Fish are obviously sick... help!

[stegm1sc]

My name is scott and i have a 55 gal reef tank that i started may 2010. I have a penguin 350 biowheel filter as well as a magnum 350 canister filter. I only have a few soft corals (star polyps, kenya tree, xenya tree, and a patch of zoanthids) My fish consist of 2x percula clowns, randall's goby, neon goby, yellow tang, and a pinkspotted goby. I also recently purchased a cleaner shrimp. Yesterday my pinkspotted goby started to refuse to eat. Then my yellow tang started to get "cloudy eye". Now one of my clowns is noticeably lighter and has a little bit of white slime on him. The cleaner shrimp has been on the yellow tang, he ate tonight and seems ok (besides his eyes). The clown fish ate as well. The other clown seems ok. I did a 8 gallon water change today (because nitrates were around 20 ppm). I also installed my protein skimmer today. I usually do a 5 gal water change weekly. The tang is 2 weeks old... the clowns are 4 weeks... the gobys are 3 weeks... there has been 0 problems w/ them fighting or any signs of stress since they have been in there. I feed Nutrafin flake food in the morning and brine or mysis shrimp in the evening. The other levels i test are.... Salinity 30...Specific Gravity 1.022.... Phosphate 0ppm... Ammonia 0ppm... PH 8.3 Nitrate (fluxuates between 5ppm-20ppm) after the water change it is currently at 10ppm.... nitrite 0ppm... my temp ranges from 80F-84F (but has since day one) Here are some recent things that could have caused this (IMO). I added Nutramar Live copepods 7/13... put DT's Live Marine Phytoplankton (1tbsp) 7/13... my sea lettuce got sucked into the powerhead today and maybe the clown ate a piece of him? i got his chunks out seconds after the incident. HELP!

 

[Sadielynn]

Ok most of this seems ok ... it is a new tank so the swings are normal
Try to get the temp to stablize to only a degree or 2 flux ...If possible see if you can get some one to cross your testing to be sure that yours are correct , I do not see it being bad just yet but it could be they have a shelf life of 6 months give or take a month after opening
Bump the SPG to 1.026 or so since you have corals ...
The nudi will put toxins out if killed or stressed so start running some carbon changing out every day ,. you may wish to get a cheep HOB for now to run tandum and addtional carbon .
Do a larger water change along the lines of 15 -20 gallons ...
Keep the water prestine this should help the smaller fish ... Soak mysis in garlic and selcon to boost nutritional values a bit and pump up thier imune system ... The tang will get way to big for the 55 and will stress and likely develop disease and die ...HTH

 

[melosu58]

Agree with Sadie. PWC`s and GAC are a must. Need to remove toxins and excessive nutrients. The cloudy eye will go away with pristine water conditions in the tank.

 

[stegm1sc]

Alright thanks for your inputs. I went to my LFS today and bought a 10 gal tank and turned it into a small quartine tank. I put my two gobies and my clown (the other one died ) in there. They suggest that i give them a copper treatment called Cupramine. I got some some minced garlic that I'm going to mix with the mysis shrimp tomorrow when i feed. I left the tang and cleaner shrimp in the 55 because i couldn't put him in a 10 after you guys said a 55 was too small. I also did another 25 or so% water change again today.
I think i found a better reason for their sickness... when i do my water changes i usually just rinse off/switch out the filter cartridges but i haven't been cleaning out the actual filter. I did today and was surprised what was actually in there...8-O it smell terrible and easily could have been polluting my water... i dunno?

 

[Sadielynn]

Do NOT dose the display tank you already knew this since you got a QT(it will kill off inverts and corals ) ... However you dont want to dose that as you have not discribed ich (discribed as salt or sand grains on the body of the fish ) or brook(where the skin seems to peel away like white glue on your hand) , to reach theraputic levels you must test ...
The QT is a good thing but I am not sure that at this point it would cause more stress to them . If they are there do leave them there ... The display should go fallow for up to 8 weeks to rule any diseases out ....
The filter pads can be rinsed and used up to a week or so for a more established tank monthly ... keeping in mind the carbon will have passed its life in about a week , but the sponge will continue to grab some larger particulates in the water rinsing them frequently (daily ) will keep the stuff from breaking down and poluting the tank ... The tang is the one that will attract ich but the cleaner should clean them off ... The garlic is used to trigger the feeding response in fish , it is thought to be the allicin in it that does so ... HTH

 

[dannyb]

A cleaner shrimp will not "clean ich off". A cleaner shrimp does eat parasites not ich though. A cleaner wrasse does, But it only eats the trophonts, Not the tomonts or thermonts.

