Life in a Post-Ich tank

S

Siberwulf

Long time reader, first time poster here..

Ich wiped my tank. Here's a rough timeline of what happened:

Wednesday: I noticed some little white spots on our Yellow-Eyed Tang. After consulting with my contact at DNA, I started raising the temperature towards 82 degrees. I also started dropping my salinity over the next 24 hours.

Thursday: Temperature finally hit 82 and has been holding stead. Salinity dropped down to 1.0205. Went to DNA to pick up a Cleaner Wrasse and a Cleaner Shrimp to help get the Ich off the Tang. Noticed that night that that our Clown had some white spots on it at well. While I was at DNA, I picked up a cleaner crew of some hermits, snails and crabs. Nothing elaborate, but we had a small problem with algae, and they were there to help out. I also picked up some garlic supplement to add to their food (a frozen brine). All fish appear to be eating fine at this point.

Friday: Came home from work to find the Cleaner Shrimp dead in the back of the tank. Yoinked him out, and did a quick water test to see how bad the nitrates got. To my surprise, they were normal, maybe 5-10ppm. I noticed at feeding time tonight that the Tang wasn't eating. The goby and the clown still ate fine, however.

Saturday: The Tang is getting worse. He is swimming on his side, swimming upside down and acting "funky" if you will. Around 6pm, I see him on the bottom of the tank, dead. I pulled him out, did a nitrate test, and thinks still looked alright.

Sunday: I wake up to find our goby dead and covered with hermits in the back of the tank. They've eaten his eyes and most of his gill area, so he's been dead a little while. I pulled him out and did yet another nitrate test. Everything is still the same. At this time, I doubt my testing abilities, thinking I should surely have seen a spike in nitrates with 3 dead things in 3 days. I took some water to DNA, and they did a test there. Everything looked fine there, too. PH, Nitrite, Nitrate, all fine. The clown has been sluggish all day long, hovering around the bottom of the tank. I figured he was about to die, but fed him anyway. The Wrasse has been following him around like a puppy, picking at him left and right. Sure enough the Clown ate well, ate a lot. I thought he was going to be alright after this.

This morning: The clown is dead, at the bottom of the tank, with a few hermits around him. I haven't done a water test, as I had to go to work today. I'm probably going to return the Wrasse tonight.


My two main questions:

1. Where did I go wrong, if at all? Does this just "happen" sometimes?


2. Now that everything is dead, I intend on waiting a couple weeks before hopping back into the swing of things with fish. What do I need to do in order to ensure this does not happen again?

Thanks in advance for any advice guys. I do appreciate it. :oops:

Here's my basic setup info:

55-Gallon glass
60 lbs LiveRock/20 lbs LiveSand/20 lbs aragonite
Red Sea Protein skimmer
Aquaclear 70 filter system
2x Aquaclear 50 powerheads
48" PC (Blue and white on separate timers)
1 pad of Green Star polyps
1 frag of Green Star polyps
Cleaner crew of hermits, crabs and snails
 
Thanks for the reply!

Yeah, I don't intend on getting anything in there for a long time. There is a sense of emotional loss I'm going through losing these fish. I certainly don't want it to happen again.


I try to take my time when it comes to acclimation. I do 20 mins of temperature only, then every 20 mins i put a cup of my water in the bag. I do this no less than 3 times before I net the specimen out into its new home.

I see what you're saying about raising the temperature. I'm curious why my guy at DNA would tell me that, then :sad:
 
Well, I have one of those plastic hydrometers off the shelf. I did some research and various opinions are that the refractometers aren't as good unless they've been recently calibrated. Add that to cost and I went with the hydrometer.

Thanks for the good link, btw. I'll be reading that during lunch :)
 
To add to Matt's point. I've had a refractometer for over 3 years and tested the calibration with distilled water twice and it was bang on both times. It really is the best investment you can make.

Also read the sticky on Ich and hypo in the stickied thread at the top of this fourm. Lots of useful info there. Lowering your salinity to 1.02.. would do nothing for the ich.

Matt has outlined the best approach at this point. Let your tank run fallow for 8 weeks. Then qt all your new fish in a hosiptal tank. The worst think you could do is have all that patience and then reintroduce it by not qting your fish.
 
@Siberwulf wrote:
After consulting with my contact at DNA said:
I would suggest that your first mistake was taking the advice given by your contact. Even though you may get the correct advice from your LFS, had you posted your dilemna here, you could have been pointed to the correct information and others (like Matt above) would have pointed out the problems with the advice you were given.
At least by posting your problems here, you can get a variety of opinions and then choose the best option for your current situation. So far, the advice given by others in this thread seems to be the correct course of action for your current situation.

