Leisl

The rock was dry when I bought it. Fish #3 has taken a liking to my thermometer and he hangs out there most of the day. Fish #2 was quite shy, he mostly hung out behind the rocks or in a spot below the thermometer where Fish #3 was. Fish #1 was missing his fins when I got him. He and Fish #2 were in the same bag for the ride home.

I watch them for a few minutes. I don't take out the leftovers immediately so if they wanted to pick something up late they could. That seems unlikely though. Fish #1 never ate. Fish #2 (the one who died overnight) ate happily for the first couple of weeks then just watched the food float by. Fish #3 eats happily, he swims right up to my hand. There are no other fish in the tank, these are my first. This is what my cycle looked like. I stopped recording it after the 12th but I didn't see any more nitrite or ammonia after that. I did further water changes to bring the nitrates down before I added the first fish on the 17th of January. This is what the tank looks like today

Thanks for the reply. I don't have a skimmer and I've got an API Saltwater Master test kit. I've been feeding them twice daily because the shop said that's what they were doing. Only a tiny amount (about .3cm square) although there does seem to be a bit left over every time. I've been scooping it out with a net. The wave maker doesn't disturb the surface a lot, just a bit of a swirl. Should I point it more towards the surface?

Hello! I’m a long time reader first time poster and I’d really appreciate some advice/insight about what’s going on in my tank. I’ve had freshwater tanks for a few years but this is my first saltwater tank. I’ve got an Aqua One AR620T 120l tank with 10kg of rock (bought dry), 10kg of silica sand, an Aqua Synchro 100lph wave maker and a bog standard looking heater. I’m not currently using the tanks own filter. I’m using sea water. I started my cycle the first weekend of October by adding a small chunk of snapper from the freezer. They cycle finished by mid November but I wasn’t ready to get any fish yet and then Christmas and holidays etc happened so I kept feeding my tank small bits of fish, keeping an eye on my parameters and doing smallish (20l or so fortnightly) water changes until I was ready to add fish in mid January. I did an 80l water change a few days before I picked up my fish, checked the parameters the morning of pick up day (all good) so I went and bought a couple of juvenile clown fish. As soon as they went into my tank I noticed that fish #1 was missing the fins in his chest/stomach and there was a small lesion where they should have been. I live in Whangarei and the shop I bought them from is in Auckland so I couldn't really just take him back. He never ate and died three days later. I called the shop and they said they’d replace it. I wasn't keen to ship a fish in the summer heat so they held it for me until a family member who was coming up this way could collect it. Fish #2 stopped eating a couple of days before fish #3 arrived which was two weeks ago. He looked fine and was behaving normally so I assumed he was eating something when I wasn't looking. Last night I noticed fish #2 was missing the fins from his chest and had the same lesion as fish #1 had. It happened very rapidly, one day the fins were there, next day gone. I never noticed any aggression between any of the three fish. This morning I found him belly up :dead%fish . Water parameters are: ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5ish, salinity 1026 and temperature 25c. I've been doing fortnightly water changes of 40l. The fish have been eating a frozen food mix I bought where I got them (I don’t know what’s in it but it’s what they were eating at the shop) and some frozen bloodworms. I've been feeding them a small amount twice a day. Have I done anything obviously wrong? Is there anything I can do now to save fish #3 from the same fate? Here's a pic of my tank pre-fish