Troubled Waters!

Did you cycle the tank???  Based on your test results, you did not.

 

Your ammonia level should be ZERO as in ZEE-RO...that's probably what's killing/stressing everything.  Stressed fish will get sick.  Tangs are notorious for getting crypto...they don't call them "ich magnets" for nothing.

 

Even if your tank was lightly cycled, adding several critters at once is going to be too much for the biofiltration system to keep up with.

 

Get a bottle of Super Bac or Dr. Tim's and dump it into the tank to boost your bacterial count.  You might consider re-homing your fish until you get a handle on your tank's water chem.

+1 about the cycle!

Dont trust LFSs man, get a SW aquarium book and read it read it read it... ull find out u may do things diffrent than everyone else but thats fine cuz i dont think anyone does it the excact same...

 

You need to cycle ur tank and ur parameters will level out within the next 10-80days depending on variables.

 

Ive got some Dr. Tims bacteria stuff. I havent used it yet but just got it from my local club a week or two ago... it says right on it that it will deplete the o2 in ur tank so make sure lightly dose!

 

just my .02

Agree with all the above, the general rule with anemones is that if you can not spell anemone then you haven't done enough research to keep them. By the time you finish researching them you should be waking up in cold sweats thinking about them. j/k, but on a serious note, sounds like you maybe received some bad advice and the responses above should be taken seriously. Good Luck.

Looks like a pretty standard spike after adding a new fish.

 

Don't add food until the nitrItes drop down which should only take a few days.

 

I would also add macro algaes (in a refugium (tank partition) to keep the tang away). The macros will perform similiar functions to live plants in Fw tanks.

 

And the "left over" macros can be fed to the tang.

 

 

my .02

Edited by beaslbob - 1/30/12 at 11:21am

IMHO i dont think ur tank was cycled correctly and or completely.

 

Wat do u have for filtration and wat kind of media is in it?

 

From the test results given above, ur tank was cycling and the nitrates are the end result of cycling... u need a good skimmer or a weekly small w/c to keep the trates in check. or macro as bob pointed out.

 

-devin

wats ur salt at?

 

Some people like uv and some dont.

Okay, so you have an anemone in the tank? WOW,,, I'm just gonna say watch it closely.. its very hard to keep an anemone in a new tank..

secondly,, if you have no fish left,,, WAIT 8 WEEKS to add any other fish,,, ICH can stay in your tank and run its cycle but will die out if no other fish is introduced after 8 weeks..

that being said, after that add 1 fish per 2 week period for the first 4 or 5 fish,, you need to build up a biological filtration within your system'

Next,, and dont take this hard but please dont put a tang in a 55g aquarium.... they can get VERY aggressive being confined 

 

Make a list of fish you want,, check their compatibility with one another (do not bother with damsels, excl. clowns, and leave the large fish ;tangs, triggers, large wrasses out of your tank)

 

so currently you only have sand, live rock, an anemone, some star polyps (im assuming green star polyps?) and a hairy mushroom in your tank....

let it be.. make sure to check your water weekly and make sure to feed your anemone 1 time a week or so....

do normal 10% water changes every 2-4 weeks and in 8 weeks get your first new fish.... 

OH and you can run your UV if you want... theres really nothing its going to do if you have ich in your system other than kill the free floating ones,, its still in there...

and What your salt level, is a very good question but i believe more aptly put is what is your temperature and salinity? (are you using a refracometer or a hydrometer?)

Killing ICH with a UV is not as simple as hooking it up and letting it run, ICH requires a certain amount of radiation in order to be killed off in the floating stage. 

 

 

So basically this is how it needs to be set up. Say you have a UV that does 90,000pWs at 1000gph. You need to get it to 336,000pWs or above. So you would take 336,000 divide it by 90,000. You get roughly 4 when you round up so that basically means it needs 4x the exposure than a normal pass through. How do you do that? You cut flow. So then you would take 1000 and divide it by 4. Meaning that you would need to have no more than 250GPH going through your UV in order to kill free floating ICH.

 

With that being said. The GPH should be no less than 1x your total tank water volume. So if you have a 500G tank. you would basically need to push at least 500GHP through your UV, while still maintaining at least 336,000pWs which basically says you will need bigger than a 90,000pWs UV. 

 

IF your UV does not state the pWs with GPH I would not buy it.

Do hypo for ich...a UV is only useful for hair algae spores. JMO

Looks like you have the basics down. I think your biggest mistake was buying a fish from PETCo. I would leave the tank fishless for 8 weeks do a lot of research in that time and NOT buy another fish from PETCO. Welcome to the hobby it is very addicting.

UV can be of limited use for crypto, but the parasite must be in the free-swimming theront stage, which only lasts 24 hrs - 48 hrs.

 

In my honest opinion, it's better to have one then not have one.

Even if it kills ich just on the theront stage, it's better then not killing any and also it clears up your water and helps with algae.

But each to their own of course. :)

The trouble is that if the tank is stocked, all it takes is for ONE critter to find a host and you're off to the races again, because a UV unit can't get every one of the theronts (assuming you have a UV of sufficient power rating, as mentioned).  Now as for algae spores and waterborne bacterial blooms, UV units do a pretty good job.

 

Hypo works fine for "normal" crypto, however, you need to be really vigilant regarding pH during hypo...if you can keep it at 8.0, you're doing well.  However, it seems like more and more, we have been seeing "reisistant" strains of crypto that hypo won't really kill.  We've moved away from hypo and have been using quinine sulfate (crypto pro) instead with really good results.

I'm googling this soon as I'm done with this. Thanks for the info saxman.

i have a clarkii clown and a sailfin tang from petco.had them for almost a year now.they did go to qt when i got them.no ich but they had lympho.they are double the size i got them and healthy as a horse.but i would always assume petco fish have something on them at purchase.so if you know how to qt i would buy from them again.problem is most if not all the people that buy salt fish at petco have no clue about disease.longtime reefers go to a salt fish store.