Weird behavior

Tony

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#1
So I have a small yellow watchman goby and two juvenile Da Vinci clowns.

The yellow watchman has been hanging out near the top of my tank for the past 4 days I have had him. The clowns have also been in the tank for about 4 days as well.

The bigger of the two clowns is doing the same.

My water parameters are great.....water temp is about 80 degrees.

I can't figure out what (if anything) is wrong. I thought gobys were supposed to be a bottom fish....and clowns that swim sideways on the top of the water.....that just sounds strange.

The clown only does this for few, then he comes back down and swims around. Sometimes he surfs the water jet.


Also, the yellow goby just jumped out of the water and somehow managed to land in the 3rd chamber of my 24ga JBJ nano tank. A small fish net isn't working in getting him out.
 

Tony

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#3
They're not gulping....and the small baby yellow tang is doing just fine.

But let me adjust the power head nozzle so that more surface "disturbance" is created.
 

Tony

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#5
Gimme a few....will be doing that in a few hours.

Small "work emergency" came up.

The clowns are chasing after each other and no longer at the surface....the goby is still in the 3rd back chamber of my JBJ 24ga nano tank.

No clue how I'm going to fish his *** out.


Will report back to this thread what my parameters are exactly.
 

Six2seven

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#6
how old is the tank? has it gone through the cycle? sounds like you added these three fish together 4 days ago and might be going through an ammonia spike. check ammonia and PH asap.
 

Tony

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#7
Hi, ok here are my parameters:

Tank is 24ga JBJ nano. It's ~6 months old. It already went through a cycle many months ago.

Amonia: 0ppm
Nitrites: 0ppm
Nitrates: ~10ppm
Phosphates: 0ppm
Calcium: 340ppm

Is low phosphates bad? I'm using Chemipure Elite right now in order to remove some of the nitrates that may have gotten stirred up. I just moved ~2 weeks ago and had to move the tank myself and it was a disaster.....lesson learned to pay someone to do it for me.

All fish/corals survived...but the sand bed was stirred up more than it should have been and I'm pretty sure some nasty stuff got uncovered. So for the past 2 weeks I have been doing a 5 gallon water change every 5 days.

I'm going to stop that now, and revert back to changing 5 gallons of water every Saturday.


Thanks if you can help.


I also have that "Reef part A and part B" solution....I forget the name, but it's a brand name. Should I start dosing daily with that? It has calcium/etc in there.


Edit: I should also mention every morning I give a small "squirt" from a bottle of "Phyto Feast" I got in the fridge. No real reason as such.....just want to make sure the copepods/amphipods/maxima clam/corals (if any) have a little extra food. I realize this is probably what is causing the 10ppm nitrates as I only feed 1x per day and only enough for them to eat.
 

forty

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#8
All fish/corals survived...but the sand bed was stirred up more than it should have been and I'm pretty sure some nasty stuff got uncovered.
Not so much about what was uncovered but how the fish were transported, or if they stayed in the tank during the sand bed being stirred up. Thats not good for them and will stress them out for sure, maybe even keep the lights down and just watch them.

Do you have a picture of your tank?

Is it running stock, out of the box or have you upgraded?
Do you have Rock or just sand, if so how many lbs.
Do you have a Skimmer

What other living things are in your tank?

You mention the goby is 4 days old?
The Clowns are about 4 days old? Did you get them at different times, different places?
How did you acclimate them?

Maybe your moving to quickly...
 
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#9
Do the fish have any black dots on them? Look very closely! Sometimes fish can get "black ich" which is actually a worm that attaches to the host (fish), usually gills first. This would explain the reason they look like they need more oxygen with out symptoms. Second fish tend to be lethargic and swim funny when these worms are taking over, wouldn't you if worms were sucking the life out of you :) . Prazipro treats this, BUT ONLY IF IT IS CONFIRMED BLACK ICH!

Ps: clowns have funny behavior such as the swimming patterns you mention. I wouldn't be to worried unless you see dots or gasping!
 

reefes pieces

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#10
Your params look fine for fish and even most corals. 10ppm of nitrates isn't something I'd worry too much over. I've had some tank bred clowns do stupid stuff in a tank and host the top edge of the tank, the overflow, etc. Check for rapid breathing. That's a good indicator if something is wrong. Also, have you checked for stray voltage?
 

Tony

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#11
Thanks for the replys everyone.

It's a 24ga JBJ nano...so I don't think there's any stray voltage because I'm not feeling it...and no metal parts are touching the tank water....save for the heater element which was a $10 Tong's special.

I got a yellow watchman goby....whom I thought was going to be a sand-sifter....turns out he just hangs out at the top of the water column. He jumped back from the back part of the tank, into the display tank yesterday....and he just chills at the top of the water.

The clowns are not doing the water thing....and nobody was gasping. Only the big clown is doing it....he kinda sorta turns sideways and swims really fast at the top of the water.

The smaller clown and the baby tang just hang out towards the bottom of the tank.....almost as if they have paired up.

The clowns do host the top of the water at night time.....I bought a huge torch coral hoping they would....but nope.
 

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