Disaster!

[ShooterRick]

My 72 bow was all but finished with one fish left to intro planned. A week ago I had a McCosker die. No visible signs outwardly even under 10x jewelers loops. 2 days later phsuedochromis and yellow tail damsel died. Same as above no signs. Then it became evident. The rest of the 4 fish left had outward signs of ich! Because of the corals I could not treat the tank so I began frantically setting up my 29 fowlr for quaranteen and treatment. Since I had not broke it down and the bio filter was viable I simply removed 5 gal of water and placed the bio filter with a nano pump in the bucket. I removed all the substrate. Removed carbon and placed simple particulate filtration media in its place. Did a massive water change of about 24 gal and mixed RO and salt to a salinity of 1.18. Placed a ceramic coffe cup and a piece of PVC for fish to hide and relax.

Within the 2 days it took to do this as I was required to be working OT the rest of my stock died. The speed of this was fightening. The DT will now set fishless for 45 days and since I already had a UV sterilizer I hooked it up figuring it couldn't hurt. All corals and inverts are fine and all water parameters from PH, Am, Ni, Na, Phos, Kh, Ca, Mg, salinity are perfect as they can be with either zeros across the board or levels for base elements within range.

All fish from here on out will spend 6 weeks in the hospitol tank and be treated profilactically. Never again I hope will I go through this. I assume I will have to feed the isolation tank to keep the bacteria going while I wait. I am very discouraged but not giving up.

 

[ShooterRick]

side note:

What do you recommend as the best parasite control meds. I know of copper based products but are there others best suited for treatment these days?

 

[carey]

I'm really sorry to hear this. I'm glad you will start over, it's tragic when something like this happens but it does happen. I lost 6 fish within a few days last year, never did find out why but I still know how deadly and quickly some of these things can happen.

Good luck!

For parasites I believe paraguard is used but for ich it's copper or hypo salinity treatment.

 

[acolotto]

This just happened to me lost 4 fish out of 7 so far hoping for the best with the last 3 Its horrible and I definitely learned my lesson also qt tank always for now on

 

[ShooterRick]

Yep and I am sorry about your fish. I have set the QT tank and will be treating all new fish with Paragaurd prophelacticaly. I also ordered with the Paragaurd a coral dip. From now on nothing goes in my DT not held for 6 weeks and treated. Once my DT sets fishless for 45 days I will restock over time. Once the 10 planned fish are in I will break down the QT and store the bio filter in the sump of my DT to be up and running QT again quickly if needed.