Finding dead fish
 

so looks like i lost one clown fish to ich. he was about an inch long living in a 180 gallon tank with about 200 pounds of live rock.... i've been looking for the past 45 min and cant find him

is it bad if i just leave him in there?

anything dead will leach a little bit of ammonia but if you cant find him just make sure you do a water change... if you can find even tiny chunks then make sure you pull them out

How is your clean up crew? I lost a 5 inch tang in my 125. He was there at night and gone the next morning. Not a trace - and I have very opeb rock work. My crabs and serpent star took care of him in one night!

i have a clean up crew. but i theres no way i can see it. ive got so many caves and hiding spots, id have to take appart all the rock

Honestly in a tank that size I doubt a clown would have much effect. Clean up crew will consume it really quickly. I have a system less than half that (65 + 20 sump) and of the few fish that did die they were eaten in less than an hour. (Bumblebee, Nassarius, etc.)

I personally wouldn't worry about it. You could check the ammonia to make yourself feel better but a healthy system will gloss over a single fish loss. (Especially a 1" fish.)

Your going to cause more of a disturbance digging around trying to find it. Plus if your fish have ich you will just cause more stress and make the ich worse. The dead fish has probably been consumed by now.

+1 and sorry for your loss

Sorry for your loss, that sucks, just make sure he's not in an overflow or something. I'd picked up a sea hare a few days ago and couldn't find it so i expected he'd died and been taken care of. Found him about an hour ago rotting away in the corner of my overflow.

thanks for the suggestion.... already checked it

my 5" spotted sweetlips looks like it died too, but nowhere to be found

ugh this is just so discouraging. i just spent all this money only to sit here and watch my fish die one a day

Sorry to here of the losses Marko, very beautiful fish

i turned up the MP40 to full power and the sheer power of the current that it creates dislodged the fish..... now only 3 left

Slow down a tad. The tank is relatively new Marko. You are most likely going to fast and shocking the system. If you move too fast adding livestock to a new system you can cause more problems. Ich can be stressed related.

This is not a freshwater system like you are accustomed to. Different rules apply here.

Common error in reef keeping.

As for the clown. Who cares. Leave the body, the CUC will take care of it. Test your parameters and do a water change.


Patience is a virtue, and if you follow that as the only rule, your tank will flourish. If you by-pass patience...

HUH?

i only added 2 new fish to the tank. they were perfectly fine for over 2 weeks with all the perameters in check.

there is no way the fish got stressed because of the water quality. i have been obsessing since day one to make sure i did everything correctly so it wouldnt come back and bite me. i just cant figure out what triggered it.

the only thing that i can think of that could have stressed the fish, is that i added to much top off water too fast.

i now have an ATO so hopefully it wont be an issue

have you moved any rock around or added new or different flow?? i find mine get a little stressed when i move the flow around differently

didnt move anything around but my wavemaker constantly changes flow. but i dont think thats the problem

If this is the tank that's only been around ~2 months you'll come to see how saltwater tanks can be. Basically you're attempting to make a full ecosystem from the bacterial level thru to fish and inverts. This amount of time is very small and changes in water make-up and quality WILL happen. It's a matter of having the tools and mixture of animals to minimize these changes. Even the most established tanks can have problems so don't get discouraged.

Basically you're just going to want to check all your parameters to get an idea for what has happened so you can fix it in future. Most of the advice on saltwater tanks is anecdotal at best so remember that. :)