals" you did
not mention the type, as most corals will not tolerate a buildup of NO3 this
throws a kink in my guessing game. I have also had problems getting perc's
to live for long at the time lately and its not just me, its everyone who
gets from the only LFS here we have, even the owner has stated problems with
keeping them alive in his setup and has therefore stopped carrying them for
sale. the claim was the method of capture on the "wild caught" ones is
causing either stress or other related problems that tend to kill the fish
within a week or so. your only other mention was the ich on the tang, which
is a commonality of tangs, they are easily stressed. I have seen this many
times and usually it clears up fast, your coral banded shrimp will help at
this. with all fish, tangs especially, when I introduce them to the tank
after acclimation I leave all lighting off in the tank and only dimly light
the room for the remainder of that day then let lighting return to normal
the next day, this tends to help with the stress of all newly introduced
animals.

"Disney Trivia Ron" <captai...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030517085433...@mb-m16.aol.com...

[Disney Trivia Ron]

>mention having "several corals" you did
>not mention the type, as most corals will not tolerate a buildup of NO3 this
>throws a kink in my guessing game.

Thanks for an awesome reply. So far the only corals i have in my tank now are
a colt coral (About 1- 1/2 yrs old and growing great!) It even rooted into my
live rock, A long tentacle plate coral, brown leather, a bubble coral and a
gonapora.

Ron
Ron & Marie's Disney Web Page & Trivia
Join Our Free Disney Trivia Email List
http://trivia.disneysites.com

[Sprattoo]

This is an off-the-cuff thought.. I recently read that acclimation should
take 4-10 hours depending on critter. Like 3 or 4 for tough fish like yellow
tail blue damsels but like 10 hours for snails and shrimp.

I have to say I recently had troubles with mexican turbo snails dying and an
8 hour acclimation drastically reduced my snail mortality. I was acclimating
in like 1 or 2 hours before.. and it can take a few days for stress and
organs to shutdown before the critter dies. esp. if te LFS has a low or
higher SG than your own.

how long are you taking to acclimate?

"Disney Trivia Ron" <captai...@aol.com> wrote in message

news:20030517124749...@mb-m18.aol.com...