cleaner wrasse must have sand???

[i love fish]

I had a severe outbrake of ich, white spot and bacteria about 6 months ago after adding some coral in my aquarium and had to restart my aquarium from scratch. As a result, I lost all my fish and coral. I read in a book that if there is ever a severe outbrake of disease you must throw away all the gravel, airstones, rocks etc. So what i did was wash and boil all the CC and since everything on the LR was eaten by my Butterflies and Angels, I soaked the LR in the bathtub in tapwater for afew days hoping that it would kill of the parasites. In the meantime I treated all the fish in the hopsital tank with copper but within 1 week that had all died of various diseases, only my foxface survived. The strange thing was that within 3 days my 3 juvinille cleaner wrasses died 1 by 1 with no sign of disease at all and during the night while sleeping. The QT/ hospital tank had no gravel/appropriate sleeping accomidation for the wrasses and I am wondering if this is why they died. About 7 weeks after i got my display aquarium up and running i had another outbrake of ich again after introducing a cleaner wrasse and a gold rimmed tang. The cleaner wrasse died with no sign of disease and i am wondering again if it is because my gravel bed was not deep enough? This time I managed to save 4 of my fish and once again one of them was the foxface. I restarted my aquarium once more and now its been parasite and disease free for 3 months with no fatalities and i am extremely cautious about quarantine.
Now my question is... does boiling CC kill off parasites or can they still survive?
My 2nd question is ..can u use the same type of gravel in a marine aquarium as in a freshwater one or does it have to be CC or LS?
My 3rd question is ... does a cleaner wrasse need a sandy bottom layer under the gravel and how deep must the gravel bed be?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[teresaq]

I would say boiling anything will kill anything on it, but leaving your tank fish free for 6 to 8 weeks will also rid your tank of any ich
n you can not use freshwater gravel. Most people dont use cc. Live sand is better for your tank.
from what I have read cleaner wrasses do not have a good survival rate
There are lots of good threads in the archives if you need some night time reading. try this one first
https://forums.saltwaterfish.com/t/127007/faqs-fish-diseases-treatments-quarantine-health-info
T

 

[larrynews]

i have always read that cleaner wrasses dont make it but mine always have, they have at the least lived a year or more, but i have alot of fish, more than i probably should, and he also eats frozen foods and prime reef flakes, i had the same trouble with ick when i started and since then i have made sure that i have a cleaner wrasse and a cleaner shrimp in the tank and it has payed off...

 

[petjunkie]

Cleaner wrasse sleep in rocks so lack of sand won't affect them. That said they also are obligate cleaners and live solely off parasitic isopods in the wild, ich is not an isopod and is under the skin where cleaners cannot reach so adding cleaner shrimp or wrasses isn't going to help an ich problem. It is however going to affect the reef it was taken off of.
Boiling should kill off everything but I would switch to sand instead of cc and don't use freshwater substrate.

 

[ophiura]

PATIENCE is key in this hobby, and I would suggest a lot of reading.
I'm afraid you have been misled, and the only solution is to take it slow, do a lot of research, and learn. There are several mistakes you've made in the past, and will continue to make (sorry) if you don't take the time to go slow. People here will be happy to help, but this goes well beyond a question on cleaner wrasse. It goes to basic set up of tanks, QT and selection of fish, etc.
These losses are very common and a key reason people end up leaving the hobby. PLEASE take some time to get it right, for your own sake

 

[i love fish]

Thanks for your prompt response, I just wanted to know, hypothetically speaking, if i was to use fresh water gravel, what would happen?

 

[ophiura]

It is not a natural saltwater substrate. If it is colored, it is hard to know what the "paint" would do, except flake off, and become unattractive in time. Larger substrates can lead to problems with nitrates, as detritus sinks below it and can not be reached by clean up crew. It limits some of the animals you can keep. If a typical "natural" substrate is used (eg sand blast gravel) it may contain mineral impurities that can lead to various issues as well (heavy metal, or algae for example with iron). It will not aid in the buffering capacity of the water so your alkalinity may have issues.
It is altogether completely unnecessary and would not, IMO, add anything to the tank but problems.
Did I mention that I used white freshwater substrate in my first tank, without knowing better?

