Greetings,
Well i have had my tank up for about 2.5 months now, and I have been researching and doing my best to be slow and calculated with every move/addition I make. My specs are 30 gallon, 2 pc 55watts by JBJ, about 20 lbs live rock, 20 lbs live sand, several polyps(4), 2 mushrooms, a few small crabs, 5-6 snails. So I have a low bioload, I got cured liverock, and do 10% water changes once a week with RO water, and my tests have given 0 readings from day one.
Now on to my loss. I was browsing the LFS's and came across a small Sailfin Tang, and I mean the smallest I had every seen in a LFS. Maybe 1.25 inches from head to tail. Now I know that my tank is too small for tangs, yadda yadda. But under the circumstances of having no other fish, and an aquascape that gave lots of swimming room for this little guy, I figured I could enjoy him for maybe a year before having to give him up due to growth.
He had good visible health, took food, had been in a copper treated tank for 3 weeks, so I took him home. Everything was fine, he was eating nori, investigating his new home, being a healthy fish etc. Well after about a week, I came home from work to find a long piece of red cat hair protruding from his mouth. He was trying to get it out, shaking his head and backing up etc, with no luck. I knew this couldnt be good, so I netted him and broke the hair off at his mouth, not wanting to pull on it or anything. So after this he remained in his little cave and wasnt very active. I kept my eye on him, and once he started to pass the hair, I realized he had gotten a pretty long piece. Once passed, he started acting like he had swim bladder problems, laying on the rocks, not eating, and would only go upright if I approached the tank and alerted him. He died about 2 days later, never able to really "swim" around and eventually laying on the bottom. The only bad reading I had during this whole process was that I had some evaporation in the tank, and before I topped the tank off I got a salinity reading of 1.026.
So has anyone had something like this happen, could I have done something to help this guy? I have now changed my stocking plan to not include tangs. Just because I had originally written them off, and now that I broke down and got one then killed him, its an omen.
Thanks in advance for any advice,
Dustin T
Atlanta GA
Well i have had my tank up for about 2.5 months now, and I have been researching and doing my best to be slow and calculated with every move/addition I make. My specs are 30 gallon, 2 pc 55watts by JBJ, about 20 lbs live rock, 20 lbs live sand, several polyps(4), 2 mushrooms, a few small crabs, 5-6 snails. So I have a low bioload, I got cured liverock, and do 10% water changes once a week with RO water, and my tests have given 0 readings from day one.
Now on to my loss. I was browsing the LFS's and came across a small Sailfin Tang, and I mean the smallest I had every seen in a LFS. Maybe 1.25 inches from head to tail. Now I know that my tank is too small for tangs, yadda yadda. But under the circumstances of having no other fish, and an aquascape that gave lots of swimming room for this little guy, I figured I could enjoy him for maybe a year before having to give him up due to growth.
He had good visible health, took food, had been in a copper treated tank for 3 weeks, so I took him home. Everything was fine, he was eating nori, investigating his new home, being a healthy fish etc. Well after about a week, I came home from work to find a long piece of red cat hair protruding from his mouth. He was trying to get it out, shaking his head and backing up etc, with no luck. I knew this couldnt be good, so I netted him and broke the hair off at his mouth, not wanting to pull on it or anything. So after this he remained in his little cave and wasnt very active. I kept my eye on him, and once he started to pass the hair, I realized he had gotten a pretty long piece. Once passed, he started acting like he had swim bladder problems, laying on the rocks, not eating, and would only go upright if I approached the tank and alerted him. He died about 2 days later, never able to really "swim" around and eventually laying on the bottom. The only bad reading I had during this whole process was that I had some evaporation in the tank, and before I topped the tank off I got a salinity reading of 1.026.
So has anyone had something like this happen, could I have done something to help this guy? I have now changed my stocking plan to not include tangs. Just because I had originally written them off, and now that I broke down and got one then killed him, its an omen.
Thanks in advance for any advice,
Dustin T
Atlanta GA