Ya that's why I figured you said that.

After the copper treatment is done does anyone know what heals open wounds? I know melafix works for wounds on FW fish just can't remember if it works for SW or not.

Sohal looks awful however he is eating and swimming around lots. King is slowing down, not quite on his side but almost and she hasn't eaten anything yesterday or today :sad:

It's also been a big PITA trying to keep ammonia in check, we're doing 25% to 50% W/C's everyday.

One of the side affects of copper is depressed appetite, I would feed sparingly until copper treatment is over...it will help with the ammonia levels as well

*edit* A well fed fish should last 10 days without eating with no problems but I would feed a good quality flake food (flakes soak up things up better and faster)that has been soaked in garlic juice and vitamins for the fish who are still eating

I know I said it a bunch of times already last week in the PM's but again, I am so sorry about your losses :sad:

Velvet has to be caught so fast and so often it's too late by the time you figure it out.

None of my fish have ever been offered flake not sure if they would eat it or not. We've been feeding pellets and mysis very sparingly (mysis soaked in garlic & selcon) and we try to scoop up any uneaten food 10-15 minutes after feeding. I was paranoid that if they stopped eating it was a signal that they were getting weaker and that the end was near. Good to know how long they can live for without eating. I'd say my king was well fed, I'd bet she's fatter then Doofus :wink:

Thank-you again GSP for the pm's and kind words.

Unfortunately I do think you are right. I really believe that by the time we figured out what was really wrong with our fish, it was to late to save most of them.

So all of your fish are quarantined and treated with copper at this point? Or only some?

ALL of her fish are in the QT tank being treated.

Yes all of my fish are in QT being treated with copper save for one sneaky red corris wrasse who is being a PITA to catch from the FOWLR display tank. Almost caught him last night but he wiggled his way out of the net. The problem is he dives deep into the sand and it's very hard to find him once he's out of sight, we have stirred up the whole sand bed in our efforts to catch him but after awhile it gets to cloudly to see anything and we have to stop. Pretty much all the live rock has been taken out this tank and we're hopeful that tonight when he's out and about we should be able to get him.

As soon as we catch him he will be going into the QT tank, and we will be leaving the display tanks fish free for at least 6 weeks in order to kill off the disease in the tanks.

What would a person do to a new fish prior to putting them into a QT tank to perhaps take preventative measures on a fish that might be incubating this disease? Does a person put some copper in the fish bag the fish came home in for a certain amount of time to kill off any disease?

Any new fish I have brought home get prazipro and cupamine put into the fish bag and they are left in it for an hour. I do pour the fish and contents of the bag into a pail and cover it with a towel while I do this as well. Then I add and subtract my tank water by replacing one cup of bag water with tank water (bag water goes down the sink), and I keep doing this for about 40 minutes. I then net the fish and put it into my holding tank. I know one LFS that does a fresh water dip on all new fihs to kill everything but it freaks me out to do this. So far, since I have taken the measures I have done, I have not had a single problem with any disease of any kind. However, perhaps this has just been good luck, so any insight on how else people do things would be appreciated.

From your post I feel that everyone else is still alive so far? I am sure hoping so!!! It seems promising.

WOOOOHOOO (all and all considering) today is the first day in a week that I didn't wake up to dead fish and I didn't come home to dead fish :mrgreen: My king was lethargic and not really moving around or eating the past 2 days and today she is swimming around a bit and she ate a bit too. The rest of the fish seem to be ok too. Other then the Sohal tang. The Sohal is swimming around eating lots and acting semi normal but his face is awful, literally half of the skin on his face has fallen off :sad: Doesn't seem to be slowing him down, but it looks just awful.

Also we finally caught the red corris wrasse today and she is now in QT with everyone else, seems to be doing fine in there.

Yessss! :whoo ::pray2:

I have been waiting the whole entire night wondering what the news would be.

