Tank EULOGY from a beginner

[geweagle]

Hello all,

I thought I would share my experiences to date, which have been far from good and frustratating.

Lots of dollars spent
Lost some lovely fish, yellow tang, bicoloured angel, and checkered butterfly

Far from over and very frustrated. If things do not improved I may give up on salt water.

To start a bit of introduction. I am far from new to keeping fish. I have had many fresh water fish for many years with great success. I decided to change to salt water because of the wonderful diversity and rich colours. My family have alway enjoyed viewing a good salt water tank. I was told that the hobby has improved dramatically.

So I retired my fresh water system and moved to salt. An 80 gal bow faced tank. $$$$$ later now with a HOB skimmer, live rock and sand to start. Cleaned the tank with vingear and rinsed well before I put anything in. A shop provided me with their salt water for the first fill to save me some issues with cycling the tank.

Even so I set the tank up with live rock and sand and left it for a few weeks before getting any livestock. Started with custodians and a couple clowns because they are very tough little fish. Everything was great! So I went a little further.

Then the bad stuff started. I seemed to get all the bad stuff. First it was some Aiptasis. Got a couple pepperment shrimp. They cleaned it up except one big one which I got with a shot of vingear. Problem solved. Not bad I thought.

So everything looked good so I got some more fish. I started to do water changes on a regular bases (5-10 gal) every few days. I do not have a RO/DI system (more $$$$$) so I used tap. Still not to bad, I thought, at least for fish.

Talked and read a lot and found I needed more light. I was only using a standard 4ft fluorescent. So $$$$ later and I bought an Evergrow fixture. May not be top of the line but not bad, and great programming for day cycle. Spectral range was OK. So OK and moved forward.

SO now again tank looked great and I have a yellow tang and a bicoloured angel. Also got a green star palp which is suppose to be very tough. No coral yet. I was warned to wait for a while, becasue phosphate may be high.

They were fine so I bought a checkered butterfly fish.

Little while later (like 1 week) I got a green bubble anenome for the clowns. They did not like him and so never associated. Anemone kept moving in the tank. Then one night it got into the skimmer intake. I had to extract it, but of course it was hurt. Put it in a dark cave spot so he would heal. Tang started to pick at it. Next thing the tang is belly up on the sand. Good bye to the tang. And the anemone did end up dieing too.

Checked the Phosphate, ammmonia, nitrite, and nitrates because everyone told me too. Phosphate was suoppose to be bad for corals that I wanted later and may lead to algae. Nitrates did not seem to be a problem other than maybe alage. Of course phosphate was high (almost 2 ppm). everything else seem to be near zero. Tap water was 0.1ppm. So I started more frequent water changes. Nothing was happening. So I put a hang on the back flow through filter and got Phos-X (suggested by a shop). Based on the directions added the necessary amount and started to see phosphate drop. But only down to just under 1.0 ppm. So replaced the phos-X with new and added more. Got it down to 0.5 ppm. After a whole bag (more $$$) and more water changes the phosphate would not drop more. Shops said it is leaching from the live rock. I did not have enough fish or feeding too much to be a big contribution.

Then more trouble. That horrible red algae hair started growing on everything. Cleaned and cleaned but got worse and could not get phosphate down. I was told I need to be at lest below 0.2 ppm PO4. Nitrates were low. And to drop the photo period which I did.

So what now? more reading!! And went to another well reviewed shop in Vancouver. Yup I live in Edm (more $$$) and talked about where I was. Got a phosphate reactor, granular iron oxide, a sugar? polymer (for nitrate), and Lanthanum chloride. ($$$) Thought great now I have some tools to get the phosphate down and get rid of the red mess.

Dosed as the direction with lanthanum chloride, and set up the PO4 reactor with half the suggested granular iron oxide. Everything looked great the next day the phosphates were down to 0.2 ppm. Another day dose of lanthanum chloride and down to 0.1 ppm. So I stopped that and let the reactor do its work. It held the phosphates but not dropping so I added a little more iron oxide and got the sugar polymer going in the skimmer as suggested. Phosphates droped to around 0.05ppm. I thought great now the tank should clean up and maybe I can get into corals. So I stopped water changes. A few days later I went out to look for some leather corals and maybe another tang.

