194G IPI tank build

[leftyfish]

Not sure yet what to do. Everyone is fine, right now, despite the ich.

I'm so frustrated, I might remove coral, inverts (but not sure how the sea star would do in new tank) and treat main tank, keep sand but remove all the rock, ugh. Run rock, inverts in 45 gal bucket tote I have and treat main tank at hypo. I will have to tear up the rock if I were to catch the engineer goby, and everyone else, so just keeping the fish in for volume sake and running a separate "tank" with rock/inverts might be better.

 

[leftyfish]

Pretty sure it is velvet. Powderbrown, while not coated swims directly facing the power head. Engineer goby, blue tang and kole all have a velvet appearance when I look at an upward angle to them. Everyone else does not appear this way and are acting normal. The goby has been swimming all over the tank, usually he hides in his caves. I don't have a qt that would not stress all of them out, and I don't trust the clowns not to attack because they keep laying eggs. Given the severity of the three fish I think I will go FOWLR, put all inverts in a separate tank/sump for 8 weeks, then sell. Shut off DT from sump, run separate PH in sump compartment with inverts.

Remove rock, leave sand, remove a fair amount of water to get copper amount manageable. And treat. Any suggestions?

 

[leftyfish]

Okay... If it was velvet they would all be dead from what I understand. Since my last post, I added prazipro to the whole tank because I thought maybe it is flukes or something else given the velvety appearance but lack of rapid breathing after looking the same way for about two weeks.

I stopped my carbon/gfo reactor for the prazipro. Everything is fine, even feather dusters and worms. So...this is what ha happened...

Blue tang looks much better, velvet appearance gone, still has some white spots, flashing and visiting cleaner shrimp.

Kole tang looks better, velvet appearance gone, and weird...the HLLE is almost completely HEALED in a matter of five days! It has had the HLLE since before January. Is this due to the carbon being offline?

Engineer goby still looks velvety/discolored but no individual spots an no rapid breathing.

Powder brown still flashing and swimming into powerhead flow. Visits cleaner shrimp for posterior of its body.

Foxface has random white or black spots that come and go.

Clowns still spawning, last batch hatched yesterday.

Chromis, Yellow tang and cardinal all spot free, symptom free.

Going to do water change tomorrow and add carbon but passively in third chamber of my sump. Seeing if I can remove prazipro without effecting the Kole tang HLLE issue.

 

[circus clowns]

How long have you had your clowns, and do you raise the babies

 

[leftyfish]

I have had the clowns for over a year now, they came with a tank I bought. I wish I had the time to raise the babies but I don't. Some make it to the sump and I throw food in there but they disappear after a week or so.

 

[leftyfish]

So all my fish pets are still in my tank, still alive, clowns are still laying eggs and whatever disease it is, is still in there on the powder brown mainly and a couple little spots I noticed on the hippo tang. Everyone still eating and acting normal, so we are going on 3 months of this! Each fish that was effected went through being covered and then got better, the powder brown is the last to show this. The clowns and cardinal never got any spots, the clowns live in the RBTA and the male tends the eggs when they lay them. The yellow tang had a spot or two, then none.

Still not sure what to do, my next step is going to be running an experiment with diatomaceous earth and a micron filter to see if I can eradicate the parasite through filtering and agitating the sand and rock every three days for 12 days. We'll see.

In other news, I've started replacing the ASW with natural sea water, everyone (including the coral) seemed to love the first 40 gallons I switched out. I can only get the Catalina water through petco here in Ohio, so I am splitting it up over a few months to switch it out.

 

[Packohotdogs]

Beautiful tank Lefty!!!!!!!!! Glad to hear all is well

 

[leftyfish]

Beautiful tank Lefty!!!!!!!!! Glad to hear all is well

Thanks, I love it, I put it in my family room, where we spend most of our awake time in the house. It has had a few issues, but it has only been up since January, so it is still young. I posted in your stocking thread.

 

[leftyfish]

So the second round of prazipro seemed to get rid of the parasite. It was rod shaped, about 1/8" long and when the fish had it on them they had a thick mucous coat. Everyone looks great and are happy. After having spent so much time quarantining them and being proactive it was very frustrating to have what ever this pest was, I'm assuming some type of worm, going in the tank. I would have to spend a lot more money on NSW to do a water change to get rid of the prazipro as I don't want to run carbon because of the kole tang.

So after a long mental struggle, I decided that I'm going to convert the tank to freshwater and enjoy saltwater fish at the zoo, lol. I know some of you have freshwater and I've done it before but I have some questions so I'm going to start a thread for it.

Hopefully selling the entire contents of the tank to someone in my reef club! They would be going into an even bigger tank, that has been running for a while. That would mean I could be soaking the tank in vinegar shortly!

Thanks for following!

One last FTS from yesterday...