What to put in my saltwater tank???

ok, I lost my baby yellow tang the other day, don't know what happned to him...I checked everything in my tank and they all came back normal and my other fish are perfectly fine.

for a b-day present, I am getting a bigger tank from my mom and my dad is buying me a fish to put in there...I was wondering...currently I have a four inch dogface puffer, a inch and a half tomato clown, inch and a half damsel.

I wanted to get a dragonet, 2 engineers, a fuzzy dwarf lion, or a huma huma....which fish would be the best bet to put in my tank...also if anyone has any ideas of fish that would mix well with the three I already have (I cannot do any more damsels, mine is aggresive to other damsels already) and I also plan to get some more live rock for the tank as well. which one of the fish would mix well in my tank with my current members and any new ideas are welcome...

 

I would really wait and see if you can keep some CHEAP fish alive first honestly.

What is the lighting in your system? Can you post some pics?

What were your levels when you checked thme?

What are you testing for?

A yellow tang is a pretty hardy fish so there must have been some thing some where wrong and I would suggest you fix the probably before you lose any more money.

Did you do any dramatic changes to the tank as it is?

 

Be careful with the dragonet - they can be hard to feed and some will only eat live food (and since they're slow the other fish may beat them to the food). Mandarins are beautiful fish, but they often starve to death if not kept in an established tank with lots of copepods to eat, or live foods from an lfs. I'd love to get one but I'm not sure I could meet his food requirements. If they'll take frozen foods that would be good, but some will only eat live food. Here's a good link on them:



Good luck - sorry to hear about the tang. Tang unfortunately are prone to ich. Did you notice any white spots on it? Sometimes the ich is in their gills so it's not always obvious. Do you do any water tests - ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, salinity, pH, temperature, etc. ?

 

Ok, I tested everything in my tank when I had the baby tang and after he died.  when I had him, I had to do constant water changes due to his bioload.  I did tests this morning, my nitrites are zero, my ammonia is zero, my pH is 7.8 (constant for my tank), my salinity is specific gravity 1.022 (normal for my tank), nitrates are at 5 ppm.  so the tests came back normal for my tank, if not better than when I had my tang.

I have also heard that tangs are not as hardy as most fish.  I was told by my fish dealer as well as a friend who works in saltwater that the yellow tang especially baby ones are hard to keep.

I mean my fish look great.  I didnt see the ich on the tang though.  the dogface has slight ich problem, but it isn't too bad, I have been treating him for it and he looks good now.

the picture of the tank has the baby tang in the picture, my tank still looks the same I have also put pictures of the dogface and my clown and chromis




my 29 gallon tank




the tomato clown and chromis




my dogface puffer cujo
29.



dogface puffer again

all of my fish except my dogface have been cheap.  my dogface was the most expensive fish I bought at 49.99.  my tang was only 29.99.  I have heard that dogface puffers are harder to keep and to swap with foods but mine openly accepts squid, crabs, shrimp, freeze dried krill, and occasionally flakes if he takes it from the other two.

 

What were you feeding your yellow tang ?

 

What were you treating you puffer with?

Your nitrates were high and your ph is kinda low

What water are you using. Its best to use ro/dI water. I buy mine from walmart. I started with tap water but realised the tremendous difference in clairty and everything else when I used ro dI water. It really makes a difference.

At my walmart its the Drinking water with the green label

 

If it was my tank, assuming your puffer pulls through it's bout of ich, I would return the puffer to the store and then I would re-start with some smaller, hardier species. QT all new arrivals for several weeks before introducing to your main tank. Check out the green chromis and the banggaI cardinal fish.

The pH is way low - aI'm for 8.3 - 8.4. Do more frequent small water changes and for top-offs use a buffering product added to the freshwater top-offs. You do need to invest in an alkalinity test kit when using buffers for top-offs to make sure that the alkalinity is not climbing too high, but I'd suspect that it shouldn't be a problem.

Small weekly water changes will go along way towards keeping your pH where it needs to be.

 

OK, the yellow tang was getting fed romaine lettuce that had been boiled for 5 minutes, dried seaweed, and flake food and occasionally plankton.

the puffer was put in a quarantine tank and treated with hyposalinity along with my clownfish. The tang seemed scott free and he would probably stress so I didnt treat him. Ever since the tang died, there has been DRAMATIC drop in nitrates, when I had him, in less than 50 hours later, my nitrates were 160 ppm I was panicky and after he died saturday, I checked monday and the nitrates wer at 5 ppm I'm testing right now and will label them in this same bulletin when they have had their 5 minute run. I was using tap water at first, but then a friend of mine reccomended the ro water so now I use ro water.

pH is 8.0
ammonia is 0 ppm
nitrites are 0 ppm
nitrates are in between 0 and 5.0 ppm

 

Cujo is so cool!!

 

I'm not entirely sure if this was the problem, but I think it was the tank size. Most tangs usually need around 75 ga. or more. It might be fine for a while in your size tank but the puffer might of made it too crowded. Other posibbilities are that it was picked on or was diseased.
Hope this helps! ;D