Trouble with Blue Jaw Trigger

We've bought 2 Blue Jaw Triggers (months apart) and they've both died. The first one we thought maybe was a fluke because it had just been shipped in and seemed upset but the second one was healthy and did the same thing. Basically they are acclimated to the tank properly but for whatever reason all they did was hide and would not eat anything! We're thinking about trying one last time, however, there is obviously something wrong and we aren't going to get another one until we try something different. Does anyone have any ideas what could be going on?

 

Can we get a little more information on your tank?

How long has it been set up? What is your stock list? What are you parameters? Where are you getting the fish? How are you acclimating? What have you tried feeding?

 

We need way more information here, as Erin has already stated. Provide some more information about your set up

Also, what does 'acclimated properly' mean? Did you drip acclimate? For how long? etc

 

Sorry about not posting any of the info the first time around.. I just figured there may be a quick explanation in which I wouldn't need to post everything. The tank has been up since February. Inside the tank is a yellow tang, a kole tang, 2 clownfish, yellow watchman goby, hawkfish, purple pseudochromis, 6 line wrasse, flame angel, and a sergeant major. Several corals and live rock also reside in the tank. I got both of them at local fish stores but I got them from different ones. The first fish was acclimated to the store tank for about a week and the second one wasn't acclimated at the store-we were able to pick up immediately after shipment arrival. When we acclimated the both the fish we used the same procedure by first floating the bag in the tank and adding a quarter cup of tank water to the bag every 15 minutes for 1.5 hours. For food we tried frozen mysis, frozen brine, freshwater guppies, ghost shrimp, and frozen silversides. The Blue Jaw was not interested in the mysis, brine, shrimp or silversides and although he chased the guppies he never ate any of them. Both fish only lasted from 10 - 14 days the second fish spent about a week happily in the water, barrel rolling, spitting water and what not and then about day 8 retreated to hiding in the rock and died shortly thereafter. Neither fish ate anything the whole while in the tank.

 

How much live rock do you have and what type of filtration are you running?

That sounds like a pretty good bio load and if you don't have the proper filtration or not maintaining the tank the parameters could spike causing the fish to die.

 

About 175 lbs of live rock and there is a 40 gallon sump underneath with a filter sock, live rock filtration, and a lot of macroalgae. We also have a good protein skimmer. Regular water changes are done every 2-3 weeks as well. Am I missing something?

 

Maybe try a different vendor? Liveaquaria has great livestock.

(Also for the record, freshwater fish are terrible for marine fish to eat.)

 

I've tried 2 different vendors. I'm not big on having fish shipped to my house as the weather conditions are not always the best.

 

Maybe have a store hold on to one for you for a bit then. Make sure he's eating, happy and healthy before you try to introduce another one into your tank.

 

Also, find out what your LFS is feeding them, this way you can feed them the same thing while you ween them on to whatever it is you are feeding your tank. +1 on not using freshwater fish to feed saltwater fish. Every once in a blue moon is all right, but the chemical makeup between freshwater fish and saltwater fish is very different. Continued feeding like that will lead to malnutrition.

 

The owner of the LFS actually came to our house and told us to try guppies. It wasn't as a preliminary measure.. just to see if that was something he'd eat after he'd gone days without. He had said he'd never seen anyone have a problem like that with a trigger. Maybe we'll just need to monitor levels more closely, however, none of the corals or other fish seem to be showing any signs of problems.

 

I still highly suggest having the store hold on to one for you for a few weeks so you know you'll get one that's eating.

 

That sounds like a good idea Erin. Thanks everyone for the input. It's greatly appreciated. Perhaps we'll try again soon.