ScottSape
08/10/2011, 10:44 AM
Hello, I have a very confusing situation with my fish tank.
I have a 40 gallon breeder tank, 36 x 18 x 20? (I'm not sure about the height)
It has a live sand (2-3 inches deep) substrate, and about 100-120 pounds of live rock. There is a percula clown, bicolor angel, pink spot shrimp goby and an engineer goby. All of the fish are roughly 3 inches long, the clown is a little smaller. There is also one small hermit crab that has been in the tank for about two years.
My situation is this; every time I get a new invert and I add them to the tank they quickly die. I have had 2 cleaner shrimp, 4 peppermint shrimp and 4 mexican turbo snails all die. I did not try to add them all at the same time, I tried a few here and a few there. In between the first and second incident I did about a 50-60 percent water change -- same result (death).
All of the water levels are good: ph - 8.3, nitrite - 0, nitrate - 0, ammonia - 0, alkalinity is up around 300.
What is confusing is how all of these inverts die but the hermit crab keeps plugging away, don't get me wrong - I don't want that to die.
I have tried various ways to acclimate also; slow drip - very slow and took about 1-2 hours (this seemed to stress the shrimp out more than anything), float and add little amounts of water to the bag over about 20 - 30 minutes. None of it worked.
If you have any ideas please share them and thank you in advance with your help.
Scott
I have a 40 gallon breeder tank, 36 x 18 x 20? (I'm not sure about the height)
It has a live sand (2-3 inches deep) substrate, and about 100-120 pounds of live rock. There is a percula clown, bicolor angel, pink spot shrimp goby and an engineer goby. All of the fish are roughly 3 inches long, the clown is a little smaller. There is also one small hermit crab that has been in the tank for about two years.
My situation is this; every time I get a new invert and I add them to the tank they quickly die. I have had 2 cleaner shrimp, 4 peppermint shrimp and 4 mexican turbo snails all die. I did not try to add them all at the same time, I tried a few here and a few there. In between the first and second incident I did about a 50-60 percent water change -- same result (death).
All of the water levels are good: ph - 8.3, nitrite - 0, nitrate - 0, ammonia - 0, alkalinity is up around 300.
What is confusing is how all of these inverts die but the hermit crab keeps plugging away, don't get me wrong - I don't want that to die.
I have tried various ways to acclimate also; slow drip - very slow and took about 1-2 hours (this seemed to stress the shrimp out more than anything), float and add little amounts of water to the bag over about 20 - 30 minutes. None of it worked.
If you have any ideas please share them and thank you in advance with your help.
Scott