David29price
Active Member
I've recently had some issues with fish loss and after consulting several people in the local aquarium club 3 Rivers Marine Aquarium Society, I'm posting this with hopes that someone will be able to help us identify the issue and advice a course of action.
Not sure if at mentions work here, but I'm told @Jay Hemdal is an expert in this area and may be able to give good advice.
To give a background/overview, these are the details:
400 gallon mixed reef, heavy fish population (roughly 50 fish), a few inverts, minimum coral, although a large piece of GSP (2' length).
About a month ago I added two triggers an angel and a blue dot jawfish all within 2 weeks of each other. I used Safety Stop Rapid Fish Quarantine as directed before putting the in the main display tank. I've done this prior without any issues.
About 3-4 days in, the picasso trigger died. I didn't take much thought of it as he had not been eating since day one, didn't seem interested and was acting downright weird with his behavior.
2 days later the clown trigger died. He looked like he was covered in something, but as he had died sometime in the last 24 hours, I could not tell if it was a disease or just his skin starting to come off.
The blue dot jawfish was very elusive and not very active. I was unable to get it to eat much and at this point he was struggling to stay alive. He looked like he had something on it, so I removed it an euthanized him.
The passer king angel never got sick and has been eating fine.
My clown tang which I've had for nearly two years has some white dots on it. I swear I've seen this before only to see it vanish and then come back. The working theory is that it is Ick and we are seeing the lifecycle repeating. As the water volume is high, very healthy fat fish and a UV, the theory is that the population is staying low. There appears to be something on some of the other fish as well, but it is very hard to see and not positive it is anything at all, although many of the fish have cloudy eyes.
To back up a little, back in March my bio-pellet reactor suffered a major problem and basically quit working. My Nitrates went up off the scale and slowly over the summer I lost all my hammers and frogspawn. I had a good amount. I've gradually been able to get the Nitrates down to the mid 40's and hovering around there. I've ordered a sulfur denitrator and will be switching to that in a month. I have two pellet reactors running, but my bioload is so high, they just keep clogging and I can't get the nitrates below 40....
My theory on the cloudy eyes is that it is a result of the high Nitrates, but that is just a theory. All my fish are otherwise very healthy and fat.
Last Sunday, 6 days ago, I suddenly lost a yellow headed goby. It had no signs of disease and had been eating/swimming fine the day before. At the moment I don't know if I have something in the tank or not.
Everyone is telling me just do copper or remove them and do copper in QT. The problem I have is, half of these fish are in the 6-10" range of size. The other half are apple sized and dozens are much smaller. To try to get them all out would be a nightmare and I'd surely stress them out so much I'd likely lose some trying to do so. All of my rock work was carefully put together and cemented together, so I can't remove it.
I can remove the coral I have left and move to my frag tank as a temporary solution. If this is Ick, the feeling from my club president is that I can induce hyposalinity for a period of 30 days to get through the Ick stages and have it die off, then move the coral back when I'm done. The downside is, if this isn't Ick, nothing will have changed. If it isn't Ick, we will have at least ruled that out, but then we are at a point of, what is it? Doing copper in the main tank will of course make it useless to ever have coral in again which I don't want to do. An alternative has been suggested which is Chloroquine Phosphate as it doesn't stay embedded in the system and would kill just about everything.
So, here are the best pictures I can get of the Clown Tang showing the white dots. In some light you can't even see them, in others it is clear. The fish is NOT rubbing against rocks, it isn't swimming into power heads or water current like you would expect to see. We also don't feel this is Velvet as if it was, the entire tank would have been wiped out a few weeks ago.
Not sure if at mentions work here, but I'm told @Jay Hemdal is an expert in this area and may be able to give good advice.
To give a background/overview, these are the details:
400 gallon mixed reef, heavy fish population (roughly 50 fish), a few inverts, minimum coral, although a large piece of GSP (2' length).
About a month ago I added two triggers an angel and a blue dot jawfish all within 2 weeks of each other. I used Safety Stop Rapid Fish Quarantine as directed before putting the in the main display tank. I've done this prior without any issues.
About 3-4 days in, the picasso trigger died. I didn't take much thought of it as he had not been eating since day one, didn't seem interested and was acting downright weird with his behavior.
2 days later the clown trigger died. He looked like he was covered in something, but as he had died sometime in the last 24 hours, I could not tell if it was a disease or just his skin starting to come off.
The blue dot jawfish was very elusive and not very active. I was unable to get it to eat much and at this point he was struggling to stay alive. He looked like he had something on it, so I removed it an euthanized him.
The passer king angel never got sick and has been eating fine.
My clown tang which I've had for nearly two years has some white dots on it. I swear I've seen this before only to see it vanish and then come back. The working theory is that it is Ick and we are seeing the lifecycle repeating. As the water volume is high, very healthy fat fish and a UV, the theory is that the population is staying low. There appears to be something on some of the other fish as well, but it is very hard to see and not positive it is anything at all, although many of the fish have cloudy eyes.
To back up a little, back in March my bio-pellet reactor suffered a major problem and basically quit working. My Nitrates went up off the scale and slowly over the summer I lost all my hammers and frogspawn. I had a good amount. I've gradually been able to get the Nitrates down to the mid 40's and hovering around there. I've ordered a sulfur denitrator and will be switching to that in a month. I have two pellet reactors running, but my bioload is so high, they just keep clogging and I can't get the nitrates below 40....
My theory on the cloudy eyes is that it is a result of the high Nitrates, but that is just a theory. All my fish are otherwise very healthy and fat.
Last Sunday, 6 days ago, I suddenly lost a yellow headed goby. It had no signs of disease and had been eating/swimming fine the day before. At the moment I don't know if I have something in the tank or not.
Everyone is telling me just do copper or remove them and do copper in QT. The problem I have is, half of these fish are in the 6-10" range of size. The other half are apple sized and dozens are much smaller. To try to get them all out would be a nightmare and I'd surely stress them out so much I'd likely lose some trying to do so. All of my rock work was carefully put together and cemented together, so I can't remove it.
I can remove the coral I have left and move to my frag tank as a temporary solution. If this is Ick, the feeling from my club president is that I can induce hyposalinity for a period of 30 days to get through the Ick stages and have it die off, then move the coral back when I'm done. The downside is, if this isn't Ick, nothing will have changed. If it isn't Ick, we will have at least ruled that out, but then we are at a point of, what is it? Doing copper in the main tank will of course make it useless to ever have coral in again which I don't want to do. An alternative has been suggested which is Chloroquine Phosphate as it doesn't stay embedded in the system and would kill just about everything.
So, here are the best pictures I can get of the Clown Tang showing the white dots. In some light you can't even see them, in others it is clear. The fish is NOT rubbing against rocks, it isn't swimming into power heads or water current like you would expect to see. We also don't feel this is Velvet as if it was, the entire tank would have been wiped out a few weeks ago.
