Fallow tank questions

littlefoxx · Feb 12, 2023

Hello,
I had a very fast outbreak of velvet that killed my favorite clown and my mimic tang. My male clown is also on the way out as he caught velvet too. My LFS said to let it run the course for 48 hours and take all survivors out and put them in my 32 bio cube for two week treatment that has copper in it, meaning no corals in that tank. It works as l have a separate clown pair in there with the female being completely blind. I am worried about her with the other surviving fish in there. Any tips?

Also I have two zoa corals in my display for a week now. Can these carry velvet?

Also if not as lve read that's rare, can I add corals during the 72 day fallow period?

Also if l wanted to add coral to the biocube in the future after treating all fish is it as simple as replacing live rock or is that tank never allowed to have coral due to the medication and copper?

This situation just sucks because I love my fish and am devastated this happened and want to know how to prevent it in the future.

Info for the tank: I got most fish from Neptune's LFS. Very reputable and have extensive QT process. I got my tang from another LFS and added a few fish from blue zoo. Learned my lesson there and will only be getting from my LFS!!! But could the coral have caused this as well? Also bluezoo shipped me two stag horn hermits... Could they have brought velvet???

ISpeakForTheSeas · Feb 13, 2023

littlefoxx said:
Hello,
I had a very fast outbreak of velvet that killed my favorite clown and my mimic tang. My male clown is also on the way out as he caught velvet too. My LFS said to let it run the course for 48 hours and take all survivors out and put them in my 32 bio cube for two week treatment that has copper in it, meaning no corals in that tank. It works as l have a separate clown pair in there with the female being completely blind. I am worried about her with the other surviving fish in there. Any tips?

Also I have two zoa corals in my display for a week now. Can these carry velvet?

Also if not as lve read that's rare, can I add corals during the 72 day fallow period?

Also if l wanted to add coral to the biocube in the future after treating all fish is it as simple as replacing live rock or is that tank never allowed to have coral due to the medication and copper?

This situation just sucks because I love my fish and am devastated this happened and want to know how to prevent it in the future.

Info for the tank: I got most fish from Neptune's LFS. Very reputable and have extensive QT process. I got my tang from another LFS and added a few fish from blue zoo. Learned my lesson there and will only be getting from my LFS!!! But could the coral have caused this as well? Also bluezoo shipped me two stag horn hermits... Could they have brought velvet???

No tips from me on the clown, unfortunately. Copper treatment should last for 30 days (I give advice in my quotes below, but Jay Hemdal’s posts on the disease forum here are where I’d advise looking for proper treatment advice).
Barring a proper medicated QT/fallow period, anything wet could have brought in velvet (corals, inverts, rock, etc. can all carry the parasite at a certain life stage - fish are definitely the most common carriers though).

No, you should not add corals (or anything else that’s not totally dead and dry) to your tank during the fallow period (see my comments and Jay Hemdal’s article on biosecurity below).

Copper removal for inverts (coral included) is a bit complicated, but you would need to remove all sand and rock, and possibly some other things too - you’d obviously also need to get any copper out the water too (water changes would help with this, but it may be easier to just empty the tank, rinse it out, and refill it; I’m not sure). If any copper remains, you’d likely see inverts dying from it.

To prevent this from happening again, proper QT for anything entering your tank that isn’t 100% dead/dry (with prophylactic treatment for fish) is the safest way (again, more info on this and some of the benefits of QT below).

ISpeakForTheSeas said:
45 day (minimum) fallow at 81F (or higher) for the tank, 30 day therapeutic copper and two week observation post copper for the fish, and a fishless QT for literally everything else (probably at standard reef temps for 72-76 days just to be safe) is - to my knowledge - pretty much the hobby gold standard for biosecurity at the moment.

ISpeakForTheSeas said:
Yeah, with the live rocks (and inverts - including nems - unless treatment is needed) you just wait the 76 days SharkBait mentioned (minimum is 45 days at 81F, but longer is generally recommended out of an abundance of caution), and that removes most of the disease risk. If you’re concerned about “bad” hitchhikers (crabs, worms, invasive macros, etc.) coming in on the rocks, then you can keep the rocks in a QT (bucket or tank) for the duration of the 76 day fallow period and just observe them to remove hitchhikers as desired before adding to the DT.

Yes, to be safe, the QT should run for the full 76 day duration based on when the last inhabitant is added (so if you run a QT for 2 weeks, then decide to add a new hermit or shrimp or something to the QT, the countdown should reset from day 14 to day 1 of the full 76 days again).

ISpeakForTheSeas said:
The odds of them bringing in parasites like ich are very small, but not zero (hence why Dr. Reef QT's all inverts; it's all about biosecurity) - 45 days at 81F in their own tank is the minimum recommended QT for inverts (and pretty much anything else going through QT too - rocks, sand, algae, snails, etc.). 76 days would probably be wise at temps lower than 81F.