Sick Fish - Can't solve the problem

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Myka

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. 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.