Also notice I was a little low on salinity at 28 ppt, so I raised it to 30 ppt. Did not want to go to high to fast. I was told it should be at 35 ppt.

Then trouble again. The green star palp were closed up almost disappeared. What happened? They are so tough everyone said! Then I could not find the bi-coloured angel. Well after a lot of looking I found the bones. So sad. So I got worried and started to change the water again frequently, but kept at 30 ppt. Phospahtes remained at <0.1 ppm. The green star palp started to show up a little. Went out and bought another yellow tang. The phosphates remained at <0.1 ppm and the red alge was going away. Iron oxide reactor still running but no new iron oxide added. I was told it should be good for several months.

Well last night the checkered Butterfly fish died! The green star palp are still very little.

So what happened? I point to the Lanthanum chloride. But I will never be sure because I added that and the phosphate reactor at the same time.

So now I have the new yellow tang only. And all through this the two little clown fish are doing great.

So for all you people starting in this hobby, be prepared to spend lots of money. Advice is plenty but good advice maybe not. Start slowly! I would have said I was an experience fish caretaker, but this has been a rough ride. I thought I was doing everything correct, and did so slowly. But now I am not sure. I think I will change the water a few more times and just wait to see if the fish in the tank live. If they do, maybe I will continue but I sure have spent a lot of money and I'm very frustrated.

For all you experts, if you read this and I did something terribly wrong I sure would like to know. I am not afraid to learn.

[Aquattro]

Was this new rock? Not sure why you got so much PO4 so soon. Lights probably didn't help with algae. Anemones always get sucked into pumps. Fact of life Your clowns seldom approve of anemone.
Water changes every few days is a bit overkill. Larger less frequent are better. Also better than adding lots of removers and adders and takerawayers.
Butterflies are delicate, often end up dying.
I'd get a RO unit, do water changes every 2 weeks. 25% or more. I like to run carbon, some don't. I don't use any other filter media. Get a better light, not sure I'd trust that one. Not enough for coral, and probably good at growing algae. Not sure what kind of skimmer you have, suspect it's not good enough. Generally "not bad, but ok" will not be enough for a reef.

[kien]

What was the time frame for all of this? Aside from waiting a few weeks before adding your first critters. The reason I ask is because your "problems" are very common challenges that ALL salt water hobbyists encounter at some stage and to various degrees. Ultimately we have all poured the same amount of time and money into the hobby to battle these challenges. It sounds like you were suggested all the proper remedies. Although, I have no experience with lanthium chloride. We've all had to figure out the appropriate lighting for our setups, the best way for us to battle phosphates, nitrates, anemone suicides, etc.

I guess what I'm getting at is that your journey sounds quite common. I think what you're truly battling is trying to stabilize your tank. All new tanks need To achieve a level of stabilization to be successful. Unfortunately this is quite challenging, as you've discovered, if you are trying to battle various nuisances. One suggestion I would make is whenever you are attacking something, try to limit yourself to one solution at a time. I would not have recommend you dose lanthium while bringing gfo AND bioPellets all online at the same time.

[reefwars]

i think it was a bit to much too fast saltwater is about slow changes so they are not noticable to your live stock , i agree starting with LC was a bad idea as well.

fact is this is easily fixable by simply stop spending and let your tank stabilize , do your reg water changes and do not feed the tank , if you have fish left throw them some pellets every other day but thats it.

turn your lights back to just 4-5hrs a day.

and thats it go have some fun dont but buy any livestock pretend your tank doesnt exist it doesnt need us in it and changing things every other day remeber alot of what your trying to keep is delicate. if you come back to your tank in a month to a month and a half this will resolve its self if you take care of a couple of things now.

run some carbon , do a large water change to correct whats wrong now and then let it stabilize.

for every action is a reaction they arnt always immediate and so they tend to snowball slowly in the first few months.

test your water or bring to a lfs

theres def a couple of things that will help your journey like a decent skimmer,powerheads and quality salt etc.

i know youve spent a bunch on the hobby but i run a couple tanks that are basic as it gets , no fish,reg water changes and no skimmer,expensive powerheads etc. it can be done you just have to pace yourself a bit more and add less overall to your system unless its absolutely needed.

do a water test once every week or two to get an idea whats happening but if i were you i would set my tank in crusie control and come back to see it in a month.

post your questions here , we are all very knowlegeable and are the poeple you should be asking for advice...were not selling you anything

[geweagle]

Brad,

Thank you.

