help trigger & eel death?

[nanoreefer]

ok this a long one but, for the last three months ive had a 3" V lion and 2.5" niger trigger in a 10g QT tank wile ive been working on there 75g tank(lots of problems with it!)two weeks ago i added a small zebra eel and they were all eating and doing well, on tuesday i got my new aqua safe aquarium RODI untit and hooked it up then i did a WC wendsday moreing useing the RODI water the SG on my hydrometer read about 1.027 or so but it has gone higher than that many times so i wasent worried, i whent out on wendsday and bought some macro and red algea for a seahorses tank i was working on and put it in the 10g, i was planning on moveing the fish from the 10g in the next few days and useing the astablished 10g for the SHs wile i finish there tank, thursday the eel and lion woudent eat trgger did, but i figured they woudent sence i added the algea and they were getting used to it, friday afternoon the trigger was dead:cry: never looked sick or anything just dead, the eel dident look to good listless and just sitting half out of the rocks, i did 3g WC and the eel looked better but was dead at 10PM, the lion seemed fine and is still ok but dident eat any food until yesterday i have n=never tested the water before but iam sure it has been worse yet the trigger and lion were always fine and the eel ate well dos anyone have any ideas what might have hapened the only thing i can think of is there was some disease on the algea or the RODI water sence there the only things i changed on the tank? but now it has realy shaken me up sence most of my LR was in there and now i dont whant to use it for the SHs if is contaminated or diseased

sorry for the long post i just whanted to list everything and try and get an idea what i did wrong, aside from the 3 fish in a 10g thing i know that

[Jason McK]

I'm sorry but you had a Lion and a trigger in a 10G then added an eel to the same 10G? For 3 Months?

J

[Aquattro]

I'm sorry but you had a Lion and a trigger in a 10G then added an eel to the same 10G? For 3 Months?

J

Well, they had lots of rock to swim around :)


sorry, I think the root of the problem is tank size. Even if something was funny in the water, having only 10g of water, minus any space the rock took up, really didn't give any buffer for errors.

[justinl]

and to add to the above: you want to try sea horses of all things? i do hope this is a joke post.

[tang daddy]

How much of a wc did you do?
what kind of macro did you add?
1.027 is alittle high and if you didn't top off water after 2 days it would probally run 1.030. It could be a number of different variations..... maybe the trigger and eel swam into the scorpion, maybe the macro turned asexual, maybe the salinity spiked without listing parameters who knows,
maybe they weren't happy in a small tank and with a tank that size things can go wrong fast!!

Hydrometers are not the most reliable and can go out of calibration fast so if it was at 1.027 maybe it was at 1.032 who knows...

[i have crabs]

pbitawa

[Reefhawk1]

Try using a larger quarantine tank for that many fish. Use a refractometer for more precise results on SG.

[hawk]

10g is way too small for those fish. Did you have any additional filtration besides the rock? I'm guessing an ammonia spike after you added the eel.

[Marlin65]

How much of a wc did you do?

Hydrometers are not the most reliable and can go out of calibration fast so if it was at 1.027 maybe it was at 1.032 who knows...

Times two
1.027 is way to high especially with a hydrometer they are know to run on the low side you might of been at 1.040 for all you know, but you have enough other things wrong as well.
Drop the salinity down to 1.020 that way if you have a bad reading you will still be in range.

[banditpowdercoat]

I got a good Refractometer from ebay for $45 Way more accurate than Hydrometer

[EmilyB]

No seriously, you didn't have fish that size in a 10g.

[nanoreefer]

sorry guys that was a bad joke somone eles typed that out it was 40g not a 10 oh well it just ads to the rest of the stuff that as happened today, please dont think i would put a lion trigger or eel in a 10g unfortunatley noonelse realises the diffrence between a 10g fish tank a 40g fish tank, please dont think iam that stupid my sister dosenot understand the importance of the diffrence between a 1 and a 4:lol:, and i know a hydrometer is inacurate but i cant see well enough to use a refractometer or i would have one, i hope i havent lost anyones respect or anything(if i had any:biggrin:)

[skylord]

There are a lot of things I would like to say here but........please do these animals a favor and not buy or receive anymore until you have a home set up for them and the proper testing equipment. Seahorses are not going to be able to wait 3 months in a 10g tank.

Scott

[WhoPoopWrasse]

I'd like to put in my 2 cents here about a refractometer...
The eye piece is adjustable to almost any eyesight, IMO if you can see the numbers on the crappy swing arm, you should be able to see just as well in the refractometer if not better :)

[nanoreefer]

i bought some new test kits and got someone to look at them for me and got the LFS to test the water, and every thing checked out trates are at 10-20 and everything eles is 0 except for high phosphates but i dont think that matters, then i test the water i used for the WCs and the PH was like 7.4 so the only thing i can think of is they died of PH shock witch makes sence because the eel died after i did another large 30% WC after i found the trigger dead, but for some reason the lion is still healthy, it looks like i have to let the water sit for afew days before i can use it for WCs

about the refractometer i tried several times to use one, i can see ware the blue and white meet but the lines are so darn small and i cant even see the numbers,:sad:

and my 75g is getting plumed and leak tested today WOOT!

[WhoPoopWrasse]

about the refractometer i tried several times to use one, i can see ware the blue and white meet but the lines are so darn small and i cant even see the numbers,:sad:

There is another alternative which is this gadget which I'm actually thinking of getting myself for my larger system (I'll keep using the refractometer for my smaller tanks) it measures the salt concentration and it's got huge numbers!! :razz:
http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/store_pages/product-info.php?product_ID=pp-msal