lost every fish in the tank

kateater · Dec 2, 2008

A friend of mine just got a new fish and put it in his established reef tank. Well a day or so later ich breakout. He moved them all to a 55 gallon QT. In the morning all the fish were dead except for a maroon clown that he has had for years.:cry: This is all within a three day period. I cant figure out what happened. I have had sick fish and moved them into QT with minimal casualties. He said all water parameters were the same as his main tank. I know it doesnt make it better but does anyone have some ideas on what happened?

fish lost: 1 regal tang 1 bowder brown tang 1 seabe clown 1firefish (helfrichi) and a small school of blue reef chromis.

mrgreenthumb · Dec 2, 2008

Personally, not to be rude, but i find it very hard to belive that the quarentine ahd the same water params as his main tank. Unless this quarentine was FULLY CYCLED, and had enough bacteria to clear up all those nasties( ammonia, nitrite) from a very heavy fish load, then ther is no way the params were the same. Quarentines are usually more stressful on the fish than just leaving them where they are. In the future, I would either quarentine the new fish(pre intro to main tank), in a cycled quarentine tank, or just try to treat the fish in the main display for ich. Moving all of those fish into a small quarentine with inadequate filtration, just spells trouble!!

Reef Pets · Dec 2, 2008

Agreed. For a display tank I have always kept a small EMPTY quarentine tank. If I need the quarentine tank I would take water from the display tank and put it into the quarantine tank. Then of couse new saltwater for the display tank, like a small water change. This way you know for a fact that the quarentine tank has the exact same perameters. Within the quarentine tank you can then treat the coral or fish (whatever is being treated) and then toss all of the water out when the treatment is complete.

returnofsid · Dec 2, 2008

Even if water parameters were the same as display before he put all the fish in there, it'd quickly change. That's a huge bio-load to add to any tank all at once. I'd imagine if he tested the QT water afterwards, he'd have found he had pretty high ammonia.