SO here is where I am at...

[dlux4life]

Hi Guys-
I recently made a post due to the death of a kole tang that i had.
Here is a link to that so you can see where I am.
https://forums.saltwaterfish.com/t/371135/question-on-ich
I have a picture of one of my clowns that looks to possibly have ICH or Broklynella. Its been about 7 days since the passing of the Kole Tang. I have been doing 10% water changes daily since then.
I am unfortunatly a complete novice when i comes to fish deseases. Can some one help confirm if this is ICH im my tank? I did some work on my skimmer and there are micro-bubbles on the bottom of the clown. What I am referring to is the blotchy whitness at the top of the fish. It really doesn't seem lile salt, more like a white opague blotchiness. I also put the clown into a formalin 3 bath for 30 minutes today. He seemed to have alot of energy, but was more swimming really fast in place than only places in the tank. His eyes seem to be a little clouded as well.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[garick]

If the eyes are hazy then it can have some sort of bacterial infection, fluke or parasite. If the skin is blotchy it could also be bacterial or fungal.
Post your water Param's. Foods and other things that you do normally. That might help us help you better.
also someone mentioned a type of "ich" looking stuff that clowns get easily but it is not treated the same as normal ich.

 

[dlux4life]

Water Parameters:
PH: 8.2
SG: 1.024
Phosphate: .2
Alk: 2.2
Nitrate: 0
Nitrite: 0
Ammonia: .25
Calcium: 425
temp: 80 degrees
I feed the guys a mixture of Ocean Nutrition Formula 1 and 2 pellets. Copepods in the tank, mysis shrimp, brine shrimp, small chopped krill and chopped clam / scallops. I will also feed them an occasional red / green seaweed sheet.
It looks as if my phosphates are a little high. No signs of alge blooms in the tank.
I will usually feed a small bit of pellet food in the morning, and a cube of some protien at night.
More water changes tomorrow.

 

[beth]

Can you describe what you are seeing. The pictures just aren't clear enough. There are also examples of fish diseases at the Diseased Fish topic, top of this forum.

 

[dlux4life]

I know. I wish I could get a clearer picture.
It really looks exactly like Brooklynella. It is an opague white blotchiness on the skin. The fish seems to be swimming rather frantically in place. Both eyes are somewhat white and translucent. The fish is eating, but seems to have difficulty navigating the tank due to the situation with the eyes.
Do eye infections generally go hand in hand with Brooklynella?

 

[beth]

Cloudy eyes can just be a symptom of illness. For safety sake, I'd recommend going forward with formalin bathes, as detailed in the FAQ Topic (top of this forum). This will treat brooklynella. Brook is a fast killer, so, if possible, proceed with this treatment.

 

[dlux4life]

I started that yesterday. I am doing round two today.
I am also doing 20% water changes each day until i see an improvement in phosphate and ammonia. My Caulerpa needed a good trimming. I Trimmed it about 2/3's back. I am hoping that might help slightly with the phosphate.
Thank you for your help beth.

 

[beth]

Why do you have ammonia? That could very well be the at the heart of your problem.

 

[dlux4life]

Im am not quite sure why. i do feed 2x a day, so possibly it is overffeeding. i also had cyano outbreaks for about 6 weeks that have recently goten under control.
i am setting up a 10 gal qt to move the clowns after another formalin 3 bath. ill continue with the 20% water changes daily until the numbers impprove.

 

[beth]

Describe how you have your display tank set up.

