Death again.....sigh

[Melonbob]

Come home from my weekend in Detroit, with a few corals of course.....one of my clowns are dead, and my blood shrimp is missing. I don't get it, everything else is thriving, my corals look awesome, and a dead clown. This is at 1:00 am last night, and I'm checking all my parameters. Everything is good. I mean, trites, trates, amm all 0. Temp is fine, water looks good other than algae blooms. I've had my frogspawn, sea hare, anemone and now a clown. All have been separate incidents, and I'd love to own it all up to coincidence, but I have this fear that I'm missing something and I'm gonna kill my whole tank. I dropped in the new corals as I had noplace else to put them, they opened up fine and look great! Now I have one clown. What do I do with one clown? Can you match up different types of clowns as long as they are paired? I really want to get something more interesting than false percs anyways.....Either way, I'm giving the tank a few weeks to see if anything funky happens

[cthegame]

I think my response here is the same as your last incient. I think you stock your tank too fast. Do you do more than average water changes? I think you need to if you want to keep good water quality. trites, trates, amm all 0 doesnt always mean your tank has no other issues...

[Melonbob]

I do stock more than one coral at a time, I'm kind of forced to as the shop is a couple hours away. I was told its not as critical with corals. I added six fish over a six month period, I don't believe that is stocking too fast? The only fish added more than single were my pair of clowns. Every time I stock, I wait a minimum of two weeks before stocking again. I used trites, trates, and amm only as examples. I also test for phosphates, alk, calcium, ph and SG. All are within spec. If there were major issues with my tank, wouldn't I have deaths more frequently? I'm done stocking for a while now anyways, I'm out of cash and tank for the time being.....lol

EDIT: I have a 46, and change 5 gallons bi weekly........plus top ups in between

[Doc]

If there is one constant with the hobby, it is that weird shit happens. I have had a fish wind up dead when the day before it was swimming and eating and flirting with me. We cannot test for internal parasites which can just kill a fish in one day. Anytime I have a death, I wait a minimum of 3 weeks or more before adding a new fish, just to make sure the tank is OK.

One more thing. If your tank is out of hiding places, your fish might be killing each other. I have had that happen when I pushed my tank load. Just a few ideas.

-Doc

[Bifferwine]

Who knows. Sometimes they die for no apparent reason.

Don't mix more than one type of clown, there's a 99% chance they'll fight to the death. If you want a different type of clown, take the one you have back to the store and buy a new pair.

[Doc]

Biff has it right with the clown. It is best to get two of the same kind. You can get lucky with two very different sized clowns, like a pink skunk and gold striped maroon, but they won't pair up, but may tolerate each other.

-Doc

[reeffreak]

Sorry for your lost.Sometimes,actually many times a fish dies and we will never know what happened.Waiting several weeks is the wise thing to do.

One thing on the clowns,you will have to stick with a clown in the same family for them to get along.Ocellaris,Percula,Black-White Percula/Ocellaris,Misbars,Picasso are different variant of the same family and should mix fine.

[Altohombre]

how long was the clown in your tank? maybe it was sick from the start. How often are you feeding your fish and corals, maybe they aren't getting enough nutrients in the water. I have a 46g too as you know and have been doing 5g water change once a week and feeding twice a day. I have only been running my tank for little over 2 months, but no deaths yet luckily. I only have 3 fish and 3 corals right now. Maybe when I add more it will become a different story, but hopefully not.

[sen5241b]

Not just clowns, but other fish, like fairy bassets, will not tolerate closely related species. All clowns are in the same genus, family? Help me here.

[yote]

Hate to hear about your clown.