Fish swim to top of tank then dive/fall lifelessly to bottom after feeding

[Littlesardines]

This has been happening with a chromis and a royal gramma in a 60gal cube tank. The chromis did it consistently for several weeks and would come back to his senses after a while, but died a week or so ago. The royal gramma just started doing it today.

Any ideas?

[ReefWeeds]

How is the surface agitation in the tank? Do you have enough for gas exchange and to provide enough o2 in the water?

[Littlesardines]

Surface agitation is good, it's an sps tank so lots and lots of flow. These fish have been in the tank for 6 months and doing well until recently.

[Tamberav]

That is certainly strange behavior indeed, I wouldn't expect such lethargic fish to eat.

 

Is there any visual signs what-so-ever? Torn fins? Any sort of discoloration, even something small?

[Littlesardines]

The gramma died last night unfortunately. No visual signs on these fish besides the weird behavior. There was a red line wrasse who suddenly got white patches on his back half and seemed to not be able to move his lower half very well and died several days later about a week ago as well. But that's the only fish who showed any outward signs of anything, and he never showed the diving/lifeless behavior.

[Tamberav]

The gramma died last night unfortunately. No visual signs on these fish besides the weird behavior. There was a red line wrasse who suddenly got white patches on his back half and seemed to not be able to move his lower half very well and died several days later about a week ago as well. But that's the only fish who showed any outward signs of anything, and he never showed the diving/lifeless behavior.

 

White patches could be Brooklynella or Uronema marinum since you had a chromis in there. Both can show up as white patches, but often uronema will have a defined edge and if it is inflamed, will appear red.

 

Check those out and see if any look like what your wrasse had.

[tetraodon]

do you have any other fish? source of the fish? what food did you feed? could there have been anything contaminating the food?

[Littlesardines]

 

White patches could be Brooklynella or Uronema marinum since you had a chromis in there. Both can show up as white patches, but often uronema will have a defined edge and if it is inflamed, will appear red.

 

Check those out and see if any look like what your wrasse had.

 

Maybe could've been Uronema...definitely not Brooklynella. This fish however displayed very different symptoms than the other fish that we've lost. None of the other fish had pale/white skin (not really a growth or dust) and seemed to have lost the use of the tail.

 

do you have any other fish? source of the fish? what food did you feed? could there have been anything contaminating the food?

 

There is a blue hippo, one chromis, leopard wrasse, orange stripe goby, blenny, target mandarin, and a black cardinal still in the tank, none currently showing signs of distress.

We've lost in the past 3 weeks: 2 chromis (both to strange eating/sinking issue), 1 springeri damsel (not sure on cause for this one, just disappeared one day), 1 red line wrasse (white skin and loss of tail function), 1 royal gramma (eating/sinking issue)

Fish were obtained from various LFS in the area, feeding LRS frozen food with an auto feeder putting out some flake a couple times a day. Nothing has happened to the food since we've been in charge of it, but i suppose there's no telling what might've happened before we got it.