HELP !!! fish dying in my 38gal
 

Someone help me. yesterday, my dragon goby and my mandarin goby were both dead in my tank. Now today, my other 2 fish, a foxface and a clown are covered in a white film with some white spots on them. does anyone know what is wrong with my critters? I recently changed my tank from a 33gal to a 38 gal just after x-mas, amd since then, everything has kind of slowly been deteriorating. HELP ME PLEASE !!!

Colin

What are your water parameters? What livestock is in your tank?

Test your water. If you don't have a test kit, bring a sample to your LFS which does testing. Sounds like you have some sort of water quality issue related to it being a new tank. Perhaps, even though you may have just transferred everything from the 33g to the new 38g, your tank has been going through its ammonia/nitrite/nitrate cycle & your nutrient levels spiked. Mandarin gobies should never be kept in a new or smaller tank anyways because of their feeding habits (usually need live pods or mysis shrimp found in an established tank with lots of LR) so it's not surprising that it would be one of the first to go. Also, how's the temp. because ick can also be caused by a sharp change in temp. Many possible reasons for what's happening but not enough info posted to give more accurate diagnosis of the cause.

Good luck.

Anthony

the ammonia levels are a little high, but they have always been a little high since i started the tank more than 2 years ago. the tank was quite welly established for the mandarin, lots of copepods and I fed them a mixture of mysis and marine diet for food. temp of the tank is 76.5 right now, and it flucuates between 76-78 daily. also my no3 levels are slightly raised, but everything else is prefect.

Have you tried weekly water changes? What kind of result did you receive?

What is your SG?

strangly my sg is at 1.016,it is normally at 1.026
it just started the other day, so i have not tried water changes yet. I have researched it online and i am almost certain that it is marine ich.

Start doing some water changes and running some Carbon for starters. That should help neutralize chemicals in the water (if it is chemical contamination).

Also, since your fish are already that sick, it will be difficult to move them to another tank where you can treat the ick without stressing them out even more so. Do you have any corals/inverts in your tank? Did something die to cause the ammonia spike? How did the SG get so low?

Pretty sure it isnt chemical, but i will use carbon just to be sure. yes i do have corals and inverts as well so i need to use a quarantine tank. nothing died that i know of to cause the ammonia spike other than the 2 fish yesterday. as for the sg gettin so low, i have no idea. I need to raise that though.

What part of Edmonton are you in? Depending on the area your in your water quality changes. Are you using tap water?

How are the corals/inverts doing? Are they showing any signs of stress?

i live right by southgate. I actually use safeway filtered water from the supermarket, the ones that you fill yourself. that water is filtered with carbon,RO, UV, and something else, so it is almost completely pure.

the inverts are doin fine, but the corals are also showing signs of stress, probably because of the SG. I am slowly raising the SG as we speak to get it back to normal.

I went to Big Al's, and they told me that the disease I have in my tank is more than likely velvet, not ich. So I got this medication called rally for velvet, and started to medicate the fish. They also told me that a neon goby would help fight the infection as they tend to remove disease from other fish. hopefully the neon goby does not die before the velvet is removed.

I don't believe that a Neon Goby or a Cleaner Wrasse will do anything for velvet. I may be wrong though.

That many fish in that size of tank... stress, I would venture to suggest.

How many fish do you have in that tank and how many corals and such...you just might have to many fish in your tank which would explain why your ammonia levels are always a bit high....

Do you have a sump, or are you using a cannister filter??? If you are using a cannister filter try putting in some Zeo Carb but just use one bag of it...That should keep you ammonia levels at 0ppm.

It also seems like they are just stressed from being in a new tank! and personnaly I would keep the water a little bit warmer, I keep my tank at around 80°

I have heard that the zeo_carbon works in the opisite way in a salt tak and releases chemicals that can kill fis and corals. please tell me if I am wrong.

Brad

I haven't heard anything about that....Hopefully it's not true but if it is then someone please say something so I know and can stop using it!!!

I have 3 fish in it now. I have the neon goby, a clown, and a foxface. the only coral i have is some star polyps, which are not looking too good right now. i am using a hang on filter for my tank.

ok update on my situation. I bought a gallon of rally, which is suppsed to get rid of velvet. I used the conatiner over a 5-6 day period, and i appeared that all signs of the velvet were gone. there were still a few white spots on my fish, but i thought that the rally in tank from medicating would take care of that. It didnt, probably because my tank was infected with velvet and ich at the same time. I just figured that out now. So i went back to the lfs and got some more rally, because it looks like my clown still has velvet, and I also got some copper medication. I have set up the QT tank with some live rock from the main tank and started both medications, so hopefully my fish will be ok. I freshwater dipped them for about 20 min, my foxface might not make it, almost died from the dip. i think so they the fish look ok now, so im hoping for the best.

the foxface is dead, darnit, must have stayed in the fresh dip just a tiny bit too long. grrrr

33g too small for a foxface. They are major eaters; therefore, major poopers as well (highly scientific terminology being used here - Thank you UBC).

Sorry to hear about your losses.

Anthony

Sorry to hear about the foxface. The stress of the dip is usually to much for the fish to handle when they are sick. Sorry to hear about your loss.

So the nasty velvet & ich fight now hey. I HATE velvet and ich is definitely a pain but seems to tag along with Velvet at same time, not uncomon. Especially if you bought the fish from B.A's here in Edmonton.

If you need any help, let me know...be happy to help. As I read every article I could find about Velvet and tried every Cure All product out there. P.S they don't cure. The ONLY thing is copper treatment and keeping it at the same levels for a period of a month. Make sure to test levels. IMO, I found coppersafe to be easy to monitor and WAY more stable.

What copper are you using? Cupramine or Coppersafe?

Btw, Velvet is light sensitive. Keeps lights off or low on tank. Helps to not spread faster until you full dose with copper.

Funny enuf, i did buy all my stuff from big al's, but i hadnt bought anything new for my tank for a very long time, so im not sure where the velvet came from. for copper i am using cupramine.

Velvet is always introduced usually with new tankmates. it is possible it's not velvet and something else or a bad case of ich.

Best of luck with treatment. Remember to test Cupramine quite often as its harder to maintain. Easy to overdose & falls outta solution after time.

Keep us updated. Help here if you need. Good luck. :mrgreen:

I dont trust those ro machines in the stores , i bought some water a few weeks back and tested it and man what a waste of money. There was alot of junk in there, i took it down to the city and tested it and it was just like getting out of my tap water. i think its a scam my self. will never buy it again unless its a major issue...

My opinion.


mike

I came home from work today and found my clown which i have had for almost 3 years now, dead. before I left for work it looked to me likehis flesh was peeling off his body, and his fins were decaying, so Im not sure what exactly he had, but now that I have absolutly no fish whatsoever, I can leave my tank fishless for a couple months to let the tank have a fallow period. This really sucks the big one, he was my very first marine fish that i ever bought and he had survived 2 moves, and 3 tank changes. Not sure after the fallow period that i will get any fish or not, but if I do, any suggestions for a 38gal tank?

Has anyone else had similiar experiences? or was it maybe just his location that was bad?

Tank
 

Question for you Keen. When you medicated your fish did you separate them and medicate, or did you medicate in the main tank? If you did medicate in the main tank did you remove rocks and substrate?

Re: Tank
 

No i quarantined them to a small 10gal tank i had laying around. If i medicated in the main tank, then i would have lost all my snails, crabs, and shrimp, so i had to set up a qt tank. I did put a couple of pieces of live rock in the QT tank, but thats it.