Dead Chromises

[sen5241b]

I bought 2 blue-green chromises a month ago and one died in a day or two. I got another yesterday and acclimatised him for at least 5 hours but he was dead today. Is there some trick to keepng blue-green chromises or am I having bad luck? I had a Bangai Cardinal once and he died after 3 days becuase he just would not eat but besides that I never had fish die so fast.

 

[Hiker4twenty]

My experience with chromis have been good. My LFS only told me to acclimate for 10 min, then pour 1 cup of my DT water in the bag and let sit for another 10 min and then off into the tank. That was 2 months ago and it's still doing good. I've since gave it to a friend of mine who has a 46g marine tank. It's grown a lot in the 3 weeks he's had it. How are the params in your tank? My brother also had chromis and they did well until they got a bad case of ich. They did not make it throught the treatment.

 

[Melosu58]

I dont know why but I`ve heard that they need to be an odd number of them. 1,3,5 or 7. I kept having problems with mine long ago but since I added an odd number (5) they seem to do better. As I said I cant explain why but it happened.

 

[sen5241b]

I did notice my Pajama Cardinal chasing but not really hurting my one live chromis. But the one that died in less than 24 hours was bigger than the live one. He seemed kinda stressed out last night after I let him out of the bag.

0.24 Salnity
78F Temp
400 Cal
zero Nitrates
6dkh Alk
8.1-2 Ph
Zero Phosphate (or at least very close to zero)
Zero Ammonia

 

[sen5241b]

I dont know why but I`ve heard that they need to be an odd number of them. 1,3,5 or 7. I kept having problems with mine long ago but since I added an odd number (5) they seem to do better. As I said I cant explain why but it happened.

very interesting.

 

[winyfrog]

What other fish do you have in your tank?

The reason for adding odd numbers is so the dominant chromis will pick on more then one, this reduces stress for a single chromis getting picked on always.

 

[winyfrog]

I did notice my Pajama Cardinal chasing but not really hurting my one live chromis. But the one that died in less than 24 hours was bigger than the live one. He seemed kinda stressed out last night after I let him out of the bag.

0.24 Salnity
78F Temp
400 Cal
zero Nitrates
6dkh Alk
8.1-2 Ph
Zero Phosphate (or at least very close to zero)
Zero Ammonia

How did you acclimate them?

 

[cthegame]

i would say you have had just bad luck. They are tiny little things and probably got stressed and died when they got moved. I bought 10 of them and kept losing one after the other for the first few days until the strongest two are left.

Also remember that sometimes fish just die without anything being wrong on your end.

 

[ltljoker]

I agree with the game. i havent had any problems with mine either. ive only got 2 no odd number there, and they have lived thru the cycleing of my tank. so they are tough lil buggers

 

[Bifferwine]

Green chromis are usually very hardy and very easy to keep, but they tend to not handle shipping very well, so they may have been sick from just being at the LFS.

And I agree with the odd number idea. I've had much better luck keeping groups of fish in odd numbers rather than even numbers.

 

[dcantucson]

I agree there must have been some pre-existing condition. If not then something killed it.

 

[sen5241b]

There was big school of them at the LFS and they looked fine. I acclimated them slowly over 5 hours by just pouring a a few ounces of tank water in the bag. My wide said the old chromis was trying to peck at the new one thru the bag before I out him in.

 

[daugherty]

i recently added 4 chromis to addation to the one that i have had for a few years and the older one was chasing the 3 small ones for a week or so but now they all get along. i just think they had some kind of problem that they came with since all your numbers are fine