Sick Fish - Can't solve the problem

[Jaws]

So about a week ago my tank came down with velvet, or at least what looked like velvet. After I added about 30 pounds of live rock from another reefer's tank, all the fish started showing signs of blotchy skin, heavy breathing, and erratic behavior within about 24 hours. They definitely had some kind of parasite so I removed all the fish, placed them in quarantine and treated with chloroquine phosphate about a week and a half ago. They seemed to bounce back pretty quick over the next few days. All looked good and were eating well. Then about 3 days ago all the fish decided to go on a hunger strike. Now some of their fins are starting to deteriorate and they're showing signs of blotchy skin and swimming funny again. Temp is 78, pH is 8.1, NO3 is under 5, PO4 is 0.1 and Alk is 10. I've got power heads pointed up too so there's lots of surface agitation for added oxygen. Am I missing something? I can't stand sitting here and watching them get worse. If anyone has any other suggestions I'm all ears. Thanks.

[DigitalWeight]

I am no expert but my thoughts went to what your ammonia reading is at with that new rock?

[Jaws]

I didn't test ammonia but the rock was cycled for months before I added it. There was only about 30 pounds of rock in 700G of water volume too so it shouldn't be ammonia. I'll check though to be safe.

[Aquattro]

Sounds like ammonia poisoning

[reefwars]

That's how it sounds to me too , maybe worth a check to be sure.

Adding some prime, amquel or other amonia binder would help if that's the case.

[Jaws]

Ok so I added some prime first thing this morning. I'll do a water change tonight and turn on the carbon reactor too. My ammonia test kit seems to be missing so I'll have to pickup a new one today. Is this something the fish can recover from or is it bad news once they've been exposed?

[reefwars]

Ok so I added some prime first thing this morning. I'll do a water change tonight and turn on the carbon reactor too. My ammonia test kit seems to be missing so I'll have to pickup a new one today. Is this something the fish can recover from or is it bad news once they've been exposed?

yes they can if the damage isn't to bad :)

is it possible during the treatment process they were exposed to amonia?

[Jaws]

None that I can think of. Even if that rock was dead or dry, 30 pounds of dead or dry rock shouldn't effect 300G of cycled water should it?

[reefwars]

None that I can think of. Even if that rock was dead or dry, 30 pounds of dead or dry rock shouldn't effect 300G of cycled water should it?

30lbs shouldn't IMO but i guess it comes down to whats inside the rock:)

[Aquattro]

Are you just using 30 pounds to filter 300g of water?

[Jaws]

Ok so the ammonia tests definitely came back positive. How ammonia spike I don't know. The only thing I can think of is maybe from a bacteria die off after treating the tank but I had way more rock in there the first time I treated it and everything did fine. Doing a 30% water change right now then we'll see how things respond.

[Jaws]

Are you just using 30 pounds to filter 300g of water?

Since taking the big tank offline, yes. They tell you to remove the rock if you can when you treat with CP because it absorbs some of the treatment.

[reefwars]

if you just tested after adding prime then i dont think that test would be accurate....is it? long time since i had prime going

[Aquattro]

I had way more rock in there the first time I treated it and everything did fine.

Well ya, that's the point. You need a certain amount of rock to treat ammonia in that volume, less rock, less filtration. 30 pounds in 300g isn't enough to process waste from all the fish, therefore you get NH3 build up. You have too small a filter.

[Jaws]

You have too small a filter.

Hmmm. What do you suggest I do to boost the filtration? I don't have any cycled live rock anymore. I would've figured that this would be similar to a fish only tank without live rock now but I guess even they have sump filters to boost bacteria.

[Aquattro]

Ya, you need something. No rock, you use other media. Hit J up for some foam blocks, he has some that he was cycling for me.

[Jaws]

Sure you don't need em?

[Aquattro]

Nope, I'm good. My rock has caught up to the load and I'm not running the foam anymore.

[Jaws]

Ok thanks. On a positive note, most of the fish have bounced back after the water change. The powder blue, purple tang and moorish still aren't eating but they're swimming around better at least. Hopefully they bounce back too.

