Ready to cry

[hypersaline]

I've been have problems with livestock dying, and I'm not sure what the heck is going on. I had the tank set up as a 29gal for several years with various fish, inverts, leathers and zoos. In January, I moved cross country and lost all of my corals, but I set up a "new" 72 using 100 pounds of cured live rock. After 2 months of cycling, I had my fish and shrimp flown here and they've been good up until recently.

The fish/inverts: a 5 inch gs maroon clown, a yellow watchman goby, a 5 in yellow tang, 3 yellow tail damsels, a flame angel (now dead), a fire shrimp, tiger pistol shrimp, 2 peppermint shrimp (dead), tuxedo urchin, snails and hermits. Corals: yellow polyps (dead), some button polyps that actually survived the move, and frogspawn. I also have chaeto in the sump.

The most recent chain of events happened when my clown started hosting the yellow polyps thereby killing them. I got a bubble tip anemone which the clown loved, but the next morning the flame angel was belly up with lesions on its face. 5 days later, anemone dead. I have a strong feeling that the clown is being too aggressive with hosting, but I haven't observed much aggressive behavior from the clown towards the other fish. (If anything, he just attacks his own reflection!)

Any ideas? I would like to add things to the tank and bring it back to the glory days, but this is making me sick to my stomach.

BTW: I change 10% 1 x week, <20ppm NO3, 0 NO2, 0 NH4, pH 8.3, KH 240, GH 180, T5 lighting 12h, bakpak skimmer, couple koralias

 

[ac7av]

Sorry to hear about that. I’m no expert but anemones require excellent water conditions. I would suspect the no3 may have something to do with that guy checking out. Sounds like that angle just got to close, maybe at night when the lights were off? After all the die off a larger water change may be a little insurance and running carbon could certainly help if there are nay toxins in the water from the nim.

 

[MGDMIRAGE]

With no clear cause i would bump up the water changes to atleast 25% a week until everything settles down.

How often and what do you feed? what is your temperature? Salinity? Once the tank was settled did you put all the livestock in at sametime? If you added all the fish and inverts at the sametime that would be a huge bioload shock and could spike ammonia until bacteria catches up.

 

[lvsuckerfish]

if you have a heater check to make sure it is not broken!

 

[sivart33]

well you went from a 29 to a 72. you got a bunch of new Live Rock, is there some type of hitch hiker that is messing all the stuff up? a mantis shrimp killing stuff? even though it si cured doesn't mean there is not living animals inside of it, like today i notices 2 other crabs in my tanks that i have never seen before after 2 and a half months. and just saw a mantis shrimp, its tiny but only have seen him once. toss a trap and see what you get

 

[Chichas01]

Your nitrates do seem a bit high. Does your skimmer output seem like you are getting out the nasty stuff? If not, you probably need to upgrade that skimmer or mod it. Sound like you have sump setup so you might consider putting a bigger and better skimmer in there. You might also consider that you are possibly overstocked fish wise and that may be leading to an overly aggressive maroon behavior. Seems like everyone who has one says they become pretty nasty a they mature and you have a fairly aggressive group of fish as it is.

 

[NWDiver]

Good advise so far. I would do a nice 25-30% water change and run carbon to get things happy again, relax a bit and concentrate on your water params. If the RBTA was on the small side, a clown can indeed damage them with agressve activity, and with the water just a little out of whack it may be that he couldn't quite get ahead of the curve and recover.
As I'm sure you know, the clown does not NEED a host, so take a bit of time and focus on getting all the things you can control exactly where you want them, then start the slow process of stocking anew.

 

[Maxx]

I've been have problems with livestock dying, and I'm not sure what the heck is going on. I had the tank set up as a 29gal for several years with various fish, inverts, leathers and zoos. In January, I moved cross country and lost all of my corals, but I set up a "new" 72 using 100 pounds of cured live rock. After 2 months of cycling, I had my fish and shrimp flown here and they've been good up until recently.

The fish/inverts: a 5 inch gs maroon clown, a yellow watchman goby, a 5 in yellow tang, 3 yellow tail damsels, a flame angel (now dead), a fire shrimp, tiger pistol shrimp, 2 peppermint shrimp (dead), tuxedo urchin, snails and hermits. Corals: yellow polyps (dead), some button polyps that actually survived the move, and frogspawn. I also have chaeto in the sump.

The most recent chain of events happened when my clown started hosting the yellow polyps thereby killing them. I got a bubble tip anemone which the clown loved, but the next morning the flame angel was belly up with lesions on its face. 5 days later, anemone dead. I have a strong feeling that the clown is being too aggressive with hosting, but I haven't observed much aggressive behavior from the clown towards the other fish. (If anything, he just attacks his own reflection!)

Any ideas? I would like to add things to the tank and bring it back to the glory days, but this is making me sick to my stomach.

BTW: I change 10% 1 x week, <20ppm NO3, 0 NO2, 0 NH4, pH 8.3, KH 240, GH 180, T5 lighting 12h, bakpak skimmer, couple koralias

Maroons can be agressive and hard on critters the choose as host. A 5 inch GSM isnt going to be nice to just about anything it chooses as a host with the exception of a very large healthy anemone.

I agree about your nitrates being a bit high....that in combination with the large clown could have been what caused your anemone to die. Actually, in hindsight, that and your clown trying to hang out in various corals that are already stressed from the nitrates could be enough to kill the corals...

As far as the flame goes....I dont really have an answer for you without pictures of the lesions on the face. Sorry...

<20ppm NO3, 0 NO2, 0 NH4, pH 8.3, KH 240, GH 180

What is KH and what is GH?

Nick