Sick Fish, please help!!

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Kyle_nix

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Feb 2, 2011
Messages
14
I have slowly started a 55 gallon SWT since Oct to the best of my reasearch and advice from LFS (I know conflict of interest)...anyway, I have 60-70lbs live rock no reef tank and I have used my well water with PH at about 8.4. I have slowly introduced the following: 1 yellow tang, 1 nemo clown, 1 small blck & white stripe damsel, 1 blue with yellow tail damsel (sorry cant remember exact names) 1 fox face, small cow fish, 1 blue hippo, 1 sand goby.

OKAY now here is the story: All has been well, not had any issues until 2 weeks ago when I added the blue hippo, cow, sand goby (purchased same day). After the first week I noticed my hippo had spots, enough research I concluded it was ich. Before stressing and removing I used garlic with food and it seem to help some days and looked worse others. It seemed to only be on hippo but also the cow looked like it was showing signs. They were both eating and swimming well. After a week of garlic the hippo seemed to be getting worse and I noticed that the clown was getting a few spots. I decided it was time to set up a 25g hospital tank and put them in (again after research). So I set it up and purchased nox-ich for salt water and used a little under the recommended dose, after removing all rock I caught hippo (still swimming fine), yellow tang, clown, cow, fox face. Placed into hospital tank and within 1-2 hours hippo and cow DEAD.

The remaining are still in there alive, probably a little stressed but alive. I have raised the temp to 84ish as I learned that it speeds up the ich process. My ammonia this morning was really high 1.0 but nitrate was good, so I did a 20% water change. I have now noticed that my yellow tang has brown spots on the front half of his body/face almost like bruises. Is this normal to being stressed or is it something else I should be really concerned about??

How long should I leave them in this hospital tank? Do I have to take out the remaining damsels and sand gobby to cure the display tank even if they show no signs of ich?

Any help appreciated and if I have made any mistakes please be kind on me, I have done as much research as possible before making any decision I have made with this tank, even if the research or advice was wrong.

I appreciate you help!!
 

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the tangs and the foxface don't belong in a tank that small.
raising the temp isn't doing anything for the ich. it's just stressing the fish more.
i think the brown spots are probably ammonia poisoning.
i would do large water changes to lower the ammonia, and i would return the yellow tang. if it's real tiny you could keep it for a while, but you'll need to remove it shortly.
i would leave the rest of the fish alone, and not add anything new until the tank parameters are corrected.
 
Thank you, I plan on getting a larger tank very soon at least a 100 gallon-200. I am just looking for a good deal on a nice tank. I missed one not to long ago which I kick myself in the butt. The tang and fox face do get along quite well, the research I did and was confirmed by my lfs was that they may fight for the first week and then live together, NO??
 
it's not the fighting that is the issue, it's the fact that they require larger swimming areas than a 55 gallon tank can provide, and are stressed as a result.
they both get quite large also.
 
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