Sorry for the delay.
The water's all good. My nitrite and ammonia are at ZERO, my nitrate is at about 30. MY red gracilaria (in my sump/refugium) doesn't seem to be doing as well as I hoped, so I'm about to go downtown and buy some chaeto from the reef shop. I have COLDWATER fish, and am just starting to get tropical fish. I figured that I could learn a bunch without losing thousands of bucks worth of fish by catching my own sea life. I have a 4" tautog, a 4" cunner, several killifish (that have been successfully BREEDING in my tank!!!), several tiny green crabs, grass shrimp, snails, mussels, clams, sandfleas and all kinds of little critters throughout the sand and live rock. I figured the best thing for the health of the tank would be to replicate the natural ocean habitat as close as possible. I felt that the mussels/clams would filter the water, crabs would eat any uneaten food and sift the sand, etc. So far everything was great until I noticed a little white spot that sort of looked like a 2 millimeter string sticking out of the center of the killies' eye lenses. The problem got worse and their fins started to look scraggly, their scales startes to turn cloudy in spots, and a few got septicemia in their fins. So far, most of the fish look 100% better. A few still have ONLY that white string sticking out of their eye lenses. I have no idea what this is, but the Maracyn Two has definitely helped. I tried Melafix first, but almost killed my tautog. I haven't had any losses so far THANK GOD. I tried keeping the skimmer on when I used the Melafix, but started getting millions of bubbles and the skimmer would overflow with water. I haven't turned it back on even though I began the Maracyn Two treatment. The part of my sump where the water comes in and makes contact with the bioballs has started making bubbles and sliming up on top--acting just as a skimmer. I think I'm going to continue the meds for another day or two and then do a partial water change. Any advice or ideas?
Thanks!!!