The only way to cure ich is to leave the display tank fishless for 28days at least.
And then ofcourse cure the fish, Eg copper or hypo.

And still if your adding the tang back into the 55g, Its just going to get stressed and yet again cause an ich outbreak.
Now, Take all the media out of your canister filters and at least put LR in there. Even though i do not, 100% think canisters do any good for a Marine Tank in anyway.

What flow do you have going in your tank? You need to turn your tank over 15x an hour at the very least.

 

[JustOneMore20]

Just to clarify, I don't see where Scott described ich on the fish. Just seems like they are all stressed...probably from the toxins from the nudi.

Some good advice given above. Do the water change and add some carbon and let us know how the fish are doing.

I don't think I would have moved them to the QT, but I agree, if they are there now, moving them back would only stress them more. Make sure you do water changes in the QT tank since you have several fish in there. I wouldn't dose the meds since you didn't describe any spots on the fish. Save the meds for when you have a disease (Ich) to treat.

 

[stegm1sc]

dannyb... im not exactly sure of my flow in the 55 gal but i have 2 small powerheads that push quite of bit of water and then my canister filter, protein skimmer, and hang on filter all move water as well...
BTW out of all of the fish i have the tang seemed to be the healthiest... he did not show ne signs of fin rot or whitish slime and he still eats like a lil piggy and he isn't gasping and twitching or scratching in the sand like the others were... he is acting pretty normal to me... he just follows the cleaner shrimp and neon goby around all day... hopefully the numerous water changes ive done over the past few days can help nip this in the butt....
Also it seemed that the fish were sick before the incident with the sea lettuce... its possible that that added to the stress though...

 

[stegm1sc]

danny... i was told my hang on filter would do the job along side my protein skimmer... but then again i was also told that the more filtration the better... everyone in this hobby has a defferent opinion on everything! LOL do u think i should just take down the canister filter then?

 

[dannyb]

Well, The perfect filtration to me is..

A sump, A DSB (Deep Sand Bed), Macro Algae, A very good quality skimmer (rated double the size of your tank volume). Thats your basic, Perfect filtration.
Then you can get into your reactors.. Phosphate, Nitrate, Calcium.
Then you can go into Dosing, The list just keeps on going.

But if you can, I would ditch the canister, and get a sump if you could.
People do remove all the media and add LR rubble to the cansiter but it wont help you as most DTs have more then enough LR to keep Amm/Nitrite down.

 

[stegm1sc]

so my other clownfish died yesterday while in the qt tank for the first night... the 2 gobies that are in there now are swimming around way better than they were but they are still refusing to eat... (i guess they could be eating while im not watching) but i tried soaking this mysis shrimp in garlic but that didn't seem to trigger any feeding... the tang's eating good and the cloudy eye seems to be getting better... so ne ideas on how to maybe get those gobies to eat?

 

[Sadielynn]

Let them settle for a few days before attempting to feed again ...

 

[David S]

I think you have added too many fish too soon in the first place,it was probably the extra stress of moving them to the qt caused the demise of the clown,just let them settle as sadielynn has said and try try not to act on impulse to quickly,if your in any doubt just pwc first.I personally would go towards no mechanical filtration and go with a sump with LS and as much LR as possible and as said a decent protein skimmer.

 

[stegm1sc]

How long in QT tank?

well the two gobies in the QT tank are starting to eat now... not like they used to but i guess its still a good sign that they are eating. I did 2 treatments of copper (thats what guy from LFS said to do) but they didn't have ich.. but hey it might have worked, they are better now... (or it was the WC i did before i added them to QT tank).. who knows... neways i was just wondering how long are you suppossed to leave them in the QT tank? they have been in there 4 days now.