One dead fish a day HELP
 

The fish in my tank are starting to die one per day. Their eyes are going cloudy and they are getting white spots (doesn't look like ich) on their fins an bodies. Even my clowns are sick, the anemone isn't helping. Cleaner shrimp arn't effective. Garlic doesn't work. What should I do.

Recently I added some seaweed. Green and red. The green I have seen in several reef tanks but the red, not so much.

Their also seems to be a whit coating on the fish. Slime coat falling off??

Yuk. What are your water parameters. For one thing, you probably have some serious ammonia going on after the first death. Did you introduce something new.

Do some serious water changes for starters.

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Could it be a fungus from the introduced seaweed? :question:

What is the seaweed that was added? Where did it come from?

It sounds like your clownfish have "clownfish disease". I've encountered this a few years ago where the slime on their body almost starts to "melt". You must have introduced another fish that was carrying the disease.

I would let the tank go fallow for a good six weeks to rid of all the diseases. I'm not too sure how long a clownfish disease can stay dormant in a tank, but you should cater for that as well.

The water quality in the tank is good, just a little amonia from the dead fish. I have done a couple of water changes.

I was told to use nox-ich but am not a fan of the stuff my self. I'm trying to set up a sick tank for the fish but i'm not sure what to treat the fish with.

What do you mean let the tank go fallow?

The seaweed I purchased from a fish store. It is from ethier Indonesia or Fuji. I don't know the names of the two seaweeds though. I will take some pics and post them. Is it possible what I think is seaweed is really kelp?

Let the tank sit running with no fish in it for 6 weeks. Thats what he means by fallow. And if you set up a sick tank there many different ways to treat different diseases. But it would be helpful to figure out what it was before treating it.

The pet stores seem to think it is velvet?? If it is a fungus can maroxy be used??

If its Velvet, let the force be with yeah. I have tried every product out there with no sucess. Only thing is get a QT tank and treat the fish left although maybe be too late but in Copper (Cupramine).

With velvet they do get white blobs through fins or body when really bad. Fish also can get cloudy eyes with velvet but when they get cloudy its already to late for the fish. If it is velvet, your fish will take on a goldy tinge in color all over there whole body.

It could be clown fish disease too and but as far as I know, it can be only treated with Formalin to be rid sucessfully.

I agree, either way you have to leave the tank fallow for at least 6weeks for either disease before adding new fish.

I had a box fish that had velvet and it looked like it was goin to fall apart. It was incredibly bad but i put him in a Q-tank with copper and in a week he was all better. Ill post picks later to show you just how bad it was. So not all hope is lost. But you will need to Quaritine to use copper.

hey Tarolisol,

what copper did you use for your boxfish? I just lost mine to velvet...I'm still sad about it, its a sore spot. She was my fav..

I used copprumine. It worked great.

Heres a pic before the skin started comin off. It was to gross to take a picture of then.
http://www.canreef.com/photopost/data/500/1284box.JPG

This was in the early stagesm and it progressed pretty fast.

That is exactly what my fish are getting!!! Man that looks bad. Poor fish.

Yup, thats velvet! EEK! :frown:

So cupramine worked great! How many days did you treat with cupramine for? 14days or 21?

BTW, Thanks for the pix!

Tarolisol: not to hijack this thread but doesn't a stressed boxfish emit toxins? I thought they have a poisonous slime that could wipe out a tank if stressed enough.

Its called called ostracitoxin. Boxfish have the ability to do this yeah, but IME it is VERY rare. They do however feel threatened with their own kind. But I had a boxfish that was fighting Velvet for almost three months and when died still did not release the toxin and wipe out everyone else.

Also I have seen many LFS, put these fish in with aggressive tangs and triggers, get nipped at and still not release toxin. In all the time or known others to have them I have never had one release toxin. But its a good thing to know that its always possible it could happen. keeps you scared and leaves all the cool boxfish for us. :mrgreen:

Yeah i never had a problem with the toxin i was always worried when he was sick but never seemed to bug anything. When he got it i removed all my fish and quaritined. All but the clowns but they never got a touch of velvet. I think there super fish. Thats not even as bad as it got it go to a point i thought there was no way the fish would live, its skin was falling off you could see the flesh peel. But he came through.

