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I bought a cherub angelfish at my LFS two days ago. WHen i got him home and in the tank he was doing very well he was eating algae off the liverock. Then today i went to test my water and he was swimming in loops and looked like he couldnt control himself. he died about 5 minutes later. I checked my water and ammonia was 0 nitrite was 0 and nitrate was arout 15 or 20. Anyone have any idea what happened. this is in a 30 tank with 35 lbs of live rock a 20lbs of livesand with a ocellaris clown yellow-tailed damsel and a 6-lines wrasse

How long has the tank been set up?

What is the salinity?

How often are you doing water changes?

Do you have a protein skimmer? what do you do for filtration?

How long was the angel at the store before you bought it? Do you know if it came from a reputable collector?

Were there any other symptoms, anything you observed at the store or in your tank that seemed odd? Any markings? was he getting picked on? Any one of those fish could possibly have a dominant streak.

How did you acclimate the fish to your water conditions?

Also, it seems to me that you have quite a lot fish for a 30g tank. With the angel, I'd say it was well over stocked. Even without the angel it's borderline depending on your setup and maintenence schedule.

I'll need answers to all those questions and maybe more before I can begin to know what might have happened.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

the tank was up for a little more than 2 months

the salinity was 1.024
water cahnges once a week
no skimmer
no idea how long the fish was at the store but ate at the store it came from fishfishfish

my fish dont really pick on each other except the damsel and the clown every once and a while but its just a chase away.

i used the drip method to acclimate him i did that for 30 mins

On a tank with that many fish, you should probably have a skimmer. It will at least help keep those nitrates under control.

How much water did you drip into the bag/container with the angel? Did you double the water? triple the water?

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

I trippled it then took out about 1/2 of it from the bucket then doubled it. are my three fish over stocking the 30 gallon

In a 30, putting even a small Angel like a Cherubfish is pushing it, particularly without a protein skimmer. If your nitrate reading is correct - i.e., 15 to 20 ppm - then this should not hav eimpinged unduly on your Angel, even though they don't like high nitrates. 15 to 20 ppm in a tank as small as yours is usually a sign of good management - IF it stays that low over the long term. With Centropyge Angels, 15 to 20 ppm is possibly edging close to the point where they will be uncomfortable, and for those fishes you should be looking at trying to drop the nitrates to 10 ppm if possible, but I can't see an immediate reason for the death of your Cherubfish.

The one thought that DOES occur to me is this. What colour was your Cherubfish's face when you bought it? A Cherubfish, Centropyge argi, should be a nice bright yellow in colour around the face. If it was deep orange, that is an IMMEDIATE sign of trouble - it means tha the fish is 'goosed' - slang term for having been collected with cyanide, a practice that should be banned (and decent collectors don't resort to it) but there are some collectors still in circulation using cyanide. The problem with this is that reversal therapy is time consuming, expensive, not guaranteed to work (as you don't know the dosage that a cyanide collected fish was exposed to) and requires the assistance of a well equipped biology lab. Check VERY CAREFULLY all stock for signs of this - the classic sign in Centropyge Angels that they've been collected using cyanide is that yellow colours have turned to an unnatural deep orange. Go to this page and scroll down until you see the photo of the specimen of Centropyge flavissimus (which should be brilliant sunshine yellow) that has been collected with cyanide, and take note of the unnatural orange colour and the photo caption - AVOID cyanide collected fishes like the plague,a as they will almost certainly die once you take delivery of them because their appetites will have been shut down by the toxin. Even if a fish survives a light dose of cyanide, it frequently stops feeding and develops a host of complications. I can't say for certain if the symptoms your fish exhibited are related to this, but if your Cherubfish had an unnaturally orange face when you bought it, cyanide is definitely implicated.

Additionally, Cherubfishes are found in fairly deep water. If the fish isn't decompressed carefully upon being taken to the surface by the collector, then decompression sickness affects it just as it affects scuba divers. Decent collectors bear this in mind when collecting deeper water fishes, and decompress them properly, but sometimes a specimen that hasn't been decompressed properly enters the trade. A fish that hasn't been properly decompressed is a time bomb ticking away - it could recover, on the other hand it could be nursing a gas embolism in a major blood vessel, which will see it off in pretty short order.

For now, I'd leave your 30 gallon with the existing fishes, don't try and add any more stock, CERTAINLY not until you uprate your filtration system by some means, be it a protein skimmer, a trickle bed or a macroalga refugium to keep nitrates down, and if you DO, at a later stage, try and keep Centropyge Angels, check the provenance of your proposed stock VERY carefully indeed for signs such as those I've mentioned above. Given the price tag attached to Centropyge Angels, even the so-called "common" species being expensive fishes, protect yourself from much heartache and a big wallet hit by asking LOTS of searching questions ... if you don't receive satisfactory answers to those questions, walk out of the door.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

thanks for the info the angel did have a bright yellow face so im not sure. but thanks for the info