Good luck.
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@DalaiTom wrote:
[I]@Siberwulf wrote:[/I][quote="After consulting with my contact at DNA said:
I would suggest that your first mistake was taking the advice given by your contact. Even though you may get the correct advice from your LFS, had you posted your dilemna here, you could have been pointed to the correct information and others (like Matt above) would have pointed out the problems with the advice you were given.
At least by posting your problems here, you can get a variety of opinions and then choose the best option for your current situation. So far, the advice given by others in this thread seems to be the correct course of action for your current situation.

Good luck."]

I apologize if this comes out sounding rude but....

Posts like this are precisly why I don't post on message boards filled with experts.

I'm new to this. That should be kinda obvious. I'm alo obviously not satisfied with the advice given to me thus far, as all my fish are dead. I don't need to hear "I told you so" when I come here asking for some help. Please accept the fact that I'm here posting as a "I'm sorry I didn't come here first". Don't rub my nose in that fact.

I really want to be part of this community. It seems like there is a lot of great advice out there about marine life. However, having this kind of post on my first thread ever is somewhat dismaying. Maybe I should have stuck to reading, intead of posting. :sad:

I'm sorry if that came off as a rant, but its frustrating to get that kind of response, when I'm just trying to learn.
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Siberwulf,

Your more than welcome to post anything because none of us are "experts". I think you read Tom's post wrong.

By you posting all the information you have allows us to understand what actions you have taken and allows everyone to give you ideas.

Bill
 
Bill,

Thanks for the reply. I may have read it wrong, thats possible. I posted in response to it so that if I did, I may get some clarification. I didn't want to storm off and say "forget this place" as I do like some of the advice I've been given.

Again, thanks for the reply.
 
Not to add too much confusion to the mix, but I question weather or not it was actually ich that killed your fish. The amount of time seems awfully short from the onset of symptoms until things began to die.

You mentioned checking nitrates after things died, but did you happen to check the ammonia levels? Ammonia will elevate first, then nitrite, then nitrate when living organisms decay (sounds like you've already done a good bit of reading and likely already know this one, but it doesn't hurt to ask)

A few other things that may be useful to know are:

How long has the tank been running?
What type/brand of test kits are you using?
Do you use any kinds of cleaning products on or near the tank? How about aerosol air fresheners, scented candles, etc..?
Do you have other pets that use topical anti-flea medication? If so, do you make a habit of washing your hands after petting them and before reaching into the tank?

As for DaliTom, I doubt he meant any harm. Those that have been in the hobby for a while learn that many LFS employees just give bad information.
 
Good questions GraviT.

1. Yes I checked Ammonia, NItrate, Nitrite and PH. The kit I have is this one: Aquarium Phamaceutical Saltwater Liquid Master Test Kid ( http://www.marinedepot.com/md_viewItem.asp?idproduct=AP3313 )

2. The tank has been up and running for almost two months. With the large amount of live sand/rock, our guy told us it was going to cycle fast. We added one fish at a time after 2 weeks or so, and they were doing just fine. We added in this order: Clown, Tang, Goby.

3. We keep all the cleaning products away from the tank under the sink. We have one or two scented candles, but we don't light them.

4. We have pets, but no medicines on them. I wash my hands with tap water and some antibacterial soap before i go into the tank. I also make sure to rinse thouroughly to ensure all the soap is off my arms.

Please pardon my thin newbie skin. :)
 
Hrmm...still a bit of a mystery to me, but I've never actually dealt with an ich outbreak myself. Maybe the speed of demise is a normal thing.

No issues on the newbie skin, we've all been there! :lol:
 
I have another question...

Since this is going to be a coral tank as well a fish tank, can I keep adding coral pieces to the setup? Will that screw up anything?

I don't mind waiting, if that is the case, I'm just curious :)
 
@GraviT wrote:
As for DaliTom said:
That was exactly the intent of my post. I didn't mean to "rub your nose in it" because I'm sure you feel bad enough with having lost the fish.
Many folks read these threads. AS of the time of this post, there had been 99 views of this thread. We're all here to learn more and I only want everyone to have the best advice available whenever there are problems. Perhaps others that read this thread will be helped by the advice within the thread.
Sorry if you took offense. None was intended
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I understand. I appreciate you posting. Sorry if I took offense or misread it.