I picked up some cupramine and I am going to begin the long healing process. By that I mean getting over the fact I've lost $300 in FISH!! Holy smokes. I'm sure the fish are going to love the ten gallon tank I'm going to shove them in.

Yeah the good ale ten gallon. Thats what i used looked kinda funny to have all those fish in there. But better there then dead. Oh and just to make sure dont put the cleaner shrimp in there :lol:

No, don't worry, only fish. Just wondering. Do you think a fresh water bath would work. I remember reading somewhere this worked to remove the white spots. Your supposed to soak the fish in fresh water(PH adjusted of course) for 10-15 min.

It would depend on the fish, some fish dont take well to freshwater. Like the box fish. But for most fish it couldnt hurt. What kind of fish do you have. Also i dont know if freshwater dip will work very well for velvet. But it couldnt hurt at this point.

I've already lost my butterflies, and have only damsels, clowns & a six line wrasse.

You could try the freshwater then go for quarintine tank with copper. Sorry for all your loses. The damsels and pretty resilient, they seemed to live through anything clowns are ushully pretty good fighters as well. Deffinitly go with the copper.

Freshwater dips does help for Velvet. You only dip them max up to five minutes. 10-15mins is way to long. Freshwater dips help relieve the velvet but if your sticking the fish right back in the infected tank they will just get infected again. Only thing is copper away in a cycled Qt tank.

If tank is not cycled yet. You can use the transfer method to tie you over. Using rubber maid containers, add heater, used filter media from main tank, an aquaclear and powerhead if got it. Then freshwater dip all fish, one by one (matching temp & Ph) & then add fish after done to the new rubbermaid container tub (premixed) of same salinity, temp, & PH as main tank. You would have to do this every three days, the transfer method as this parasite can complete its life cycle in as little as three-five days. This transfer method is good to use until QT is ready to go. Its a pain but helps and also already starts your main tank following away its best to leave tank fallow for the 6weeks at least.

Great link to read on Marine Velvet & freshwater dips and its effects with Velvet.
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/tr...loodinium.html

bullets got good advice, I say do it that way.

One of my Longhorn Cowfish suffered the same fate.


Matt

Well its been a couple of long days. I lost 2 more damsels and 2 percula clowns. My clarkii and tomato clowns both had cloudy eyes and white crap all over them yesterday, and today both of their eyes have cleared up and their scales are looking better. They have been in the anemone for 4 days straight. Their breathing is even slowing down. My six line wrasse doesn't seem to be bothered by the whole chain of events and my remaining 4 out of 5 chromis are still looking good.

Not that I want to jinks the remaining soliders but overall they are looking ok.

I finally got my sump running last night. Added a huge dose of of nice fresh salty water. It really seems to have brought them around.

Dose the sump need to run 24 hours a day or can it be shut off at night. The overflow box is a little loud (right outside the bedroom).

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You should consider your sump as a the same tank as your main tank. By turning it off at night you are reducing the water flow in the sump therefor alowing the water to become stagnant, which is not good. It becomes a breading ground for all kinds of nasty little creatures, much like a swamp breads mosquitos. Is this your regular regiment for your set up? If so I could have aided in the outbreak of marine velvet. :sad:

No. Since I turned the sump on I have not turned it off. Its really not as loud as I thought. I slept right through the noise last night. In fact I thought a couple of times that it had stopped running.

Just wondering though, how could I have stopped the marine velvet. Also at this point i am not even sure if thats what it is. The clowns seem fine one day and flakey the next (excuse the spelling). Their eyes looked good yesterday, but today their are a few spots on them. The cleaner shrimp seem to be cleaning off a bit of the junk. I put a few fish in the QTank but they died in less than a couple of hours. Tested the copperin the tank and everything looked good. PH and salinity where good as well, no nitrites or amonia. Just keeping my fingures crossed that they get better.

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I was at Big Al's yesterday picking up some food and browsing. They have a tank with a Nice Angel (regal maybe) that looked as though it had marine velvet. It actually looked like its skin was made of velvet! Anyway, they put it in a tank with 6 or 7 large cleaner shrimp who would take turns picking at the disease. The Angel looked as though it was enjoying itself so you may want to try that method.