Thank goodness this might finally be starting to settle down and die. I think about how tings are going for you an awful lot.

Thanks goodness for good news for a change. You really are a trooper. I have panic attacks just thinking of what you must be going through.

QUOTE=fishoholic;414112]WOOOOHOOO (all and all considering) today is the first day in a week that I didn't wake up to dead fish and I didn't come home to dead fish :mrgreen: My king was lethargic and not really moving around or eating the past 2 days and today she is swimming around a bit and she ate a bit too. The rest of the fish seem to be ok too. Other then the Sohal tang. The Sohal is swimming around eating lots and acting semi normal but his face is awful, literally half of the skin on his face has fallen off :sad: Doesn't seem to be slowing him down, but it looks just awful.

Also we finally caught the red corris wrasse today and she is now in QT with everyone else, seems to be doing fine in there.[/quote]

Awesome to hear! Any good sign at point is GREAT. That means that copper is killing off the dinos off of the fish.

I agree, thanks Lance :biggrin:

Also (my boyfriend) Steve's brother and sister in law just stopped by and gave us a sympathy card and a $50 Big Als gift card :bounce: I have to say it was extremely nice and thoughtful of them to do so.

That was very thoughtful of them. It's good to hear that things appear to have turned the corner. Hopefully all uphill from here, keep the water quality up and the sohals face may just clear up on its own

bout time thier was some good news, so you have all the fish in the qt now?,

my2rotties-
never heard of people treating with copper while acclimating new fish, i have no idea how long it takes to have any benefit, i dont think it would do much in that ammount of time plus your exchanging water which would dilute the mix almost to nothing,
if your puting the fish into a qt just treat them in there, im not one of those people who have seperate qt and hospital tanks seems a bit stupid to me to put a fish in a tank you dont want to medicate.
the way i do things is the fish gets added to the qt, usually 1/2hour or so, streching out the process risks oxygen levels dropping and i think thats what kills alot of new fish, once the fish is in the tank ill give them a couple days to adjust and get eating if all looks well or ill start the culpramine right away if they look sick at all,
i used to do fresh water dips also but i cant handle the stress and never seen any benefit to doing it, maybe if the fish wasnt going into a qt for some reason i would do a fw dip.

Ya, it's been a pretty crazy horrible week. I :pray2: that the worst of it over and that the rest will make it.

What a tragedy.... I hope things start to look up for you.

Cheers
Lawrence

We're trying to keep the water quality up and good to know about the Sohal, hopefully he will heal up and make it.

Yes, the remaining fish are all in QT now.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

:bad-word::bad-word::bad-word::evil: Evil disease claimed another fish :frusty::mad::mad2: :censored::hurt:

Just when I thought things might be looking up, my clown tang dies :cry:

We made it all day yesterday, this morning and when we first got home from work without a single death. I was hoping and :pray: that no more would die. We went out for a bowling event with Steve's work and when we got home (around 11pm) we found our clown tang dead :cry:

I guess I wont know for sure who will make it until the QT is done.

Stay strong. Check water quality in the QT frequently. Get one of those SeaChem ammonia detectors. They are great for giving you a heads up on the ammonia levels in the QT.

That is really horrible. Sorry for the losses Laurie.

hey there Laurie, WOW talk about bad luck. I was skimming through the thread . get it SKIMMING :lol::lol::lol: i little joke to perk you up./. any ways i saw that you were asking about melifix i have used it when my fish were sick ,you just can't use the skimmer for a about 48 hours... but it does work thou..

Hey hows the skimmer holding up. did your friend get the beckett for ya to use... I hope today was a good day.

First sincere condolences I've lost 11 fish recently and I know how horrible and quilty I felt, but it pales in comparison your your loses, talk about stress! I know how you feel checking each morning with a pit in your stomach. You must be devastated.... again I'm truely sorry for you, you certainly had some magnificent fish. :Cry:

I'd also like to thank you for being so brave and honest to post this info, I'm sure we can all learn and take lessons from this. IMO that is what these forums are all about. Without the people on this forum I would have never been able to keep my dream of owning a SW tank.

