A q for David Mohr?

[Anonymous]

David,
On Jan 4th, I had a large madusa worm nuke my tank. I'm doing small 5g water changes weekly on a total of 40g system? The reason I ask is; since that happened I've tried to add 2 new fish and both have died within 3 days of introduction. Any ideas if the toxins are still in the tank?

 

[Anonymous]

Good question. I would suspect that the toxins could have leached into the rock and substrate. Just doing small water changes wouldn't solve that problem. What are your water perameters and what type of fish did you try to add?

Regards,
David Mohr

 

[Anonymous]

When it first happened I had had a A. clarkii, engineer goby and 3 un-named/identified Amblyglyphidodon sp. fises called Golden Chromis. Only the engineeer survived. All corals and other inverts survied as well and are all (including the engineer) doing well.
Todays readings:
29g
11g in sump
20 lbs. ls
70 lbs lr
amm. 0
rites. 0
rates. 0
pH 8.4
temp is a little hi 81.7
KH 120 mg/L
cal. 440 mg/L

The first part of Feb. I installed a larger aquamedic turboflo 100 skimmer rated for 150. But I had been over skimming anyway with 2 smaller skimmers.

Three weeks ago I added a yellow watchman goby and this past week I added a sm. A. ocellaris. Both died with in 36 hrs of introduction to the tank. On the first day all was well with both fishes, second day heavy breathing and by mid-day to evening lithargic, dead by next am. Both ate with gusto on both the first and second day. The goby was wild caught, the ocell was tr. Accl. is by dip method.

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry had to rush off to work so I just gave you a quick guess this morning.
If I recall Holothurin the toxin secreted by Sea Cucumbers is very fast acting effecting both the nervous and resperatory systems of fish but will not harm other invertebrates and is not lethal to humans in the quantities secreted by the cukes. In medical uses it is also easily dilluted so I'm almost hazzarding to guess that over time the toxicity of it to tank inhabitants should be almost nill.
Also this toxin, if it's still in your tank, should make your skimmer produce prodigious amounts of skimmate.
If it was me, to be on the safe side, I'd start with new rock and substrate to not only rid the tank of the toxin, if it's still in there, but to hopefully rid the tank of any other toxin, chemical, disease that is the cause of your new fishes fairly quick demise.

Regards,
David Mohr

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks David,
I Pulled all rock from the sump yesterday, have a huge amount of nsw ageing and will do a very large water change shortly.

8O Aggggh, new rock :evil: