yurple
10/12/2007, 06:07 AM
Hi everyone,
i recently started a saltwater aquarium, i made sure that i read up about as much stuff as possible before i did anything. Anyway, my initial plan was to start with just a fish only tank, i let the whole system cycle through then tested everything before i introduced my first fish. i had a bit of live rock in the tank, i guess not enough. anyway, i introduced a clownfish and a yellow-tailed blue damsel. they lived happily for about a week then the damsel died, i still dont know the reason however i never saw it eat it wouldnt take any food. i left the tank alone for about a week then i couldnt help but buy an anemone for the clown. all was well, so i introduced another clown, a butterfly, a royal dottyback and one mandarin i introduced them all at different times. a few days later i had the worst morning of my life, i was watching my fish when the top of my fluval external canister filter burst open, because it was a gravity powered system the water flow was hard to stop. there was about 15cm of water left. i rushed off to my LFS and bought enough filtered ocean water to fill the tank. this hadn't been cycled but it was my only choice. the fish lived ok four another 4 to 5 weeks before they slowly began to die in succession, i had no idea what to do. the last thing to die was the anemone, i woke up to find the water and the anemone all white. im still not sure what happened so thats why i came here. when i cleaned my filter and everything out i found lots of white stuff in the tubes.
Now my main concern is that i didnt have a skimmer because the LFS told me it wasnt important considering i had only one anemone.
would the problem be that i didnt have a skimmer or has some other disease come about, or..... could it be from when i had to refill the tank?
Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated as i wanna get my tank up and running again but i dont want this sort of thing to happen again. i have already experienced enough stress so far.
if you have read all this thank you for your time.
i recently started a saltwater aquarium, i made sure that i read up about as much stuff as possible before i did anything. Anyway, my initial plan was to start with just a fish only tank, i let the whole system cycle through then tested everything before i introduced my first fish. i had a bit of live rock in the tank, i guess not enough. anyway, i introduced a clownfish and a yellow-tailed blue damsel. they lived happily for about a week then the damsel died, i still dont know the reason however i never saw it eat it wouldnt take any food. i left the tank alone for about a week then i couldnt help but buy an anemone for the clown. all was well, so i introduced another clown, a butterfly, a royal dottyback and one mandarin i introduced them all at different times. a few days later i had the worst morning of my life, i was watching my fish when the top of my fluval external canister filter burst open, because it was a gravity powered system the water flow was hard to stop. there was about 15cm of water left. i rushed off to my LFS and bought enough filtered ocean water to fill the tank. this hadn't been cycled but it was my only choice. the fish lived ok four another 4 to 5 weeks before they slowly began to die in succession, i had no idea what to do. the last thing to die was the anemone, i woke up to find the water and the anemone all white. im still not sure what happened so thats why i came here. when i cleaned my filter and everything out i found lots of white stuff in the tubes.
Now my main concern is that i didnt have a skimmer because the LFS told me it wasnt important considering i had only one anemone.
would the problem be that i didnt have a skimmer or has some other disease come about, or..... could it be from when i had to refill the tank?
Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated as i wanna get my tank up and running again but i dont want this sort of thing to happen again. i have already experienced enough stress so far.
if you have read all this thank you for your time.