Clown Pair Randomly Died

[snackpack]

My wife has has a Red Sea Nano up and running for a few months now with a pair of Black Storm clowns from TSM. They were doing wonderfully - fat and happy and always active.

Saturday afternoon we stopped at TSM and picked her up a Panama Cardinal and a banded throchus. Acclimated the fish and snail, and put them in. No issues, the trochus sat on the sand until this morning, but is now active and cleaning the glass as of this moment. The PJ hid right away, but was eating and active by yesterday afternoon.

Wife just called me panicking that one of the clowns was missing and the other was on the sand with labored breathing. I hopped in my truck and headed home to help while she tested parameters. In the 15 minute drive, the one visible clown ended up under a rock, dead. The other clown is still MIA, but presumed dead. The PJ is out and about with no sign of any issues.

The only thing "out of place" is some light clouding to the water, possibly a bacterial bloom, and some diatoms on the sand bed. I'd done a 5 gallon water change for her on Friday night, 24 hours before adding the PJ.

Salinity: 1.026
Nitrate: 0ish
Ammonia: 0 - 0.2 (hard to tell)
PH: 8.0

Tests are from the Red Sea kit, not API.

I'm at a loss here. Only things that have changed recently are obviously the PJ and snail, two weeks ago we added a Jebao SLW-10 wavemaker. Saturday and Sunday and Monday I added Selcon to one feeding each day. The Selcon is a new bottle, and we've never used it before on either tank (mine or hers). My fish are fine and seemingly unaffected, as is her PJ, so I'd be inclined to rule out a bad batch.

All that said, I had a clown die in my tank last week, so I'm wondering if aerosolization of something could be the culprit? However the tanks are on opposite sides of the house, and mine has a lid.

I know it's not great, but this is the just-before-death picture that she sent me an hour or so ago. At this point I'm trying to figure out what's going on, and if I need to pull the PJ from her tank.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

My wife has has a Red Sea Nano up and running for a few months now with a pair of Black Storm clowns from TSM. They were doing wonderfully - fat and happy and always active.

Saturday afternoon we stopped at TSM and picked her up a Panama Cardinal and a banded throchus. Acclimated the fish and snail, and put them in. No issues, the trochus sat on the sand until this morning, but is now active and cleaning the glass as of this moment. The PJ hid right away, but was eating and active by yesterday afternoon.

Wife just called me panicking that one of the clowns was missing and the other was on the sand with labored breathing. I hopped in my truck and headed home to help while she tested parameters. In the 15 minute drive, the one visible clown ended up under a rock, dead. The other clown is still MIA, but presumed dead. The PJ is out and about with no sign of any issues.

The only thing "out of place" is some light clouding to the water, possibly a bacterial bloom, and some diatoms on the sand bed. I'd done a 5 gallon water change for her on Friday night, 24 hours before adding the PJ.

Salinity: 1.026
Nitrate: 0ish
Ammonia: 0 - 0.2 (hard to tell)
PH: 8.0

Tests are from the Red Sea kit, not API.

I'm at a loss here. Only things that have changed recently are obviously the PJ and snail, two weeks ago we added a Jebao SLW-10 wavemaker. Saturday and Sunday and Monday I added Selcon to one feeding each day. The Selcon is a new bottle, and we've never used it before on either tank (mine or hers). My fish are fine and seemingly unaffected, as is her PJ, so I'd be inclined to rule out a bad batch.

All that said, I had a clown die in my tank last week, so I'm wondering if aerosolization of something could be the culprit? However the tanks are on opposite sides of the house, and mine has a lid.

I know it's not great, but this is the just-before-death picture that she sent me an hour or so ago. At this point I'm trying to figure out what's going on, and if I need to pull the PJ from her tank.

Generally, if a new fish brings some disease into your tank (like the PJ could have) they will be affected fish, before any of the existing fish. So, for the moment I would rule out a fish disease entering that way.

Can you post a video of the PJ?

I have a suspicion, different fish have different dissolved oxygen requirements, using Selcon in excess can coat the water's surface, cutting off proper gas exchange. Perhaps the new wavemaker isn't agitating the surface enough (we see that a bit here) and then, the Selcon just sort of cut off enough gas exchange to kill the clowns, but not the cardinalfish.....

Jay

 

[snackpack]

Generally, if a new fish brings some disease into your tank (like the PJ could have) they will be affected fish, before any of the existing fish. So, for the moment I would rule out a fish disease entering that way.

Can you post a video of the PJ?

I have a suspicion, different fish have different dissolved oxygen requirements, using Selcon in excess can coat the water's surface, cutting off proper gas exchange. Perhaps the new wavemaker isn't agitating the surface enough (we see that a bit here) and then, the Selcon just sort of cut off enough gas exchange to kill the clowns, but not the cardinalfish.....

Jay

I'll try to get a video of the PJ once it comes out of hiding, right now he's tucked back in the rock work from all the commotion.

That said, the wavemaker is positioned about 3" below the water's surface, and is aimed down about 5 degrees. The surface moves quite a bit, and there's also a protein skimmer in the back compartment that I'd imagine is helping with gas exchange as well.

 

[Saltyreef]

My wife has has a Red Sea Nano up and running for a few months now with a pair of Black Storm clowns from TSM. They were doing wonderfully - fat and happy and always active.

Saturday afternoon we stopped at TSM and picked her up a Panama Cardinal and a banded throchus. Acclimated the fish and snail, and put them in. No issues, the trochus sat on the sand until this morning, but is now active and cleaning the glass as of this moment. The PJ hid right away, but was eating and active by yesterday afternoon.

Wife just called me panicking that one of the clowns was missing and the other was on the sand with labored breathing. I hopped in my truck and headed home to help while she tested parameters. In the 15 minute drive, the one visible clown ended up under a rock, dead. The other clown is still MIA, but presumed dead. The PJ is out and about with no sign of any issues.

The only thing "out of place" is some light clouding to the water, possibly a bacterial bloom, and some diatoms on the sand bed. I'd done a 5 gallon water change for her on Friday night, 24 hours before adding the PJ.

Salinity: 1.026
Nitrate: 0ish
Ammonia: 0 - 0.2 (hard to tell)
PH: 8.0

Tests are from the Red Sea kit, not API.

I'm at a loss here. Only things that have changed recently are obviously the PJ and snail, two weeks ago we added a Jebao SLW-10 wavemaker. Saturday and Sunday and Monday I added Selcon to one feeding each day. The Selcon is a new bottle, and we've never used it before on either tank (mine or hers). My fish are fine and seemingly unaffected, as is her PJ, so I'd be inclined to rule out a bad batch.

All that said, I had a clown die in my tank last week, so I'm wondering if aerosolization of something could be the culprit? However the tanks are on opposite sides of the house, and mine has a lid.

I know it's not great, but this is the just-before-death picture that she sent me an hour or so ago. At this point I'm trying to figure out what's going on, and if I need to pull the PJ from her tank.

Do you know what the PH of the water is?

Low dissolved oxygen comes to mind coupled with experienced cloudiness in the water.

Doubt the selcon being bad is the culprit....

Sorry for your losses. Pretty clownfish.

 

[Crustaceon]

I'd done a 5 gallon water change for her on Friday night, 24 hours before adding the PJ.

Info needed on this.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I'll try to get a video of the PJ once it comes out of hiding, right now he's tucked back in the rock work from all the commotion.

That said, the wavemaker is positioned about 3" below the water's surface, and is aimed down about 5 degrees. The surface moves quite a bit, and there's also a protein skimmer in the back compartment that I'd imagine is helping with gas exchange as well.

The skimmer will help with aeration if it is bubbling strongly, but the wavemaker will not be - you need to break the surface tension, not just move the water under the surface.

Jay

 

[snackpack]

Do you know what the PH of the water is?

Low dissolved oxygen comes to mind coupled with experienced cloudiness in the water.

Doubt the selcon being bad is the culprit....

Sorry for your losses. Pretty clownfish.

Thank you - PH is at 8.0. I'd thought low oxygen as well, but with the wavemaker stirring the surface pretty well mixed with having a skimmer, I'd imagine it couldn't have been too terribly low. I don't have any way to test dissolved oxygen though.

 

[snackpack]

The skimmer will help with aeration if it is bubbling strongly, but the wavemaker will not be - you need to break the surface tension, not just move the water under the surface.