I was wondering if you could tell us what you plan is to do with your infected tanks now? Do you completely change ALL the water, some rock? all rock?? or do you leave it fallow or ????? and for how long etc???................


Still hoping theres more to learn from all this :cry:

sincere regards

Thanks guys.

I am testing the ammonia daily and doing large water changes and using Amquel to help keep the ammonia levels down.

No deaths so far this morning, really hoping it stays that way.

After the copper treatment is done I plan on setting up a 90g for the remaining fish (with established live rock that we're either going to buy from a tank shut down or borrow from a friend) with the hopes of giving the remaining fish a better chance of survival for the 4-6 weeks we will be leaving them out of the display for.

Just wondering do wrasse's have some sort of odd immune system that keeps them disease free? All of my large wrasse's and my cleaner wrasse have not shown any signs or symptoms of velvet. My CBB seems unaffected as well (hoping & praying they all stay that way) it just seems really weird.

My Solar & six line survived my mystery illness too along with my foxface, but I lost 4 clowns, 3 gobies, 1 flame angel, 1 hippo tank, 1 Royal gramma, and 1 firefish.

Thanks, this is why I posted everything that's happening. Well that and to keep my wonderful canreef friends up to date as to what's happening.

Anyway I figured if at least one other person could learn from my mistakes, it might save them from having to go through what I've been going through and then at least something good could come from this whole mess.

Basically the display tanks have to sit fish free for at least 6 weeks. By doing this the disease will die off due to not having a fish for it to host on. We will probably go 8 weeks just to be on the safe side. We plan on doing a 30% water change on the display tanks today (which for a 500g system is 150g, which is a lot of water to mix and change out) after that we will do regular water changes as needed.

For future preventative measures we will be QT'ing all new fish before adding them to the display.

To be honest why we didn't QT fish before, is that it is a PITA to set up a QT tank and then you have to go through the worries of ammonia spiking etc. etc. However it is much easier to deal with the death of a new QT fish then the death of pretty much all your fish.

My plan (to make QT more reasonable and more likely to happen) is to (in about 10 weeks from now) plumb in a 90g to our existing system set it up with established LR (leave it bare bottom/no sand) and have it connected through a float switch valve. This way whenever we buy a new fish we will have a fully established tank for it to go into that we can disconnect (by turning the float switch off) from the display in order to keep the display disease free.

After a few weeks in QT if the fish is healthy then we turn the float valve switch back on and we can add the new fish. If the fish isn't healthy we can remove to fish from the 90g QT put it in a smaller QT tank and do what ever treatment necessary to try to save it. We would then keep the 90g disconnected from the displays for 8 weeks allowing time for what ever disease is in there to dissipate before reconnecting the 90g back up to the display tanks.

Thus giving new healthy fish a safe place to live in before being added to the display tanks, and thus keeping the displays disease free.

Sorry to hear that it really sucks loosing fish. Funny though how wrasse's seem to pull through.

So melifix works for SW fish too and is safe to use with LR in the tank? Right? If the sohal survives the copper treatment he will go to the 90g holding tank which will be set up with LR (established live rock but not LR from my tanks) and that is when I was thinking of treating him with melifix.

Skimmer is working good still and since I have much less of a bio-load now I'm guessing I wont have to worry about high nitrates. At least not anytime soon anyways.

It is good to see that you have decided to set up a QT and are recommending it to others.
I have a few other recommendations.
In the ensuing weeks, plan your tank. The regular visit you and your hubby make to the LFS returning with several fish should be a thing of the past.

Avoid difficult to keep species like Achilles tangs. There is a reason that fish like the achilles have been flagged red by most authors and experienced reefers. Sure, a few of them survive but most perish for no apparent reason and take their tank mates with them.