Wish a few more had said these.

First, second hand rock. At $10.00 lb for new hard to handle.

Anemones, yes I agree and wish I had known before.

Water changes were an act of desperation. Did not know what to do, with so many suggestions. I agree, removal is the way to go, so carbon is a good idea. Reactive chemistry can be trouble and bite you later, like me. Bottom line remove what is the problem. You really cannot react it and remove from the system.

Lesson learned would be to get live rock and sand only. Check chemistry and change the water until the chemistry was good. Use carbon to clean it up as a supplement to clean it up. No light until chemistry is OK so you do not have algae

Light is a cost only issue. It was a reasonable option for the cost. Spending $1000 + was just out of the question. I think if the phosphate was under control I would not have had the alge outbreak.

RO unit is nice but expensive for starting. Lesson learned not an option but more a requirement for salt water systems. Add another few hundread to your setup cost.

Skimmer, is a second hand HK something. It seemed to skim well and made good skimate. But yes a sump and good skimmer is better if you want to spend the cash and have an overflow tank. I did not.

Would have been nice if I was warned about the butterfly fish and the trouble anemones can be. When I read threads it is mixed.

So over all I would say I am much more informed than before and have had first hand experience in what can go wrong.

[Proteus]

Well you got advise from the big three. All trustworthy people to ask Qs

[IanWR]

Geweagle,

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. All of us who are starting tanks are in the same boat - getting a lot of advice (some of it conflicting), trying as best we can, and attempting to avoid emptying the bank account. Hopefully it's not actually a eulogy, but just a pause to take stock. I look forward to seeing how this turns out. Keep us posted!

- Ian

[Magickiwi]

Originally Posted by geweagle

Brad,

Light is a cost only issue. It was a reasonable option for the cost. Spending $1000 + was just out of the question. I think if the phosphate was under control I would not have had the alge outbreak.

When you said the name of the model of light you have it sounded like a grow light vs. an aquarium light. The bottom line is that grow lights, or anything in that wavelength, are going to do what they are designed to: grow plants.

Originally Posted by geweagle

Would have been nice if I was warned about the butterfly fish and the trouble anemones can be. When I read threads it is mixed.

I'm afraid that one's on you. The responsibility to know the exact details of the livestock you purchase is solely on you. Checking out a few threads on the ones you want to purchase simply isn't enough. As for anemones, every description I've seen for them says be careful they don't get sucked into your intakes.

Just saying that you're suffering a mix of inexperience, incomplete information, and a couple of less than ideal choices. Marine aquariums are expensive, that is a sad fact. Persistence is the key to anything good in life, if it's in you to keep trying then this can be a very rewarding hobby. Keep educating yourself and heed the advice that experienced people like reefwars, aquattro, kien, etc.

[Reef Pilot]

Yup, no way around it, a lot of learning with SW. And you'll get a lot of conflicting opinions, too. But like others have said, go slow, and don't try to fix too many things at one time, so you can better correlate cause and effect.

Get your water params right first, starting with salinity, KH, Ca, and let your tank go through the post cycle phases with algae, etc. Fix your nitrates and phosphates later, after the basics are stable.

And really try to curb that urge to add livestock, especially delicate ones.

[asylumdown]

Some very good advice in this thread. The two cents that I would add would be that while 80 gallons might seem like a big number, for the fish you had, it's actually not that big of a tank. I'm not sure of your tank's exact dimensions, but if it's in the range of the 72 gallon bowfronts it's probably about 4 feet long. I'm not sure what size they were when you got them, but the bicoloured angel's adult size is about 6", the yellow tang can reach 8", and I'm not sure of the exact species of butterfly fish that you had, but I'm going to assume based on the common name that it's what's also known as the Latticed Butterfly (Chaetodon rafflesi), which has an adult size of 6". If they were all adults and lined up head to tail, they would be almost half the length of your tank. It very well could work long term, but I would consider that to be a pretty well stocked 80 gallon tank, plus you had/have clowns in there.

