Scooter Dragonet dead after two days in 8 month old tank

[joeybemate]

So I set up my tank (65 gallon red sea max) about 8 months ago with live rock and everything and I should have had a more than substantial copepod population and anyway surely it wasn't a starvation problem after only two days. When I added her to the tank, my hawkfish was darting at her a bit but left her alone after ten minutes or so. She seemed happy and comfortable enough and I observed her pecking for copepods quite soon after I added her to the tank.
I found her dead under my cynarina. What could have been the cause? I have some cyanobacteria on my substrate so could that be it?

Other fish in the tank: two clownfish, one pixie hawkfish, and a banggai cardinal that I purchased on the same day as the dragonet.
Parameters: KH 9.2 dKH, Mg 1400, Ca 430, NO3 5ppm, PO4 0.08, PH 8.2, Salinity 1.023

[bundybear1981]

What was the source of your fish? Was it from your LFS or was it shipped?

It sounds like the fish was either sick when you got it or there was some issue with acclimation (such as your tank has a significantly higher salinity then the source of your new fish) There is also a chance if it was a wild caught specimen that it was cyanide caught and has died as a result of this.

[Sk8r]

hawkfish can be problems.
Certainly the cause was not cyano.
My guess is the hawkfish is your culprit, or you have another sort of predator, like a mantis...of the items you have named. Dragonets do not fare well with qt, and I understand skipping that step, as do I with that species, but I'm guessing most strongly---hawkfish.

[joeybemate]

I got it from my LFS and the guy said it had been there for about six months. Maybe there was an issue with acclimation because I only did a half hour temperature one rather than a drip one as well but I would have expected some sort of weird behaviour from it soon after addition to the tank. I'm not sure I've never had an issue with acclimation before.

Do you think the Hawkfish killed it outright or it was some sort of stress death? Because I couldn't see any physical injury on the dragonet.

[MuShu]

Did you check the salinity of the LFS water? Even though my LFS keeps most tanks at 1.025, there are a few tanks that are hyposalinity, and drip acclimation is a must.

[joeybemate]

True no I didn't damn I'll have to do that in future

[Dkuhlmann]

IT most certainly could have been starvation. You said it has been with your lfs for around 6 months...
I've never lost a fish doing the 30 min acclimation by putting a cup of tank water in the bag every 4 minutes then dumping half the bag out and continuing until full then release the fish into the tank. I know that a few came from 1.018 salinity to my tank of 1.026 and had no problems. I'm not saying to do that, just saying I've never lost a fish doing it. This is why the acclimation process is stated as what I do from LA. I do one extra thing though is put a cap of Prime in so the ammonia doesn't bother the fish.

Now if all you did was temp acclimate then all bets are off.