RG behaviour - Hiding or dead?

Annie

Reefing newb
I have come back from two days away and have been unable to find my royal gramma for longer than five minutes. Recently my firecracker goby died. My cleaner shrimp subsequently ate it and died soon after. I could not see any signs of disease or parasite. Do royal grammas hide from time to time to grow etc? Or is it hiding to die? I currently have a scooter blenny and a spotted mandarin in the tank along with a selection of inverts. What other fish will be good to go in my 58l Boyu Orca?
 
I think its probably died. Having trouble with parameters lately but no cyano or algae blooms apart from hair algae on one snail. Ph is 7.6, kh is 1.1, no3 is 10, no2 is 0.05, nh3/nh4 is zero, salinity was 1.018 before change it is now only 1.020, po4 0.25.


All these were before a water change, I've not checked anything apart from salinity yet after change. The gramma was in the tank for 4months
 
A PH of 7.6 is bad in a saltwater tank. It should never go below 7.8. 7.7 is stressful, 7.6 is usually deadly.
 
Well, its alive. Just about. I have rechecked my pH twice. It is now 7.8 after a water change weirdly. But the royal gramma is stressed about something because it is hiding. I don't think it will live long. I have not seen it eat lately
 
Yeah its properly up the spout. Got a bit of saltwater left from the water change other day. I'll get some more tomorrow maybe
 
What do I put in it to bump up the ph? I'm gonna siphon a little bit out today and add the last of my saltwater before I get some more today and will do a bigger change this weekend. My feather dusters have been a new addition, they were out initially but I assume theyre setting their tubes
 
Dont take out any water just use the salt water you have left as top of water, that way it will slowly bring the salinity up with out stressing anything.
 
I've not got any room to top up yet. But thank you ill do that because I don't want to create more stress. Why would my royal gramma be hiding?
 
Parameters first of all could be why. Just get everything in check then worry about why. you really cant ask why when you know stuff is not where it should be.
 
Yeah the water is out of whack. Ph is 7.8 I rechecked it. Gonna recheck all of them this morning. I use the red sea test kit.
 
If you havent opened a window in the room the tank is in you can open one up for a couple minutes to get some fresh air in the room, it can help bring PH up a bit also.
 
Thought of what I typed once it sent. I'll keep doing that today. Salinity still 1.020 but no room to top up yet. All other levels apart from ph and salinity seem stable now after the change the other day
 
Oh, i was going to say if you had a sump to take out a cup of water from the tank and mix in a spoon full or 2 of salt mix then pore it in the sump so its get mixed in to the dt slower. not really sure if you should do that straight into the DT do. Might want someone elses opinion on that.

I have only ben doing this for 10 to 11 months now, So im defenetly no expert but i dont think it would hurt if you do it a little bit at a time. Like remove 2 cups of water and add a spoon full of salt mix it and then add the water back in. do this every couple hours to bring up your salinity slowly.

But wait and see what other would say about doing this before you actually atempt it.
 
Back
Top