So, question 1 - how far apart did you add the fish, and what was your schedule for testing ammonia as you stocked the tank? It sounds like you tested it at least once, but while adding one more fish to an established community likely will have little affect on your ammonia levels, doubling or tripling the number of fish in a system (from one to two, for example) definitely can. Also, a dying nem in an 80 gallon can put off a whole lot of ammonia, enough to have possibly overwhelmed your yellow tang. Did you test for ammonia the day the yellow tang died? It's hard to tell what sort of a timeline this all happened on from your post, how many days between fish losses were there?

Assuming ammonia/water chemistry wasn't the problem (it may or may not have contributed), something else has been killing your fish. While I'm sure there are cases where fish have strokes or heart attacks and mysteriously die for not visible reason, in aquariums you can usually discount those altogether. That leaves us with three other options: Aggression, disease, or malnutrition. Chronic stress could be in there too, but really it just serves to exacerbate the three acute causes of death. This leads me to question 2 - what sort of quarantine procedure did you use for the fish you added? If the answer is none, There is a very good chance disease has played a role. I know you've been keeping fish for a while, but the really nasty killers in the marine world are not always as obvious to the naked eye as some of the fresh water diseases, especially on light coloured fish. The two most obvious things to look for on your surviving fish would be marine ich (Cryptocaryon irritans) and marine velvet (Amyloodinium ocellatum). Marine ich, AKA white spot disease, is usually pretty obvious to the naked eye once it reaches a lethal level, but unless you were looking closely or knew what to look for it's still possible to miss. In it's worst form, you should even see little white spots on the fishes eyes. Marine velvet however, can be subtle enough that unless you knew what to look for you could miss it, and it can take a fish from 'normal' to 'really quite dead' in less than 24 hours. If the fish were not quarantined and prophylactically treated, the chances that you don't have at least some marine ich present in your system is pretty low, which doesn't always mean it will kill them, but it does mean you have a lower margin for error in the level of stress your fish can handle before it can overwhelm them. It's a very common misconception that you can speed up a cycle by using someone else's 'aged' water, as the nitrification process happens in the substrate, not the water column. What there is plenty of in the water column is fish pathogens, and fish stores are especially notorious for being breeding grounds of disease. Most experienced hobbyists go through great lengths to keep water from fish stores out of their systems for that very reason.

If disease wasn't an issue (though I strongly believe it played a role), you have to look at aggression and nutrition. You would have noticed the aggression if it was present, but you'd need to watch very carefully to know if nutrition played a role. Butterfly fish are notoriously difficult to get to eat in captivity, and many die from complications related to starvation. By the time you see them in a store, most fish have spent at least a couple of weeks in transit, and many of them have barely eaten, and were not being given the kind of care they need to train them on new foods. Most LFS's (even the good ones) are pretty bad at making sure each fish in every tank is getting enough food. When I first started out, the only powder blue tangs, butterfly fishes, and anthias's I had ever seen were the ones in store tanks, so I actually had no idea that what I thought was 'normal' was actually how those fish looked when emaciated. Now that I have a healthy Copper Band Butterfly and can compare what they're supposed to look like with how they look in most stores... it's actually quite heart breaking. Chances are good your butterfly wasn't eating enough and that it was under-weight and had little defence against disease or any issues with water chemistry.

My advice - If your tank is having trouble keeping fish alive, you don't even need to be thinking about things like whether your phosphate is too high to keep corals. Find out what is killing your fish first, and address that problem or problems. If your system can't sustain fish, it's absolutely not going to sustain corals, and taking drastic measures to reduce phosphate is only complicating what you should be focusing on. ID any diseases that might be present, and take the established steps to eliminate it as best you can. Adopt a QT strategy that works for you. Research your fish choices and be prepared to go the extra mile (usually in a QT tank) to get finicky eaters fully acclimated and gaining weight before introducing them to food competitors. Stop taking drastic measures to eliminate this or that perceived problem as soon as you notice it - slow and subtle is the name of the game. Save for marine velvet, you'll usually kill more things trying to 'fix' the problem than most 'problems' ever kill.

ANd if you read that whole post, you've got more patience than I usually do.