New to all fish keeping

ckoladawn

ckoladawn
I have 2 29 gal. tanks. There is 45 lbs live rock in each with 20 lbs live sand. (1" deep) I have 2 powerheads (170 gph each) in both tanks, a Visi-Jet Protein Skimmer, and a aqua-tech 20-40 filter. I am not sure what kind of lights but they are on 12 hour timers. The temp. in both tanks is 78 F. Sal. is 1.025. 0 ammonia,nitrite, and nitrate. PH is 8.4. I have a small snowflake eel, 6 blue leg crabs, and 5 nassarius snails in one tank. The other tank has 2 green damsels, 1 4-striped damsel, 1 ocellaris clown, 8 blue leg crabs and 9 nassarius snails. I have had the tanks running for about 2 months and I have had 1 ocellaris clown and 1 4-striped damsel die both within 2 days of purchase. I dont know what is killing them. The other fish are doing great. Any suggestions?
 
Quarentine tank. set an aditional tank up the same as the other two any fish you get set in the quarentine tank and monitor them for 2 weeks then move them into theire new found home otherwise you run a risk of infecting your previous wildlife. Were they doing anything abnormal before they died?
 
They lost color and wouldnt eat. After a few hours they couldnt swim good and just stayed on the bottom. I had a quarentine tank but I started using it for water changes, so I guess I will set it back up. This morning I got up and the other clownfish had died and my water looked really yellow so I did a water change and cleaned the equipment and it looks better.
 
Damsels and clowns are very territorial (especially the striped). Have you noticed any bullying? Also, you might want to buy new test kits, some brands expire relatively quickly and can give you false readings. If you're getting good numbers and your fish are dying, there may be something wrong with the test.
 
You are loading up your system too quickly. do not add any more animals until you can keep everything alive for at least 3 months. provide your water parameters presently. it takes time to build up your bacteria levels and so your additions should be slow and at least 2 weeks between as a minimum.
 
Yeah, I agree with John and Jelly, you've got to be careful about how many animals you add to a tank that's only 29 gallons in size.
 
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