help! Losing fish

[kelipalmer]

Hi,
We're new to the hobby and posted some intro information on our problem at this thread:
http://www.dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=85751

We have now lost three fish in the last week: our anthias, a kole tang, and just yesterday our mandarin goby. Each of these fish had different symptoms before they died. One of our clowns has white spots (ich or brooklynella?) and our royal gramma now has a few white specks on him. Both are starting to rub against things (this is not out of character for the clown, as she likes to rub up against some of our mushroom coral). However, both the clown and gramma are active and eating normally.

We are new to this hobby and don't know what to do. We have set up a 20 gal hospital tank but it hasn't had time to cycle plus we don't really know what we're treating for or how to treat. We have 9 fish remaining in our tank. I assume that if this is ich, we would need to pull out and treat all of the fish eventually and then give the display tank uninhabitated time for the ich to die off.

Water #s remain good: SG - 1.023, Am - 0, Nitrite - 0, Nitrate - 0, KH - 7, Phos - 0.1, Temp - 78.5-80.1
We have lots of coral and some inverts.

Please tell us what we should do! Thanks!

 

[Guest]

Personally put all fish in qt and run medication for ich i think it is copper or cuppramine or do hypo treatment I am not sure which medication is for ich just research it. Second if you have corals bump up your dkh 7 is low 9 is usually lowest you want it to be.

Don't use those "reef safe " ich medications they are waste of money.

Sorry for your lose hopefully you can catch them and treat the fish and I would leave them in qt tank for awhile.


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[Guest]

@kuyatwo wrote:

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[reefer55]

Put them in QT and do a hyposalinity treatment.

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/fish-diseases-treatments/23131-hyposalinity-treatment-process.html

 

[bimmerzs]

I think we need to evaluate what fish are in your 100G along with your equipment. This could be a low oxygen issue coupled with having too many/incompatable fish in there that are now super stressed. A salinity reading from a calibrated refractometer can also help as well. You moved a tank and re-setup and in went the livestock 3 weeks ago so a lot of thing's can be happening. You may have fish that can't handle hypo so that is one reason to list out what you have. Let's get the basic's covered before throwing water on the fire.

Cheers,

 

[kelipalmer]

Okay... more details:
Livestock - 2 false perculas, yellow tang, flame angel, 2 chromis, royal gramma, melurus wrasse, blue devil damsel (inverts: cleaner shrimp, peppermint shrimp, brittle star, snails and crabs).
Timeline: we moved the tank May 14. Everything appeared fine through the end of May. We left town in early June and returned two weeks later. We lost the first fish a week ago.
We have three powerheads moving water: 2 Koralia Evo 750s and 1 Hydor 2. 150 lbs of live rock. 30 gal DAS sump with 120 gal rated DAS skimmer.
We use a refractometer to get our SG #s.
I imagine we would need a pretty good size QT to treat all of the fish.
Hope that helps! Thanks for all of your input!

 

[DFW]

I think that some would leave them in the display and begin soaking all of their frozen food in Reef Plus, or some type of vitamin/amino acid supplement. This will build up the immune system of the fish so that their natural defenses work properly. Chasing those fish all over the place to put them in quarantine will likely be very stressful for all of your tank's inhabitants, and therefore possibly be very counterproductive!

David

 

[kelipalmer]

We're already soaking the food in garlic and adding the vitamin/amino acid supplement. I agree with you about the extra stress of catching fish (not to mention trying to catch fish without totally dismantling our tank), but don't we have to eventually leave the tank uninhabited by fish to totally get rid of the ich?
Thanks again for all of your help.

 

[bimmerzs]

I would personally feed heavy with garlic and vitamin soaked food's, skim wet and maintain pristine water parameters. You have a 50/50 chance with either route you go with the upper hand in favor of not stressing everybody out. I would only go this route if I was not going to introduce any more fish in there.

Cheers,

 

[kelipalmer]

I'm assuming you say this because the ich (or whatever is making the fish sick) will still be present in the tank, though the existing fish have managed to fight it off. Thus, any new fish we added down the road would likely get sick with it. Is that correct?
We've read about fish essentially becoming immune to ich. Does that happen? Even if that happens, is ich always present in your tank? Or does it eventually go away?

On another note, if we chose to treat the sick fish, is hyposalinity your treatment method of choice?
Thanks again. We're learning.

 

[bimmerzs]

@kelipalmer wrote:

I would only go this route if I was not going to introduce any more fish in there."]
I'm assuming you say this because the ich (or whatever is making the fish sick) will still be present in the tank, though the existing fish have managed to fight it off. Thus, any new fish we added down the road would likely get sick with it. Is that correct?"]

Correct

@kelipalmer wrote:

It will always be present in the tank, so even if your current fish are not showing symptoms, they will if stress is introduced like when a new fish is added.

@kelipalmer wrote:

I would lean towards Hypo or the 3 day transfer method. viewtopic.php?f=47&t=26171

Cheers,

 

[kelipalmer]

Just an update... we decided to go the "lots of garlic and vitamins" route (though we have a hospital tank setup and cycling right now). The clown is still doing really well, other than the white spots (eating really well, swimming normally, etc.). Every now and then we think we see a speck or two of white on our royal gramma, but everyone else appears healthy. We're currently using Garlic Guard, but some have said Garlic Xtreme is better. Any thoughts? I'm attaching a picture of the clown as well.
[attachment=0]P1040696-sm.jpg[/attachment]