If your are going to start adding fish to your main tank in a couple of months choose a couple of hardy fish and observe them for several weeks. Only than start slowly adding some of the species your are more fond of to ensure that the disease cased by the stress in your previous tank does not resurface.

Best Wishes. I know what you have gone through.

I have bought a lot of fish over the past few years but never before has it been 4 all in one week.

The achilles (bought on March 29) was a special order my friend got in for me for $150 he ordered in 4 of them (I just couldn't pass it up) mine is the only one not alive. The other 3 he ordered in are all alive and doing great. Not sure it was the achilles's who had the disease as my friend had him in his tank for a few days before we bought it and his tank is fine.

The orange shoulder my boyfriend bought on March 31, he didn't tell me about it, I got home and I found the fish in my tank. The orange shoulder was eating in the store, a store we don't normally buy fish from, and he looked kinda skinny.

The regal angel my boyfriend bought (April 2) from a different LFS. The regal had been in QT at this store for a week, he looked very healthy and was eating. Again I got home and surprise there's a regal angel in my tank. He got it for $80 it was to good of a deal to pass up. Honestly if it had of been me I would of bought him.

The king angel (bought on May 4, who is still alive) my friend picked up for me from a fish store in Calgary, I told him 6-8 months ago if he ever saw a king angel for around $200 not to hesitate buying it for me and that I would pay him back. The king was $220 and he came from a display tank that was set up in the fish store and the owner had her in that tank for a year.

So my guess is that the disease came from either of the tangs or possibly the regal angel. Had I QT those fish before adding them to the display I would not be going through all of this right now :cry:

I'd love to go back in time and change the outcome of things but since I can't, I will share my story (as awful as it is) and pray that others will see this and not make the same mistakes.

At this point we just are hoping the ones we have left survive. After 8 weeks of an empty tank the disease should be gone from the displays, and it should be safe to put whoever's left back in. Not sure if we will be adding more fish. My favorite (king angel, who is very bossy so tank mates might be tricky to add anyways) and Steve's favorite (sohal, who has always been peaceful but has always had a large sailfin to keep him inline) are still alive at this point and those two are the two main fish we have always wanted. As long as they and the others we have left survive I will be happy with what I've got for awhile.

If we do buy anymore fish they will be well thought out ones and they will be QT before being added to the display.

Thought I'd share a link to pictures of the Sohal. I'm using a link because I think these pictures might be to graphic to post directly. He doesn't seem to be in pain but he must be, as he looks like something from a horror movie.

http://s261.photobucket.com/albums/i...view=slideshow

The Sohal is still alive, swims around lots, and is eating well.

OMG!!! He looks like he should be in the Movie Resident Evil... the aquarium version. It looks like it hurts so bad... I hope he heals up soon. What a tough fish.

Wow that was fast, you posted before I could even edit to get the link to work properly. There is more then one pic. the pic.'s aren't the best as the QT tank is a bit cloudy and the glass is dirty, but obviously you get the idea, since I agree he does look like something from Resident Evil.

He is a very tough fish and we really hope he makes it.

Wow what a brutal experience I am sorry that you had to go through this! Thanks for sharing it with us though I for one am clearing a spot for a qt asap.

:eek: You're going to have to change his name to scarface

I have nothing better to do on a Saturday night... plus the Flames got their butts handed to them.:wink:

It has been brutal, I'm glad to hear you're going to set up a QT, maybe if I had of read something like this I would of set one up and not be going through what I am now. On the plus side everyone is still alive this morning.

You know what, I think I will. I actually never did think of a name for him so somehow Scarface seems appropriate given the circumstances.

Good grief, I've been reading this thread every day and well, there are just no words.

Its amazing what fish can survive, and what they don't survive. I hope this is the end of the horror for you.

Me too! Two whole days without death here's hoping. I do believe with some melifix after the copper treatment is over the Sohal will heal.