 

[lesleybird]

Skip the cleaner wrasses because if they do not have something to clean on the fish they will starve as they will not eat fish food. Get yourself a cleaner goby instead as they are great cleaners of fish but also eat fish food so they do not starve like the cleaner wrasses will. Lesley

 

[i love fish]

No you didn't mention that u used fresh water gravel............ what happened?
One more question......... in the part of the world that i am living in at the moment, they only sell CC and I want 2 switch 2 sand but they don't sell the stuff anywhere, would it b ok 2 use sand from the beach? or could it be carrying parasites, bugs, impurities etc? and if it's ok, how do i go abouts cleaning it and then replacing it 4 the CC in my DT without disrupting everything?
Thanks 4 ur time and input

 

[bagemrn]

I use both crush coral and aragionite in all my tanks, 1-1 mixture, I feel that CC alone leaves too much space between them and traps loads of dirt. But if you put in aragionite then it will close the pores a bit, I usually use a mix of 1 1/2 pounds total. I use araigonite and crush coral because I have reef tanks with good results, my 125 I did the same even though it was for FOWLR, CC and araigonite are made up of calcium carbonate which will help buffer your tank. Beach sand is basically silica sand -- crushed fine rock--, it will can promote algea growth pending conditions,
Raw beach sand should be cleaned and oven heated, I used beach sand for my 300 gal KOI tank, sand sifter like them they love it. I washed and heat treated in oven 400 degrees1/2 inch layer for 1/2 hour. now you have steril sand. silica can also hold many bacteria, it looks like the same stuff that is used in the fluidized bed filters. I kid you not those filters work for biological and they say that it s good for controlling parasites in the water. Tumbling through a sand bed would just kill them. I have FB filter on 3 or my slumps with a wet dry and I never had a spike of amonia or ick or worms.
If you do decide to use fresh water substrate I would sugest natural gravel only, basically crushed granite rock. No buffering effect.
In the past when my fish got ich, I heat up the water to 82F that will speed up the process of the disease. if its in a fish only tank, in stead of all that work you did to clean everthing, add meds to the water if you have no coral or live rock or sand.
I've had great suscess with " NO SICK FISH PRODUCTS" for ich. I used it in my coral tank, all corals was fine and all the fish got better, and since then no episode of ich, however the bottle was 55.00
I thought it was well worth it.
Good luck. hope this helps.

 

[snakeblitz33]

Silica is one of the main causes of diatom blooms. If you use silica sand in a saltwater tank, you are going to have a nasty bloom of brown critters. Don't do it. Fluidized sand bed filters, however, are an excellant thing to use on a saltwater aquarium, if the proper substrate is used. It will provide an excellant source of biological filtration. One pound of substrate can handle the average bio-load of a 100 gallon aquarium.
I don't suggest ever getting a cleaner wrasse again. Cleaner wrasses need a lot of parasites and are the fish's clean up crew on a reef.
Sorry for your losses. Next time, try to quarantine your fish BEFORE you add them to your display tank. Quarantine usually takes about 90 days (two months) before you add them.
Good luck!

 

[m0nk]

Originally Posted by SnakeBlitz33
Silica is one of the main causes of diatom blooms. If you use silica sand in a saltwater tank, you are going to have a nasty bloom of brown critters. Don't do it. Fluidized sand bed filters, however, are an excellant thing to use on a saltwater aquarium, if the proper substrate is used. It will provide an excellant source of biological filtration. One pound of substrate can handle the average bio-load of a 100 gallon aquarium.
I don't suggest ever getting a cleaner wrasse again. Cleaner wrasses need a lot of parasites and are the fish's clean up crew on a reef.
Sorry for your losses. Next time, try to quarantine your fish BEFORE you add them to your display tank. Quarantine usually takes about 90 days (two months) before you add them.
Good luck!
Last time I checked, 90 days was 3 months.

4-5 weeks should be sufficient for QT.

 

[ophiura]

The freshwater gravel, which was white, in effect looked completely unnatural. It built up a lot of algae on it, which isn't easily removed (none of the sand sifters typically used for sand can be used) and A LOT of crud was stuck underneath it (which you could see building up). To confound matters, I also used an undergravel filter, which effectively made it impossible to get at with a siphon.
THis was purely a freshwater hobbyists deciding saltwater was the same, just with salt. And it is not. There were no message boards then, so I would definitely encourage you to learn from this opportunity

 

[i love fish]

thanks for the input, lots of great info and advise.

 

[i love fish]

thanks