kornface13
Community Member
Looking for opinions on a situation....
I am in the process of slowly upgrading my 15g to a 45g. I had a bunch of corals and 2 clowns in the 15g. I moved about half the corals and one of the clowns and everything's going great in the new tank. After the clown was in there for 4 days, I bought two new fish from the LFS and went to put them into the new tank. After acclimating I put them both in....one (a springer damsel) does perfectly fine as I would expect. The other (Royal Gramma) looks like it's majorly in shock. It's nearly motionless, not swimming, and basically just stuck in between my two return nozzles up against the wall. Now my new tank is only 1.5 weeks old....all my parameters are good, but I don't have an ammonia tester, so I just kind of assumed that my clown being in here 4 for days and doing just fine was enough evidence that ammonia was fine. Anyways, I kind of rushed to thinking this must be ammonia related, and I pulled him out and put him directly into my 15g tank since it's much mroe well established (without further acclimation). He continued breathing heavy, but could actually swim now, and went straight into a hole in a rock.
He would come out temporarily to eat, but retreated back to his hole where I couldn't even see it to see if it was breathing heavy or looked normal or what. When he was out, he looked 100% normal. After 4 days in the small tank, I decided it was time to move it back to the big tank, however he was still just hiding in the rock work. I ended up stirring up the rocks WAY more than I wanted to. The tank was cloudy as all get out and I'm sure I stressed the ever living crap out of the fish. I ended up taking the whole rock and dipping it in the new tank, and the Royal Gramma swam right out and hid under a new rock in the 45g tank.
The clownfish that's still in the 15g tank starts having serious rapid breating and movements, looking very much like brook, which my LFS agreed with. (). I attempted a freshwater dunk, which seemed like it dang near killed it. Instantly went motionless and would barely move even when I touched it. I only did this for like 45-60 seconds and got him back into his tank where he went right back to rapid movements and breathing. I didn't have any treatment on hand, and neither did any of the local fish stores. Paraguard (formalyn alternative) was the best I could find, so I attempted dunk him in 3ml of that with 1 gallon of water. He was ok-ish for about 45 minutes (Lots of upside down floating, then coming back to and swimming for a second), then went motionless. I removed it and put him back in the tank, but it was gone. So I think it's safe to say there is most likely brook in my 15g and I cannot move anything else from there into my larger tank.
Neither fish exhibited any symptoms at all prior to me trying to get the Royal Gramma out, so it seems like I caused this with this high stress event maybe?? Anyways, the royal gramma hid pretty well in the new tank and would barely venture out. I never saw any heavy breathing, but I did see it try to go into the rock that the Springer Damsel hides in and the springer bit off a fin or part of a fin. I only saw the Royal Gramma peek its head out a touch after that and this morning it was dead. So.....
1.) Do I assume that my 15g tank definitely has brook and not move anything else from it? It has a bunch of snails and my crab which I would like to move to the large tank, but not if it's going to kill more fish... I guess I have to let this go fishless for 75 days, then I can move the inverts?
2.) Do I assume my big tank also has brook even though the Royal Gramma never exhibited symptoms (and the other two fish are both acting completely normal)? Do I just keep monitoring for....<x> days? How long is enough to know I can continue adding fish? I'm not sure I could ever confidently say the tank is clean. If I have to go fallow, I'd prefer to just go ahead and start that now, but then I'd have to clean out my 15g completely so that it can serve at my QT, which would be essentially killing all the inverts in there? How would you go about this situation?
45g Params when I put the fish in:
Salinity: 1.025
ph: 8.15ish
nitrates: 5
calcium: 400
alk: 8.1
nitrites: don't have a tester, but these garbage little API sticks say 0
ammonia: don't have a tester
temp: 78.1
Sorry that was alot of text..... Also thanks for any help/advice!
I am in the process of slowly upgrading my 15g to a 45g. I had a bunch of corals and 2 clowns in the 15g. I moved about half the corals and one of the clowns and everything's going great in the new tank. After the clown was in there for 4 days, I bought two new fish from the LFS and went to put them into the new tank. After acclimating I put them both in....one (a springer damsel) does perfectly fine as I would expect. The other (Royal Gramma) looks like it's majorly in shock. It's nearly motionless, not swimming, and basically just stuck in between my two return nozzles up against the wall. Now my new tank is only 1.5 weeks old....all my parameters are good, but I don't have an ammonia tester, so I just kind of assumed that my clown being in here 4 for days and doing just fine was enough evidence that ammonia was fine. Anyways, I kind of rushed to thinking this must be ammonia related, and I pulled him out and put him directly into my 15g tank since it's much mroe well established (without further acclimation). He continued breathing heavy, but could actually swim now, and went straight into a hole in a rock.
He would come out temporarily to eat, but retreated back to his hole where I couldn't even see it to see if it was breathing heavy or looked normal or what. When he was out, he looked 100% normal. After 4 days in the small tank, I decided it was time to move it back to the big tank, however he was still just hiding in the rock work. I ended up stirring up the rocks WAY more than I wanted to. The tank was cloudy as all get out and I'm sure I stressed the ever living crap out of the fish. I ended up taking the whole rock and dipping it in the new tank, and the Royal Gramma swam right out and hid under a new rock in the 45g tank.
The clownfish that's still in the 15g tank starts having serious rapid breating and movements, looking very much like brook, which my LFS agreed with. (). I attempted a freshwater dunk, which seemed like it dang near killed it. Instantly went motionless and would barely move even when I touched it. I only did this for like 45-60 seconds and got him back into his tank where he went right back to rapid movements and breathing. I didn't have any treatment on hand, and neither did any of the local fish stores. Paraguard (formalyn alternative) was the best I could find, so I attempted dunk him in 3ml of that with 1 gallon of water. He was ok-ish for about 45 minutes (Lots of upside down floating, then coming back to and swimming for a second), then went motionless. I removed it and put him back in the tank, but it was gone. So I think it's safe to say there is most likely brook in my 15g and I cannot move anything else from there into my larger tank.
Neither fish exhibited any symptoms at all prior to me trying to get the Royal Gramma out, so it seems like I caused this with this high stress event maybe?? Anyways, the royal gramma hid pretty well in the new tank and would barely venture out. I never saw any heavy breathing, but I did see it try to go into the rock that the Springer Damsel hides in and the springer bit off a fin or part of a fin. I only saw the Royal Gramma peek its head out a touch after that and this morning it was dead. So.....
1.) Do I assume that my 15g tank definitely has brook and not move anything else from it? It has a bunch of snails and my crab which I would like to move to the large tank, but not if it's going to kill more fish... I guess I have to let this go fishless for 75 days, then I can move the inverts?
2.) Do I assume my big tank also has brook even though the Royal Gramma never exhibited symptoms (and the other two fish are both acting completely normal)? Do I just keep monitoring for....<x> days? How long is enough to know I can continue adding fish? I'm not sure I could ever confidently say the tank is clean. If I have to go fallow, I'd prefer to just go ahead and start that now, but then I'd have to clean out my 15g completely so that it can serve at my QT, which would be essentially killing all the inverts in there? How would you go about this situation?
45g Params when I put the fish in:
Salinity: 1.025
ph: 8.15ish
nitrates: 5
calcium: 400
alk: 8.1
nitrites: don't have a tester, but these garbage little API sticks say 0
ammonia: don't have a tester
temp: 78.1
Sorry that was alot of text..... Also thanks for any help/advice!