[Myka]

I'm confused, is the 300-gallon the display? It's the display that has 30 lbs of rock? If you don't have enough rock you will need ceramic rings or bioballs or something like that. Foam is a bad idea because it gets clogged and can end up being anaerobic (bad). Do you intend the tank to be fish only or a full reef? If you want a full reef you will need rock rather than bioballs/ceramic rings, but if it's fish only then bioballs are very good at their job and inexpensive.

How big is the treatment tank? CP can definitely affect biological bacteria if you use a significant dose of CP. If you stick to usual dosing of 10-20 mg/L it shouldn't affect biological bacteria. What do you have filtering the treatment tank?

Also note, ammonia detoxifiers are NOT compatible with Salifert test kits (I think Elos is the same, but I haven't checked specifically). You will get a false positive no matter how much detoxifier you use. The SeaChem Ammonia badges work well (I've used literally dozens of them over many years) and although they work very well as "alerts" they are terrible at giving an actual measurement, so don't rely on it for the amount of detoxifier to dose. API test kits are compatible with detoxifiers, but API isn't the most reliable test kit...

[Aquattro]

How big is the treatment tank? CP can definitely affect biological bacteria if you use a significant dose of CP. If you stick to usual dosing of 10-20 mg/L it shouldn't affect biological bacteria. What do you have filtering the treatment tank?


That's the issue. QT is 300g, filtration is 30# rock. Not enough to process a full fish load. Foam isn't a great long term media, but it's available now, fully seeded and ready to go in for short term treatment.

[Jaws]

So I had all the fish in a 400G display tank plus I had 300G of volume downstairs in my fish room conditioning of sump/fuge/rock tanks. When the fish became ill I drained the 400G, caught all the fish and brought them downstairs. They're evenly distributed between the downstairs tanks now and the display tank is closed off from the rest of the system for now. The main display had all the cycled live rock in it and the rock tank downstairs had the 30 pounds of rock in it that I suspect caused the whole problem to begin with. I removed the live rock a couple days ago when I started worrying that could be causing the problem.

[Myka]

Ok, so you had the 400 and the 300 plumbed together, added the rock to the 300, fish got sick, moved them from the 400 to the 300 and closed the tanks off from eachother. Then you removed the 30 lbs rock and added some seeded foam?

Ok...

Still, in treatment tanks, I don't like to rely on biological bacteria to take care of the ammonia. I have Ammonia Alert badges in every system. They've saved my hide more than once. FWIW, AmQuel is much more concentrated than Prime, doesn't stink, and is cheaper. :D Use the bottle to figure out a dose, but re-dose if the ammonia isn't gone. I know the bottle says something about not overdosing. If there is ammonia for it to "eat" then you are not overdosing. Overdosing is the addition of the detoxifier when there is no ammonia to "eat".

[Aquattro]

So how are things coming along?

[Jaws]

Well I wish I had a definitive answer but unfortunately I don't. I brought some water into Safari before I hit the system with Prime and Japarto didn't get around to testing it until yesterday but all the parameters came back perfect so he doesn't know what's going on. I suppose the reason the first test came back positive with ammonia is because that water was from after I hit it with prime and Christina tested that the day of. After doing the water change, almost all the fish have bounced back. Everyone's showing promise with eating again except the powder blue and the purple tang. They just hide in a corner together which is never good. I'm going to do another water change tonight plus I've turned my skimmer and carbon reactor back online and added my filter socks again to help with bacteria so I'll just have to keep an eye on things, which isn't going to be easy with my wedding this weekend and a honeymoon next week :( So far most of the fish are doing better though. I did lose my sailfin tang though sadly.

[Jaws]

Just an update on this. All the fish have returned to good health and appetites are back to normal as well. Never did find the culprit but it must of been something in the water because water changes cleared it up. I've been monitoring the parameters too and they've been good. Re-added filter socks and haven't been changing them to help with biological filtration for now too. Thanks again for everyone's help.