We had a brooklynella break out in our tank. We lost a few fish before we figured out it was brook.
Here’s the history of what we did while we tried to treat and figure out what was wrong:
We lost our first fish Nov. 7th. On Nov 11th I put my hand in the tank without shoes on and got shocked, we discovered that our heater had a broken seal and was causing stray voltage in the tank. Our fish were stressed out and started to not look good. A few of the fish had white spots. We thought it was ich, we replaced the heater immediately and then we removed all of our inverts and corals from the display tank because it was too difficult to get all of our fish out, we put all the corals and inverts in our QT tank. We treated the display tank with copper.
Nov. 18th we realized we were dealing with brooklynella. We got another tank to serve as a hospital tank and moved all the remaining fish into the hospital tank. We tried a few different treatments while we waited for the formalin to be delivered. We lost a few more fish but once we were able to do a formalin dip, they rest of the fish have survived and are still in the hospital tank to this day.
With the display tank running with no fish and no inverts, we cranked the temperature up to 87 degrees and ran it like that for 2 weeks. We removed the copper and did a 100% water change, removed majority of the substrate. Once there was no more copper in the tank we waited a week and tested daily to be sure, turned the temp back down and then added our corals and a few inverts back into the display tank because they were too crowded in the QT.
Fast forward to today. At this point the display tank has been fish less for 4 weeks. But we added the corals and inverts back into the DT about 2 weeks ago.
So here’s our question, should we wait another 4 weeks to ensure brook has died off? Which was our original plan, but questioning if it’s necessary now. Did the 2 weeks of running it at a high temp and the 100% water change complete the fallow period? Running 3 tanks with regular maintenance is becoming overwhelming for our family. We purchased 4 new fish during Black Friday sales and they are currently in the QT tank, and have been for the last 3 weeks, so that’s why we’re still maintaining 3 tanks.
Please let us know your thoughts and thanks for your time to read our story and question.
Here’s the history of what we did while we tried to treat and figure out what was wrong:
We lost our first fish Nov. 7th. On Nov 11th I put my hand in the tank without shoes on and got shocked, we discovered that our heater had a broken seal and was causing stray voltage in the tank. Our fish were stressed out and started to not look good. A few of the fish had white spots. We thought it was ich, we replaced the heater immediately and then we removed all of our inverts and corals from the display tank because it was too difficult to get all of our fish out, we put all the corals and inverts in our QT tank. We treated the display tank with copper.
Nov. 18th we realized we were dealing with brooklynella. We got another tank to serve as a hospital tank and moved all the remaining fish into the hospital tank. We tried a few different treatments while we waited for the formalin to be delivered. We lost a few more fish but once we were able to do a formalin dip, they rest of the fish have survived and are still in the hospital tank to this day.
With the display tank running with no fish and no inverts, we cranked the temperature up to 87 degrees and ran it like that for 2 weeks. We removed the copper and did a 100% water change, removed majority of the substrate. Once there was no more copper in the tank we waited a week and tested daily to be sure, turned the temp back down and then added our corals and a few inverts back into the display tank because they were too crowded in the QT.
Fast forward to today. At this point the display tank has been fish less for 4 weeks. But we added the corals and inverts back into the DT about 2 weeks ago.
So here’s our question, should we wait another 4 weeks to ensure brook has died off? Which was our original plan, but questioning if it’s necessary now. Did the 2 weeks of running it at a high temp and the 100% water change complete the fallow period? Running 3 tanks with regular maintenance is becoming overwhelming for our family. We purchased 4 new fish during Black Friday sales and they are currently in the QT tank, and have been for the last 3 weeks, so that’s why we’re still maintaining 3 tanks.
Please let us know your thoughts and thanks for your time to read our story and question.