 

[dlux4life]

Its a 55 gallon tank.
Filtration:
Fluival 305 Canister filter with bio medial removed. Added an additional bag of carbon and a phosphate media. 7 Gallon Sump with 2 gallons of bio media and a 1 gallon refugium with rock rubble, caluprea and small amount of cheato lit all the time. Coralife Super Skimmer 125 in display tank (not enough room in sump).
Flow:
Vortech MP 20
Lighting:
Aquatic Life 48" Power Compact Lights 4X65 Watt. On roughly 10 hours between the different bulbs / settings.
Stock List:
Roughly 90lbs of Live Rock. Soft Corals, RBTA, Flame Angel, Flasher Wrasse, two black and white clowns.
I also went to the pet store and bought a small 10 gallon tank. I did another 20% water change last night. I used the water from the water change to fill up the 10 gallon hospital tank. I also picked up a penguin 305 HOB filter for it and small heater.
I did another round of Formalin baths for both clowns and afterwords, transitioned them to the hospital tank.
What a world of difference already!! Clowns are starting to swim in their normal fashion. Eyes and skin have cleared up dramatically. I plan on keeping this in the hospital tank for atleast a week to ensure the desease does not come back, doing formalin baths a few more times to be safe.
I am continuing to do more water changes until I can get the ammonia to 0. I will be cutting back on the amount of pellet foods I will be feeding. I am suspecious that overfeading dried pellets was the cause of the ammonia.
During feeding this morning, the flasher wrasse actually jumped out of the tank to the floor right next to me. I was quick to react and he was only out for 2-3 seconds. Do they tend to jump more with stress (IE: large daily water changes)?

 

[beth]

Good news on clowns.
You may need to add circulation, especially at the bottom of the tank. There should be a healthy flow of water movement throughout your system.
Try to get away from bio-media type filtration, carbon, etc., and rely more on refuguium, live sand, and live rock. Add some sandbed critters to keep your live sand moving.

 

[dlux4life]

So what I through was Brooklynella is actually ICH. The two clowns were in the QT last night. I took a look at them closely after treating them with what I hoped to be the last formulin bath, and what was at one point, a blotchy whiteness had turned into very destinct white, round dots.
Immediately, I went to my LFS and got a Refractometer (this thing is actually really cool!). After returning from the store, I had the lovely pleasure of taking almost every single piece of LR out of my DT and putting them into buckets so I could catch and move my Flasher Wrasse and Flame Angel to the QT.
4 hours later, they finally were in the QT. I started the process of slowly adding RO water to the QT while taking out more or the salt water.
SG is was approx. 1.022 this morning. I plan on taking more out tonight and through out tomorrow monring / evening. My goal is to have the SG to 1.009 by tomorrow evening.
Im am a little worried having these four fish in a 10 gallon tank. I added two PVC T fittings and a fake SPS looking coral and plan on doing daily 2 gallon water changes once the SG is at 1.009.
My long and drawn out question is:
Is it ok to make a batch on saltwater at 1.009 SG in a 5 gallon bucket and do the daily water changes out of that? IE: 5 gallon bucket would last roughly 2 - 3 days. Or is this something that needs to be made right before doing the water changes?
If you think that would be ok, do you think that I could get away with making 10 gallons at a time to have it last 5 days?
Wish me luck!!

 

[reefjunkiee]

i would drop that salinity down to 12ppt day one. Fish can handle a rapid drop quite easy, it's the rise you need to be slow on. I have actually dropped the salinity down in 8 hrs time, but after some research found alot aquariums etc match PH and temp and go from seawater to hypo with zero problems.

 

[dlux4life]

I might start doing larger water changes. I was at this all last night and early this morning. With a 10 gallon tank and doing water changes with a 2 quart pitcher every hour, im only down to a SG of 1.02. I''m going to start doing more than 2 quarts at a time.
Thank you for the advice.

 

[dlux4life]

Is there any advantage to doing large water changes in the empty DT during this process?
Would it help any with my chances with the ICH battle? Thinking logically, if the ich parasite is in its stage where it is free floating in the water, doing several days of 20% or 30% water changes wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

[beth]

Ich will die without fish. But keeping up water changes generally is a good idea.
Also, you can take out two gals or so in the hypo tank, and then add qt of FW every 45 mins or so. You fish will tell you if they are stressed.
Just watch the pH carefully.