i could us some help

[scuba steveo]

I set up my first salt water tank about two months ago. I added 32 lbs of live rock and cycled the tank with some table shrimp. A month later I added some fish, the fish got ich, and almost all died. I went out of town this weekend and all that remained was a brittle star, 4 hermits, a cleaner shrimp, a damsel, and a maroon clown. I just returned and I found the maroon clown dead and I can’t find the damsel. Is it possible that it too died and the brittle has taken it under a rock? Do I need to go in and search for it so that my ammonia doesn’t get too high? I just tested all my levels and everything is fine. Now that no fish remain.....I have decided to take it much slower this time. I plan to wait about 6 weeks before I add any fish so that any ich that remains can die off. Is this a good idea? Should I wait longer? Or do I need to get some damsels in there sooner? Any advice???? Please help.

 

[alti]

its a good idea to wait 6-8 weeks. its really the only way to be sure its gone. keep testing the water for ammonia for a few days. it should be ok, but you dont want your inverts exposed to any ammonia. its nice to see someone with a little patience for once. most of the time people need to hear that they need to wait 6 weeks from 20 people and then one person tells them to go ahead and add fish and they do. you are making the right decision and you wont regret it.HTH

 

[a&m aggie 04']

could the fish have jumped out?? If not id move the rocks to find any remains, but the star or hermits could have already eaten him. Waiting 6 weeks would be a great idea to get rid of any ich. After that period start slow like you mentioned, acclimate your fish properly and maintain your water parameters. Good Luck
Mark

 

[saltydawg]

Ick Is caused by stress. It can never be totaly eraticated it is a constant variable with fish be it fresh or salt. Once the fish have it it has been said that lowering the salinty is the best wat to clear an out break. Never add ant med's to a reef tank or a tank with anenomes or corals or other inverts. Almost every med. contains heavy metals and will harm all of your corals and inverts. I am a newbie on the salt sceen aswell but after all I have read this has been posted time and time again at many different web sites i have been to. Your best bet is ( from what i have read) Is to quarantine the infected fish and let them settle down in a tank by them selves until it clears up from them. Ick is normaly brought on in saltwater sutiations from other fish being chased around the tank and stressing them out so bad they shed their slime caot leaving them vulnerable to the ick bacteria.

 

[stacyt]

Ich is a parasite and can be eradicated from any fish. Without a host the parasite will eventually die and will no longer exist in the tank. A good idea in the future would be to quarantine any new arrivals for 3-4 weeks. Durring this time closely monitor the fish for any signs of disease. I have started to do hypo on all new fish before placing them in the display tank. When doing hypo you kill the parasite therefor it will no longer exist on the fish, or in the tank. I beleive, as long as hypo is performed properly, that you should not have a problem with an ich outbreak in the display tank.

 

[saltydawg]

Yeah I didnt mean to state it couldnt be eradicated from fish. Just that is cant be efectivly eradicated from the water or tank. I firmly believe this to be true. I have Had large freshwater set ups and brackish water set ups for about 15 years and have read and experienced this. Ick is a parasite and not a bacterea again I misrepresented a statement. It is not to say that you can kill 75 percent of the parasite throwing it in to dormacy. but it will always bethere waiting for a sickly host. I am new here and not trying to kick up dust at all so please dont take any of what I have to say as argumentative or take it as stepping on toes.

 

[scuba steveo]

thank you all for you responces. I plan to wait 6 to 8 weeks before adding any more fish.......but what about soft corals. can I add some corals during this time?

 

[saltydawg]

I realy wouldnt unless it is gonna be a mushroom or somthing realy cheap and very hardy. Mushrooms are one of the few that can tolorate high nitrates and mild nitrites. Some of them actualy flourish in high nitrates. Do you have any tiny litle feather dusters on your rock in your yank right now? If you do then after you get your first readings of zero all across the board watch them carefuly. If they go in and stay in for long periods of time then that is a very good indicator that somthing is wrong with out having to test every thing again. ( although testing is still a must!!) or even buy a cheap little polyp rock for a couple of bucks and watch it. ( This was the advice given to me by ***********.com tech. dept.) So far it has worked well for me.

 

[saltydawg]

nm

 

[stpabr]

Rather than wadding through all the search hits for "Hypo," what is the proper way to "Hypo" a quarentine tank?
Thanks in advance
Stephen

 

[mykgillespie]

I've heard different things about hypo-salination and many conflicting opinions. All I can give you here is my experience and see if it's helpful at all. First, I would have to say that it may be necessary to use caution using hypo-salination in a quarantine tank as this process is somewhat stressfull and may be counter productive in a quarantine tank depending on how well the QT tank is done. On the other hand, I have used hypo-salination in a 75 Gal tank set up to be a reef. There were no corals yet kept in the tank, but had 1 cleaner shrimp, 50+ Misc. Hermits, 50+ Snails, 100lbs LR, 4"DSB, 5 Green Chromis, 2 Percula's, Royal Gramma, Neon Goby, and a Coral Beauty. When we first noticed the fish start scratching we ran a U.V. for 2 weeks, but were afraid to lose too many good critters from the DSB so we pulled it off. After finding the fish no better off the decicion to try hypo-salination was made despite the concerns of losing most of the rock and sand. Over the course of a week we dropped the S.G. down slowly from 1.025 to1.015. We kept it there for a month. To our surprize we didn't lose (as far as I could tell) one invert., fish, and the DSB continued to remain very active! The fish had no problems after that and the S.G. was brought back to normal. The tank continued on fine as though nothing was ever wrong and our biggest fear seemed tosomehow be avoided as there were still tons of pods, worms, mini brittle stars, and plenty of life on the LR as well! Believe me though, even with our success with this tank I would still consider this a risky way to treat a tank and it's no easy task either. The drop in S.G. as well as the return to normal must be very slow, the Temp. was brought up slowly also to 84 F. Calcium levels were kept to saturation and KH was kept a bit higher than usual at 14 dKH. So good luck with it and be carful, QT'ing is always best and low stress continues the responsibility of a healthy environment.
Later,
Myk.

 

[killafins413]

You are going to find that it should take you a few months to have five fish. You need to space out the amount of fish you grew originally. It is always a good idea to wait off ich but as someone said it is caused by stress and the idea of all your fish entering the tank at once probably caused it. The reason why you find cleaning packages of like 500 different species is because they are so inexpensive and if they produce ich and die that is not upsetting to your wallet (although a few people have attachments with their invertebraes and for that i apologize for any comment)... But now you should take this extremely slow... one fish at a time... well start with a few damsels in the beginning. It is also a good idea to put in a cheaper fish like a feeder goldfish or something but that is up to you, i personally am against eating fish and killing fish on purpose so i would never do that. You will also find that your fish probably were battling eachother quite often by the type of species you have... and are u positive it was 'ich'?

 

[michelle13]

I think the specific gravity should be 1.009. You can go to the disease forum on this board and all the details will be there!