Marine Velvet horribleness
 

So it's been (as of July 1st 2009) 12 weeks since I first got velvet in my tank. The surviving fish are back in the displays (along with some new friends) and it's been 2 weeks (since the fish went back) so I thought I'd update this thread (the update will be at the end). This thread is primarily to share my experience in the hopes of saving others from having velvet in their tank.

Edit: list of loses as of 10:00am July 1/09: (26 Dead) (8 Alive)

Dead: achilles tang, orange shoulder tang, regal angel, one of my two cleaner wrasses, bi-colour blenny, queen angel, blueface angel, emperor angel, blue ring angel, valmingi tang, regal tang, yellow tang, naso tang, six line wrasse, green clown goby, falco hawkfish, spotted mandarin dragonett, male clownfish, one chromis, sailfin tang, female clownfish, clown tang, 2nd cleaner wrasse (committed suicide, went to sleep curled up inside of the heater cover), coral beauty (possibly from old age, 5yrs), and red corris wrasse (I think the lunare might of killed him), and the last one to not make it (survived the velvet but got to badly beat up in QT) is one chromis.

Still alive: Sohal tang (face is healed but bumpy and top lip is gone), king angel (my personal favorite, pic. is my avatar), 2 chromis, lunare wrasse, checkerborad wrasse, bursa trigger, CBB (copper band butterfly). All of these fish are finally back in the display tanks.

Below this line is my original post.
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Well as a few members already know I have been dealing the horror of my fish being infected with Marine Velvet. At least I'm fairly certain that is what it is. I thought I should start a thread about what's happening so everyone can learn from my mistakes, and so that all the people I have kept in touch with through pm's can all keep updated in one thread. Thanks again to all my canreef friends who have been helpful and supportive through this difficult time. *warning the link I'm adding (at the end) has some very graphic pictures and a video*

So I'll start at the beginning, about 3 weeks ago my boyfriend and I added some new fish to the system. I added an achilles tang and then he added an orange shoulder tang (fairly certain it was one of these tangs that brought the velvet into our system) then he added a regal angel and I added a king angel. The regal had been in QT at the lfs for awhile looked very healthy and was eating so I don't think it was him and the king angel came from a display tank were he had been in it for a year so I'm sure it wasn't him.

Anyway I thought I just had some fish with a bit of ich on them (the two new tangs) so I wasn't too concerned, I've had ich in my system before and my fish have seem to build up a natural immunity to it. Unfortunately I wasn't dealing with ich I was dealing with marine velvet which is much more deadly.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/20...ture/index.php

This is the line that stands out for me and keeps me awake at night "Amyloodinium has shown a preference for first attacking the gill tissue of fish (Noga & Levy, 1995 and Stoskopf, 1993), so once it has spread to the body, I would consider the fish to be heavily infected and perhaps beyond hope of recovery." 90% of my fish that are left have it spread over their bodies :cry:

I will forever regret not QTing the two tangs first but now that it's after the fact all I can do is hope the others make it. I have what's left of my fish in a 110-120g (6 feet x 1 1/2 feet x 1 1/2 feet) QT tank and I am currently treating them with cupramine from seachem which is a copper treatment for the fish. I was reluctant to treat with copper considering how tricky it can be (not enough copper will do nothing to rid the fish of the disease and to much copper will kill the fish) be I've come to realize that the copper treatment is the best way to go to try to save who's left.

Losses to date: achilles tang, orange shoulder tang, regal angel, bi-colour blenny, queen angel, cleaner wrasse, blueface angel, and as of this morning my emperor angel :cry::cry::Cry:

Who's left: King angel, blue ring angel, sailfin tang, clown tang, sohal tang, valmingi tang, regal tang (looked really bad this morning), yellow tang, naso tang, cleaner wrasse, six line wrasse, checkerboard wrasse, lunare wrasse wrasse, red corris wrasse, CBB, 2 clownfish, green clown goby, falco hawfish, coral beauty, 4 chromis, bursa trigger and a spotted mandarin dragonett who is in his own 10g QT tank being treated with protomarin coral since copper is know to kill mandarins.

The pictures are to awful to post but if you want to see them here's a link

http://s261.photobucket.com/albums/ii53/Laurie_Morin/BRA/

Moral of the story: QT fish before adding to display.

You know how sorry I am that this happened... good for you to have the balls to post about it. If you ever want to talk, you know my phone number...

Lets hope this is now over and the rest of the fish have a speedy recovery.

Ouch. So sorry once again Laurie.

At least you were able to get them into a hospital tank. I think that's the best course of action forward at this point. I hope it works out. Best of luck with everything.

Just a quick couple of questions...

How long do you need to treat the fish in QT for?

How long will have to keep the livestock out of the display tanks for?

Sorry to hear. :sad:

Marine Velvet is HORRIBLE...I am sooo sorry for your loss. I experienced it when I first started in the hobby...had an established little system...added a final fish and lost all of them..it was nasty. Good luck!

Oy, sorry the emperor didn't make it, my toes and fingers are still crossed for you.

This really sucks! I know how much your fish mean to you. Cupramine is good stuff and hopefully does the trick. (fingers crossed)

Thanks everyone, you have all been very kind to me during this stressful time. I just want everyone to know how much I appreciate it.

Diana to answer your questions I need to treat them with the copper med.'s for 2 weeks and I need to keep the tanks fish free for 6 weeks.

