I NEED HELP

[acarrion]

From the reading I have done to date, it seems that several of my fish have Cryptocarion disease (ich). To date, EIGHT of my fish have died (one naso tang, two dwarf angels, a lawnmower and four clownfish)!!!! However, I really don’t know what the first two died of because they did not show major symptoms. The rest seemed to have ich but it seems the treatment came to late.

My tank is only a month and a half old, so my first thought is that I got too many fish at on. But now that I have the fish and the corals, I need to figure out what to do.

I am sure a lot of you have heard this over and over. Belive me i have read a LOT about diseases over the last week. but any advice is always welcome.

Following is the situation I am facing right now.

I have the following fish, invertebrates and corals: a purple tang, a blue damselfish, an anemone a cleaner shrimp, a fire shrimp, a pink spotted shrimp goby, a chocolate chip starfish, an orange starfish (don’t know the name), and two corals (polyp and mushroom)

Right now the Purple Tang and Damselfish are showing white spots. The Tang has a very thin film over her eyes. I moved her yesterday to a hospital tank and i am medicating with copper safe - but i am concerned b/c i dont have a chiller for that tank and i live in PR. for now i put her in my room and have the AC on, but i cannot keep the AC on 24 hours. will she be ok in 82-84 degree water?

I have not been able to catch the damselfish or the pink spotted shrimp goby to take them out of the tank and put them in the hospital tank. before doing that we tried treating the whole aquarium with No Ick. We figured too many fishes were sick so we should treat the whole aquarium instead of putting all the fish in the 10-Gallon QT (too small). (the aquarium shop suggested we follow this procedure too). but obviously that did not work.

I have not given the fish freshwater dips because the last two fish that had freshwater dips (tap water with stress coat) did not survive and I think they were so sick that the stress of the dip worsen the situation. I would love your opinion on this issue.

Since Sunday I have seen ZERO improvement. I need advice!!!! I am not sure how to go about fixing this situation. I am afraid the QT will not be effective b/c it has been setup for just a few days. If I leave the fish in the tank, I am afraid they will all die because the tank is obviously very infected. We just did a 10-gallon water change on Sunday. We checked the Ph, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels and they all looked good. The water looks clean. The salinity level is 19 – we lowered it from 22 when we did the water change on Sunday. We have a chiller and the temperature is set to 77

The reason I say it is Cryptocarion is because the Naso Tang that died on monday had symptoms that followed to a tee what was described in a very good website. The dots, the breathing, the lethargy, and finally the eyes (he seems completely blind at this point).

What do you recommend? The people from our aquarium shop have been helping us, but unfortunately so far nothing has worked.

ANY HELP IS GREATLY GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!!!


Ana

 

[Anonymous]

Not a fish person, but just want to take this opportunity (albeit not very fortunate one) to welcome you to RDO.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Ana,
What worked for me was hyposalinity. Basically lower your salt in your tank to about .014. Some say you can go more (to .009), but you risk losing your inverts. Crypto needs a higher salinity to process it's reproduction cycle. By lowering the salinity you break that cycle. You can do the change faster than if you were adding salt, and this actually reduces stress to the fish's body. However, your inverts have the same salinity content as the surrounding water, so be careful you don't over shoot your levels.
I'm sure others here will give you a nice link (which I don't have handy) that explains things a bit better. Copper will work somewhat, but the inverts, including shrimpies, snails, etc will definitely die if you introduce this to your main tank.
If you choose hyposalinity, make sure that you do it long enough to totally end the cycle. I'm talking about at least a month; I did mine for 2 months just to be sure.
This is the most frustrating thing for this hobby. Hang in there. It definitely gets better.
~wings~

 

[krullulon]

i'd strongly suggest moving all fish into your quarantine tank and treating them there for 6-8 weeks. let the display tank run fallow for at least 6 weeks to break the cycle -- you can leave your inverts in the display tank. under no circumstances, however, should you add medications to your display tank.

the fish should be OK in ~82 degrees -- do you have a fan blowing on the QT tank to help with temp regulation?

treat the fish in the QT tank and allow the display to be fallow long enough to break the lifecycle of the parasite. after the fallow period you should be able to reintroduce the fish to the main tank.

 

[Anonymous]

Can you tell us more about your system? Other than that, the only advice I can give you is that any ich medication other than copper and hyposalinity do nothing for ich.

 

[myreeef]

I would guess that it was way too early to place soo many fish into your tank. Even though your tank may have cycled, it is still going to go through blooms of stuff like cyano and hair. Some fish are not very good candidates for the yet to mature tank.

Another thing that can stress fish and bring on desease is swings in any of your tank's parameters (temp, salinity, pH,...). So until you know your tank has fully cycled and also has stable parameters you may want to keep the fish and corals to a minimum.

The best things to add at this point in your tank's life is clean up crew type critters. Once they are prospering, you should look towards some of the more hardier fish (lawnmower blenny, chromis, yellow tang).

82-84 degree water is at the higher end of ok, as long as it isn't going back down to 77-78 degrees at night. Temperature swings will cause a lot more stress than a constant high temperature. But you have a chiller now to keep temp consistent, that should help.

Changing the salinity from 22 to 19 in one water change would be a lot of stress to everything in the tank, should have taken a period of a week to do that. Same for the chiller, dropping the temp 5 to 7 degrees over a couple of hours with the new chiller would have added more stress to everything. Should have adjusted the temp by 1-2 degress per day.

I think that Naso Tangs stress pretty easily, so I don't know if you can attribute all these problems to a disease infecting your tank.

If your LFS know your tank is less than 2 months old and sold you all those fish and is giving you advice that doesn't seem to be working (I don't know all of the circumstances, so I could be wrong... but!), I would be very wary of any future advice they give you.

Tell us more about your tank setup and remember that taking it slow is the only speed of a succesfull reef tank.... and don't buy anymore fish for awhile, give the tank a couple more months to mature more.

Anyhow, I talk too much. I hope some of this helps!

 

[acarrion]

Thanks to everyone for their replies. At this point, I have three fish left - Purple Tang, Blue Damselfish, and pink spotted - in a 10-gallon QT. The temperature is around 80. We are medicating with copper. (we were able to finally cath the pink spotted yesterday). I dont have a chiller in the QT - the tank is in my bedroom which is the coldest room right now (i put the AC at night and it remains cooler during the day - but i will watch for the temperature at night to make sure the temp. change is not too drastic). We just did a water change yesterday (2-gallons). The salinity level is still 19. Few questions (want to make sure i understood correctly your advice):

- should i lower the salinity little by little over a period of a week until it gets to 14?
- should i change the water daily?
- will the three of them be ok for 6 weeks in a 10-gallon tank?

i currrently the QT tank only has fish (no salt, decorations, etc.).
- should i put salt?
- should i put a PVC (so they have somewhere to hide)?

In my main tank, i have the invertebrates and corals left (fire shrimp, cleaner shrimp, two starfish, and two corals - mushroom and polyps)
- how frequently should i make water changes?
- what salinity level should i keep?
- once the six weeks are over, should i get any other cleaner fish? if so, which ones would you recommend?

THANKS THANKS THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!!!!

Ana