Jay

I'm not sure how well this will illustrate, best I could get at the moment. I've got to head back to work but my wife is going to send me a video of the PJ when it comes out of hiding.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I'm not sure how well this will illustrate, best I could get at the moment. I've got to head back to work but my wife is going to send me a video of the PJ when it comes out of hiding.

That’s what I mean - no surface agitation. Selcon is an oil, and can cut off a lot of gas exchange if excess gets into the tank.
That may not have been the case here, but it does seem plausible to me, and we see it pretty often here.
Jay

 

[snackpack]

Whatever this bloom is has intensified to the point that you can barely see through the tank, it's like a dense fog

 

[Saltyreef]

Thank you - PH is at 8.0. I'd thought low oxygen as well, but with the wavemaker stirring the surface pretty well mixed with having a skimmer, I'd imagine it couldn't have been too terribly low. I don't have any way to test dissolved oxygen though.

Do you have an extra airstone?
If you have tubing long enough and an extension cord, hang it out a window and see if that clears up the cloudiness.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Thank you - PH is at 8.0. I'd thought low oxygen as well, but with the wavemaker stirring the surface pretty well mixed with having a skimmer, I'd imagine it couldn't have been too terribly low. I don't have any way to test dissolved oxygen though.

need better pics/videos under white lighting showing bloom and water movement opposed to top. There is not enough agitation but I believe its not a low oxygen circumstance and as Jay stated, may be sick fish or even an acclimation issue.
How did you acclimate fish and for how long?
Any loss of appetite or other strange behavior?
Heavy breathing?

When fish found dead, were their mouths open ?

 

[resortez]

crustaceon quote also has me thinking about the water change. Also considering the 0ish nitrates & cloudiness, keeping NO3 undetectable gives no wiggle room, keeping the nitrifying process on a shoe string running the risk of reversing it &/or swinging parameters. I personally don’t like keeping NO3 that low, too much of a gamble keeping the system starved of nutrients. The cloudiness is what would raise a red flag & would try to figure out the exact reason for why the sudden change in the appearance of the water. The cloudiness is a clear sign of a negative reaction, it’s definitely not a good sign. I wouldn’t associate it to a bacterial bloom but the opposite, a bioload die off, which will trigger diatoms (technically a bloom but) because there’s no effective bioload present in the system anymore. The die off is do to the lack of nutrients to feast on & sustain a biodiversity of life to compete with the diatom & keep the diatoms at bay, if you will. This is from personal experience with systems I’ve worked on, from 20 gallons all the way up to 550. If not enough nutrients are present to keep sustain a diverse complex biodiversity, simple cell organisms like diatoms & other nascence “algae” start to appear because there’s no direct competition, it’s like a default setting when systems starve. That’s my $0.02 of your situation. I hope all this gibberish makes sense & helps. Good luck.

 

[snackpack]

need better pics/videos under white lighting showing bloom and water movement opposed to top. There is not enough agitation but I believe its not a low oxygen circumstance and as Jay stated, may be sick fish or even an acclimation issue.
How did you acclimate fish and for how long?
Any loss of appetite or other strange behavior?
Heavy breathing?

When fish found dead, were their mouths open ?

The clowns have been in the tank since early February. With the time frame, I'm not sure if acclimation is still relevant, but we were extremely diligent with it due to the price tag on them. Floated for 20 minutes, transferred to a clean hang on specimen container which we floated/hung in the tank. Added 1/3 cup of tank water every 5 minutes until salinity matched, then netted and transferred in.

The PJ that was added on Saturday was acclimated with the same procedure.

Mouths were closed when found, so my guess would be they weren't gasping. I know post mortem shots aren't worth much, but I attached a few here. Wife was convinced the female was still alive so we tore out the rock work before I left so we could find her. Both fish were firmly planted under rock work.

 

[Rick's Reviews]

Sorry for your loss, Could this be anything, just looks odd to me

 

[vetteguy53081]

The clowns have been in the tank since early February. With the time frame, I'm not sure if acclimation is still relevant, but we were extremely diligent with it due to the price tag on them. Floated for 20 minutes, transferred to a clean hang on specimen container which we floated/hung in the tank. Added 1/3 cup of tank water every 5 minutes until salinity matched, then netted and transferred in.

