HELP PLEASE

[ononetire]

Hi everyone,

I have a 280 L salt water tank. I am really new to the saltwater fish. my tank is fairly new, its been up and running for about 3 months now, and about 2 weeks ago, one fish got white spots all over its body and died, the next thing i know, is that all my fish got white spots and died.

my tank been running with no fish for a week, but i do have other things in it, i have 2 inverb. and 2 ginaboras and one foam. now i am not sure if what the fish had was white spot cause they died really really fast.

my other questions, is that i live in Jordan in the middle east, and they are not really big on salt water at all, there are only 2 stores in the entire country and they don't know much about fish either. i tried to get medicine for the fish from one of the stores and he was trying to sell me something for the clorine in the water and telling me its for what spot, so we really don't have medicine for fish here. SO WHAT DO I DO??

if i leave the tank running the way it is for some time(how much time) would be fine????? and when can I add fish again?

does white spot affect the animals i have????

when can i add fish in the tank???

also I have red algea growing all over my rocks (i think red algea) how do I fix that, is scrubbing the only way???

please help, thanks again

 

[JamesR]

I believe the white spots would be ick, but someone here will be able to confirm that.

Anyone?

 

[Devilishturtles]

Yup. Ich. How long did you have the tank set up and cycling before you added fish?

I know there is an FW Ich article in the articles section, but you will get a general sense for what ich is in that article. It is all in all, basically caused from stress.

Test your water. What are the parameters? (ammonia, pH, nitrATE, nitrITE, etc.)

 

[indy]

Welcome to AA.

Ya, most likely ich. If you do some reading here you'll find quite a few posts regarding it. If you are fishless atm, leave the tank empty for 6-8 weeks. The parasites in the tank should all die off by then. Any inverts in the tank will be fine as ick won't live on them. When you get ready to restock, make sure you quarantine your fish before adding them to your display.

The red stuff is likely cyanobacteria, or slime algae. It's generally brought about by excessive nitrate/phosphate and other nutrients in your water combined with low water flow. A good skimmer will help pull the food the algae survives on out of the water, but you should also look at more frequent water changes with good quality water, and increase water flow through the tank.

 

[ononetire]

well my readings on the tank are great, ph is like 8.2-8.4 some where around there all the time, nitrate, nirtite and aminoia are really really low. regarding water flow, I have 2 pumps 1800 and 3000 pumping water back into the tank from the filter, and I also have 2 small pumps inside the tank to just move the water around, but I guess I can try to add more water flow some how.

SO I should leave my tank the way it is for 2 months?? its been empty for about 2 weeks now, just inverts. is there anything i can add like (something home made) or something to speed things up.

Also I never really understood lighting at all no matter how much i read. I currently have 3 lights on top of the tank, pink, white and blue, but they are normal light, all three are on, and at night only blue, should i turn them off? or get something else (more like invinte something else)

 

[austinsdad]

Tagging along on Indy's post, If you've got water qulaity issues with nitrates which may be causing the cyno or algea blooms, It's likely the high nitrates and maybe other water problems could have lead to ich or marine velvet/oodinium. Sounds like it could be velvet. It kills quickly. Not that I really know that it kills faster than ick, 'cause I never had problems with Ick killing my stock. I did with velvet. Killed about 9 fish inside of 2 weeks.

More background on your 3 months being established might help figure out what happened so that you can clear it up and keep it from happening again. How'd you cycle? How have your readings been as you were adding fish? Nitrate swings could easily cause this outbreak. What kinds of fish and were they QT'd ? How quickly did you stock'm w/in the 3 months. You should consider getting a QT for future additions, doing some mail order on a supply of meds to keep on hand before you go any further with new stock. Of course you could be at the point with your tank where it'd be better to leave it fishless for 6-8 weeks anyway.

By the way, welcome to AA!! The folks here will help you greatly, and love doing it for the most part.

Sorry for the barrage of Q's but I'd hate to see you go thru that again by not diagnosing the problem, treating it, and having more deaths occur.

 

[austinsdad]

Guess we were posting at the same time. Lights should be completely off at night. Mine is off for 14 hours. The light could be a cause of stress and outbreak too. I had a kole tang break out real bad in QT when I didn't realize my timer was overidden and lights were on 24 hrs for a strstch.

 

[ononetire]

thanks for all your help,

Well i custom built the tank with a friend of mine, its basically a tank with filter under the tank, the water spills from the top back right corner to the bottom into a filter and then goes through bia balls, ceramic rings, carbon and protein skimmer and back up to the tank.

now, when i got started, i basically put the tank together, added tap water, salt, and let the tank run for a week, until all salt was dissolved, from there I added sand, and some rocks (live rock, but i am not sure it was so live at all) anyways, left the tank run for like 2 weeks, and watched it everyday, and did your normal ph, no2 and no3 test, but I never had any swings at all, my reeadings been always great, my amino, no2 and no3 are always low, ph is always perfect, and i am using your basic strips to test, you know the ones you dip in water, wait for a minute and it gives the different colors.

after the 2 weeks of testing, i started adding one fish every2 days, and things were fine for a while (like 2 months) I got up total of 15 fish in tank, and then BOMB, all fish died, so I am really not sure what happened.

 

[austinsdad]

Did you have an ammonia and nitrite spikes after you added the live (or dead) rock.?Maybe you didn't cycle. Others will be along shortly I'm sure to help, but I'm not sure you cycled the tank and established necessary bacteria.

Adding a fish every two days sounds like a problem too - especially given the scenario you described for set up. Don't know how you did 15 fish and went for 2 months without any other detectable poblems with water quality. IMO, you'll need better test kits too. Order some stuff thru the mail. Robert Fenner's Conscientious Marine Aquarist and plenty other sites have good start-up info. Read those first.

Read on the value of QTing also. You're asking for serious trouble 100% of the time with the stocking technique you employed. Get books/reading/ water testing equip, and a QT setup before you take another step.

 

[ononetire]

no, I had no spike in the tank at all, and thats what was so weired, cause nothing happened, for the past 3 months my readings have been the same on all of them, do you always get a spike when you start a new tank???

do I need more live rock or, is bia balls and ceramic rings enough?

 

[austinsdad]

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/showquestion.php?faq=2&fldAuto=15

Read this article on cycling a tank. I don't think you ever did. Get the book I told you about too.

Also, I wouldn't trust your readings with those strips - 'specially since you had 15 fish and say the readings were always the same. Hmmm.....