The change over

[Snugy44]

Ok as you know i just changed from crushed rock to sand. Now here is the situation
I took the tang, aneome, and the clown fish back so all i had left was my two little blue fish. After i did my switch everything looked good, the corals and the fish were doing fine. A Few days later one of my blue fish died
When i did the water test everything checked out ok!
about 2 days later my other blue fish died
NOW I HAVE NO MORE FISH!
My corals seem to be doing fine, but here's the clue to what might be happening. My sand is starting to turn brown but just on the surface and it is in spots.
P.S. Do you think my sick tang could have infected the blue fish. Or did they die as a result to the new sand bed.

Please Help,
Krista

[mojoreef]

Krista i'm not sure what sickness your previous fish nor do I knoe what kind of sand you switched to. But i can give you some ideas. If you used a fine sand such as southdown or equal the fine particles that are suspended in the water column will go into the fishes gills and thier is a good chance it could do fatal damage to it respitory system. Small algae blooms are to be expected on a new sand bed even if the system is mature. This can be avoided at time by using LS as the top layer of your new bed. If you could say what the infection was on the old fish i could answer that question better.

Mike

[Snugy44]

well here were the symptoms:
He had "flakes" on his fin and i think i saw white specks on him, But and this is a big but, the specks looked like they came and gone. What i mean was that i couldn't always see the specks.
As for the sand, It is very fine. When i did the change it did kick up some debris even though i washed it several times. So that is probally what happened.
Thanks for your help.

[mojoreef]

I am not a big expert on fish illness but the specks made it sound like ick (but it could have also been a type of parasite). As per the fatality i would lean towards trama to the resp. system from the particles of sand in the water column. But again this is olny an opinion.

Good luck and I hope your probs are over
mike

[MontanaRocknReefer]

Hi there! When I had 7 blue-green chromis, sometimes a couple would look like they had white spots, and I panicked as I thought it was ick but upon further observations, I came to believe that they got excited chasing each other around. I believe only the males did this!
You probably should have taken all your fish back while your new DSB matured. You probably had a spike of some kind and was too much for the fish even if they are hardy! The brown spots are brown diatoms and it is part of the cycling that is taking place with your new sand bed.
I would purchased a detrivore kit from http://www.ipsf.com or http://www.inlandaquatics.com to get a well established infauna(critters) for your sand bed which will help fight the diatoms and do you have some snails? They will help alot and stay away from hermits if you can. Don't get alot of snails as they will starve after cleaning up your tank and have nothing to eat after.
Are you using RO/DI water? I am sure others will help out here as well. HTH Johnny

[beach bum]

Hi snugy!

I know it was hard to take all your critters back, but it probably saved their lives, so that's cool. There is always plenty of time to add more fish once the tank is sound, I can't tell you how many times I've redone my tanks because I didn't get something right the first time. I suppose it's all part of the learning curve. Nano tanks like yours are definitely fun, but after having tried it myself, I know they require almost as much knowledge and effort as larger tanks do, and some things larger tanks don't. Good luck with the setup!