The PJ that was added on Saturday was acclimated with the same procedure.

Mouths were closed when found, so my guess would be they weren't gasping. I know post mortem shots aren't worth much, but I attached a few here. Wife was convinced the female was still alive so we tore out the rock work before I left so we could find her. Both fish were firmly planted under rock work.

I was under impression new purchase. Only thing I see is a little inflammation around gill plates otherwise no telltale signs from bodies nor signs of aggression but looks like a little mucus around eyes. Any loss of appetite prior to this occurrence?

 

[snackpack]

I was under impression new purchase. Only thing I see is a little inflammation around gill plates otherwise no telltale signs from bodies nor signs of aggression but looks like a little mucus around eyes. Any loss of appetite prior to this occurrence?

Nope, both eating well, even as recently as lights-on this morning

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Whatever this bloom is has intensified to the point that you can barely see through the tank, it's like a dense fog

I didn't see much/any cloudiness in the picture above. If this is free-floating bacteria, that can take up oxygen out of the water to the point where even extra aeration may not help.

When you get a heterotrophic bacterial bloom like this, it is feeding on something, some organic material. Usually it is uneaten food, but too much Selcon will do that as well.

Jay

 

[snackpack]

Generally, if a new fish brings some disease into your tank (like the PJ could have) they will be affected fish, before any of the existing fish. So, for the moment I would rule out a fish disease entering that way.

Can you post a video of the PJ?

I have a suspicion, different fish have different dissolved oxygen requirements, using Selcon in excess can coat the water's surface, cutting off proper gas exchange. Perhaps the new wavemaker isn't agitating the surface enough (we see that a bit here) and then, the Selcon just sort of cut off enough gas exchange to kill the clowns, but not the cardinalfish.....

Jay

Video of the PJ, and you can see the clouding of the water a bit better here.

I'm still leaning away from the Selcon, for these two reasons:
1 - I put the food in a glass, then dripped Selcon in. I let it sit for ~5 minutes, then drained off the extra liquid. I then put in about 10ml of fresh rodi in the glass to suspend the pellets. I poured about 3/4 of that into my tank. I then added another 10ml of fresh rodi to the glass to re-suspend the pellets, and then added the remaining 1/4 of the pellets/Selcon/rodi water to my wife's tank (the death tank). By that point her "dose" of Selcon and food was significantly more diluted than what went in my tank. My tank has had no issue.

2 - to the point of surface agitation and gas exchange, my tank has no skimmer, has only a return pump, and the surface agitation is significantly lower than the video I posted of the wife's tank, and suffered no ill effect as of yet.

I'm not at all saying that you're wrong about the Selcon, just adding additional details. Would you still say that the Selcon is a possibility of the cause? Obviously I don't want my action to be the cause of her fish dying, but I'm more than willing to put my pride away to find the root cause so it doesn't happen to the next fish.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Video of the PJ, and you can see the clouding of the water a bit better here.

I'm still leaning away from the Selcon, for these two reasons:
1 - I put the food in a glass, then dripped Selcon in. I let it sit for ~5 minutes, then drained off the extra liquid. I then put in about 10ml of fresh rodi in the glass to suspend the pellets. I poured about 3/4 of that into my tank. I then added another 10ml of fresh rodi to the glass to re-suspend the pellets, and then added the remaining 1/4 of the pellets/Selcon/rodi water to my wife's tank (the death tank). By that point her "dose" of Selcon and food was significantly more diluted than what went in my tank. My tank has had no issue.

2 - to the point of surface agitation and gas exchange, my tank has no skimmer, has only a return pump, and the surface agitation is significantly lower than the video I posted of the wife's tank, and suffered no ill effect as of yet.

I'm not at all saying that you're wrong about the Selcon, just adding additional details. Would you still say that the Selcon is a possibility of the cause? Obviously I don't want my action to be the cause of her fish dying, but I'm more than willing to put my pride away to find the root cause so it doesn't happen to the next fish.

The water is a bit cloudy, most likely bacteria. The cardinal is flicking its pelvic fins a lot more than they usually do, not sure what’s up with that.
I still think this is/was a gas exchange issue - high co2, low dissolved oxygen or both together. Air stones are cheap insurance against that since measuring dissolved gas levels usually isn’t possible at home.
Jay