You can renew my faith my answering my coral question above :)

(j/k *handshake*) :)
 
You'd PROBABLY be okay adding corals and other inverts, BUT in my humble opinion, if there are problems in your system, especially a relatively new system (New = Under a year old) I really wouldn't recommend doing so, not until what exactly went wrong is pinned down and corrected...
 
Well, I'm 90% sure that it was ich based on the symptoms, (cloudy eyes, erratic behavior, trying to scratch themselves on rocks). Also, I have no more fish to kill in the tank, since I'm taking the Cleaner Wrasse back to the LFS.

All thats left is some hermits, crabs and snails :(
 
Siberwulf:

First off, I'm truly sorry for your loss. I know how attached one can get to these animals, they're not just fish to me, or to most of us. I'm sure Tom meant no disrespect, but you have to understand, we see this a lot. Lots of new hobbyist jump into this unprepared, unread and rush things, then wonder why their fish are dieing. We give advise and a lot of times it is ignored, other times it saves fish. It's obvious that you care for your fish and have done some reading, but perhaps not enough. There are no experts here, only experienced veteran hobbyist who have learned a few things over the years and like to pass that knowledge on to newcomers. All the advise given above is good stuff, you can take to the bank and prevent future fish deaths, or you can ignore it and pay the price.

You've got one advantage on your side right now. You have no living fish in your tank. You can forgo the aggravation of having to trap fish and do hypo, you can start right away with the fallow treatment, as this is precisely what you should do. You have a killer in your tank that is not going to go away until you starve it out. Six weeks minimum, but two months would be better if you want to be absolutely sure.

Keeping the heat up won't kill ich, but it will keep the parasites from going dormant. Keep your salinity high also, at least at NSW, this will speed up the process, but look at 6 to 8 long weeks if you want to do this right.

During this time, to help you fight the urge to cut the fallow period short, use the time to collect coral frags, and interesting inverts. You will be amazed how nice your tank will get in a couple of months with no fish to mess it up. Your pod population will grow, and your tank will become a beautiful place for the new fish to live that you will begin to collect in about 60 days.

Keep us posted on this thread, and the more info you give, the more we can help you. Also feel free to PM me anytime

Good Luck, my friend
SD

EDIT:
Sorry about the lag, I didn't see the coral question before posting. Corals and/or inverts can not get ich, but it can hitchhike in on them, especially nems because they hold a lot of water. You still need to QT corals, anything wet can carry crypt. However, since you are just starting your fallow period now, now it the time to add corals and inverts, that is, as Brian said if everything Else is right in your tank. But, personally, I don't think a three month old tank could be all that stable, unless you started it with everything from a well established tank, even then there will be some cycling and ageing for the tank to work well. The secret to success in the hobby is a very SLOW hand. But I'm sure you know this.
 
@GraviT wrote:
Hrmm...still a bit of a mystery to me said:
It's certainly possible for ich to take out that many quickly, but it is a bit odd. Also, did you notice any 'flashing' behaviour with any of the fish? 'Flashing' is where they are quickly rubbing against something like they are trying to get something off of their bodies. Did the fins look cloudy,spotty also.

As far as the temp issue, here's my thought on it. *IF* you are medicating a tank or it's in hypsolinity, the higher temperature will allow the life cycle of ich to complete faster and thus die out faster. Since the hypo/medication will diminish/stop the reproduction cycle, the higher temperature should be a help. In a normal unmedicated tank, I think all we are doing it making it worse for the fish as nothing is hindering the growth/expansion of the parasite *and* you are speeding up it's ability to reproduce. I personally try to get it a bit lower until I get them transferred to a hyposalinity QT tank. JMO

Good luck and please look into a QT/Hospital tank for the future.

Doug

Edit: Other posts above address the fin/flashing...so ignore.
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@SumpDiver wrote:
EDIT: Sorry about the lag said:
Maybe this is part of my "newbie" phase.

What is classified as "stable"? I used quite a bit of live rock and sand so I was told by a few sources that my "cycling" wouldn't be as prominent as if I had used uncured liverock and no livesand. That said, I tested the water every other day to see when our levels came down to acceptable range. It took about a week for this to happen (nitrates were a bit high). Once that all happened, we got a single clown and let him swim around, poop, all that jazz. Nitrates went up, then back down. I saw coraline algae forming on the rocks, there was no algae forming on the walls. What else should you look for to be considered "stable"? Again, this is obviously a newb question, so a simple link to a "list" of some sorts would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Now that my salinity is right around 1.020, what should I be raising that back up to. Also, should I keep my temp at 82 degrees as well? I want to get the best bang for my buck with the corals I have.
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