suchecki
Aquarium Advice Newbie
I established a new 125 Gallon tank in 2/03 with 125 lbs live rock, live sand, protein skimmer and wet dry. With the cultured live rock and sand, tank quickly cycled. Initial residents included Sand Sifting Star, Banded Shrimp, Cleaner Shrimp, TR Percula Clown, Y. Tang, Powder Blue and Royal Gramma. Fish were added over a two week period with no spike in ammonia, nitrite or nitrate. After only a few days in the tank, Powder Blue came down with ich. valiant effort of dips and tank treatment with invert safe Kent RxP with Poly OX lead to a gradual decline and kill of all fish. Established a quarantine tank and moved inverts in to allow a natural cycle of the ich to take place in main tank. Let tank go 4 weeks at 80-82 F with no one in tank. Began treatments with Kick-Ich prior to inverts being moved back in. Yellow Tang, Regal Tang, TR Percula, and Heniocus were added. Heniocus came down with Lymocystis and was quickly moved to QT with Copper. (Initially looked like ich, but spots grew) Regal died in tank and was removed. In the last 6 weeks, have added and within 5 days have lost 2 Flame Angels, 2 more Regal Tangs, 2 Coral Beauties, 2 royal grammas and a Tomato Clown. Have only added 2 fish at a time. In the middle of this I have added a purple tipped Anemone. 7 days ago added a 10 W. UV, rated at 200 GPD, have run 24/7. Purchased my last Regal Tang and Royal Gramma with UV unit, Flushed Regal this morning. Strange thing is that there is one piece of live rock that has a great cave in it. Problem is, if I see a fish in there, within 24 to 48 hours he is dead (this has happened with 6 of the 8 fish). Royal gramma was in there this morning. Wanted a fish tank, only inverts and a clown and Yellow Tang Survive. Water Tests Perfect, not only with test kits, but at 2 LFS, and a water lab. - dKh 9-11, pH 8.25, Nitrate and Ammonia Non-Detect, Nitrate at 10. Salinity 1.30, Temp constantly between 79.5 to 81.5 I have run the kick Ich 2x a week since before the re-introduction, - as a prevention device. No Plug, chemicals or cleaning products are used near the tank. I am sick of killing fish. If water was bad - why don't the inverts die, they thrive? Close to giving up.
