Reef_Wrecked

how many fish should be in a 40gallon reef tank?

I put 2 clowns, 2 gobys, blue tang, yellow tang, 1 neon goby, 1 blue angel, 1bi color angle, 1 cardinal fish,5 damisel, 2 coral banded shrimp, 2 camel shrimp, 4 emerald crabs, 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 high hats, 2 pork fish, 3 hermit crabs, 4 anemoes, and madd snails not to mention corals.

Point is i got excited and added to many fish to fast. olny thing i have left is 1goby, 1 half dead clown, 1 half dead bi color angel, and the damisels are fine. They all got ICH and died.
I cought the blue angel and the coral banded shrimp and the neon goby in the ocean.

Oil_Fan

The reason for the damsels being fine is that they are very hardy. The same cannot be said about the tangs. They actually should be in a larger tank.

Anemones should not be added to tank until at least the 6 month mark. You had the tank very much overstocked. That probably caused stress which in turn caused the ich.

A few suggestion:

First off research, research, research. You can never learn enough about this hobby.
Also only add fish a few weeks apart. They need time to get used to their new surroundings.
Test your water. In order to give you better advice, we need to know the parameters.

And welcome to Fishlore!! And sorry about the losses.

Reef_Wrecked

i didnt have all that stuff in there at once, i was just stating what was in there but any way here are the tests aug 16th
pH 8.5
ALK 2.9
HYDRO 41 1.031
NH3/NH4 0.25
NO2 0.2

did an 20 gallon water change same day aug 16th
check the hydro was 38 1.028
going to recheck the water in the morning

pepetj

Reef_Wrecked: First of all, welcome to Fishlore!

Your actual readings show that your cycle has been disrupted. Readings of ammonia (NH3/NH4) and Nitrites (NO2) should be zero. Your pH is fine but in the upper end. Your specific gravity was way high but your last reading suggest you are addressing that (1.026 should be ideal).

What are your Nitrates (NO3), calcium (Ca2), KH and phosphate (PO4) levels?

I believe that Oil_Fan probably read your Aquarium Info and noticed that your tank is quite new (2 months). That means roughly speaking 8 to 9 weeks. I believe you mean 2 months since cycling.

If the suggestion of adding livestock to a tank a few weeks apart is to be followed (of course you can do as you consider adequate) your tank should have probably 2 or 4 fish in there but it doesn't. You mention in your first post that you had a number way higher than would be expected:

2 clowns, 2 gobys, blue tang, yellow tang, 1 neon goby, 1 blue angel, 1bi color angle, 1 cardinal fish,5 damisel, 2 coral banded shrimp, 2 camel shrimp, 4 emerald crabs, 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 high hats, 2 pork fish, 3 hermit crabs, 4 anemoes, and madd snails not to mention corals

So I figure Oil_Man, based on that, made the observation that you were overstocked.

Your tank is 40gal. Some of the fish you intend to keep will be fine there but others won't. Other than that you may have mixed incompatible fish or still be overstocked (I don't know enough about SW fish to give you feedback):

1goby, 1 half dead clown, 1 half dead bi color angel, and the [5] damisels are fine

I am glad you are able to catch some specimens. Nice experience. If you can upload some pics, we enjoy pics in Fishlore! Hope this doesn't discourage you, I've made some mistakes in my FW experience.

Disclosure: I don't know Oil_Man, I am a newby in SW, in fact to this day I don't have a SW running since I've been planning and working on the set-up of 20gal Nano that initially was going to be a 10gal. I decided to go SW 2 weeks ago.

Pepetj
Santo Domingo

Reef_Wrecked

its cool. Thats why i am here and i told you my story, any input is better then none at all thanks, Kevin

Reef_Wrecked

After another 20 gallon water change on aug 16th did more tests on aug 19th. Any help would be great thanks

salinity 38 1.028
PH 8.3 @ temp 77
alkalinity 2.5
NH3/NH4 0.5
No2 0.1
No3 10-50

Oil_Fan

Salinity is a little high. I run my tanks around 1.025 or 1.026 or so. Nothing major though.

Ammonia should read 0 in a cycled tank.
Ditto with nitrite. But you're getting readings on both which is not good.

Nitrates of 10-50...ideally you'd like to get this down. Though it won't have a real effect on the fish. It's more of a containing algae blooms issue.

As for the reason for spreading the adding of fish out by a few weeks, it also allows your tank to adjust to the extra nutrients and well....fish poo. Basically it gives your biological filtration a chance to catch up and handle the extra load.

Ok...so now what to do moving forward?

Weekly water changes. Keep them up. Also what is source of your SW? Just to eliminate that being the source of ammonia, though that would be surprising. Ideally you should be either making it using RO/DI water or getting it from your LFS. But I'd test it just to be sure.

You can also add something like Stress Zymie by API as a temporary fix.

Also is your protein skimmer pulling a lot of gunk out?

Reef_Wrecked

yes i get the r/o water from the lfs and yes the protein skimmer is pulling alot of green junk out of it. i took the 3 damzels out of the tank last sunday 21st and did a 80% water change. testing tommarow after another water change of 15 gallons. so there is just corals, 5 emerald crabs and 5 hermit crabs and snails.

Oil_Fan

80% water change?? wow

I'd wait on tomorrows water change but go ahead and test the water. You're now going to have to make sure the cycle is finished. My guess is that adding so many fish, it caused a mini-cycle.

And you may need to retest the water on Tuesday or so depending on what you see tomorrow. Since you have no fish right now, just work at getting the cycle to finish and the slowly add fish back in. Start with the tamest and slowly move on towards the more aggressive ones.

Reef_Wrecked

ok so i did a test this morning 8-29 with no water change. got home this after noon from work to find the glass with alot of green algie. cleaned it off, hasent came back so far as of today

temp 79
PH 8.2
ALK 2.0
NH 3/4 0
No2 0
No3 0