Marie I know you were almost scared to ask me how they were this morning, well I admit I was scared to check :sad: Now I'm hanging around at work because I'm afraid of what awaits me at home :sad:

However I will be heading home to face the music soon, and I will keep this thread updated frequently to let everyone know how it's going.

So glad you could get them all out and treat them though. Keep your chin up, you will rebuild and continue. There will be a day that you look at your tanks again and be in awe. At least you have time to do some mods to make life easier.

Just go play killer zombie games with the man, and try to relax a little bit. You have done all that you could and now have to get through it. Thank goodness for some people on this forum that make life bearable and are very understanding. They know whom they are, these people ROCK!!!

I am hoping the fish that stuck it out this long will survive since they endured the worst and hung in there for you.

Good luck!:biggrin:

Ouch!! That is really horrible. Sorry for the losses. :(

I don't run a QT for my smaller tanks because it's not feasible when there are only 3-4 fish, but when I set up my 90 I will be QTing all new fish.

Heart breaking, thinking how you must be feeling. Hope things take a quick
turn around for you.:sad:

im sorry too, its really crappy to have things go sour on you to the point of things not making it. ive never read that much about velvet but from what i do know ive always thought it was similar enough to ich that i dont need to be an expert. i think your doing the right thing by coppering the fish in a qt, the assumption that copper kills easily is something i dont pay much mind to since i also use the seachem stuff which is a non cleated copper and much less toxic, normally i do the recomended dose wait the 24 or 48hours they recomend on the bottle and dose it again, and if i think the fish look in bad shape after a day of that ill check amonia/nitrite/nitrate and if thier ok ill dose a 3rd time and leave it at that concentration, the first time i ever did this i used a copper test kit and tried to be safe and ive never bothered since,
about 4 years ago i lost a tank full of large fish to ich only 2 or 3 fish made it 1 died since then,now every fish i get dosent matter from where goes into a qt and is treated with at least 2 doses of copper for 1-2 weeks and ive never seen a spot of ich in any tank since,

again im sorry that you ended up having to lose fish also but please take away the habit of qt'ing every fish from now on.

Yep lesson learned the hard way. For two years I haven't QT my fish and I started to think my tank was bullet proof and WHAM this happens. I figure it was best to post about it in order to perhaps save someone else the heartbreak that disease can cause from not QTing new fish.

So as of right now my blue ring angel, male clownfish, green clown goby are all dead. My regal tang and naso tang are almost dead, and my king angel is starting to look bad :cry:

One good thing is that when we moved all the rock out we caught 2 rock crabs that I didn't know we had. They now live in the sump. The other good news is that all 3 of my sexy shrimp and my peppermint shrimp (that I haven't seen in awhile) are all alive.

OMG Laurie I don't even know what to say... there are no words that could possibly make you feel better right now...You know where I am if you need to talk.

OH NO...I was hoping your next post was going to say that things are the same with no losses...I am so sad for you. You lost some beautiful fish.:cry:

this is really sad to hear.

"Damn" I was hoping you wouldn't lose anymore. :sad:

One good thing is that when we moved all the rock out we caught 2 rock crabs that I didn't know we had. They now live in the sump. The other good news is that all 3 of my sexy shrimp and my peppermint shrimp (that I haven't seen in awhile) are all alive.[/quote]

At least there is something positive out of this whole mess...sorry to hear of your losses.

and the hits just keep on coming
 

So as if it's not bad enough that I'm losing my fish "one by one" which makes me think of the new murder mystery series Happer's Island (good tv show) is were their catch line is that all the people will die "one by one" (which is said by this little girl in a creepy spooky voice) the worst thing I have ever witness happened last night that will forever haunt me and give me nightmares (as if this whole thing wasn't my worst nightmare already).

So my regal tang shortly before she died (I honestly think she was trying to commit suicide) she starts thrashing around in the tank literally ramming her head into the tank walls as hard as she can, smashing her head on top of the piece of ply-wood and egg create covering that we're using as a lid (to keep the wrasses in) over and over again for about 3 minutes (which felt like a lifetime) and she did this about 3 times before she sunk to the bottom and died. I couldn't believe what I was witnessing, it was very horrible to watch :cry::cry::cry: It was like she was trying to tell me to put her out of her misery but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, I feel so awful and anytime I think about it I start to cry :cry:

My naso tang and my yellow tang are dead. My sailfin doesn't look good and (the big piggy) wouldn't eat last night. My king angel ate but since I have lost all my other angels, I don't have a lot of hope for her right now.

Finally caught the 6 line wrasse out of the reef tank last night (got to be to late yesterday to do it, and we ended up taking out almost all to rock to be able to get him) it took about 2 hours to do catch him and 2 min.'s in the QT for him to die :cry:

Someone recommended a fresh water dip on the ones that look bad, it's supposed to get rid of the larvae or eggs in their gills which is cutting off their air supply and might give them a chance to survive. Seems worth trying, unfortunately it will have to wait until tonight as I need to get ready for work.

Oh Laurie i am soooo sorry:)

We had Vibrio in our tank a little over a year ago and unfortunetly i watched our fish do the same as yours. They died a painful death and by the time i figured out what was going on it was to late..It is funny how they do things when they are sick and dieing. All my anthias died together in the back corner all in a span of about 5mins. And my regal angel was the same as your 6line. Forever to dig her out of the rocks and about 5mins to die in quarintine.

If it is helpful at all that checkerboard made it through that Vibrio without a hickup...Hes a tough little bugger!

I wonder if he built up an immunity or something, the checkerboard is the only one who is showing no signs of disease. Do you have and link to more info on Vibrio? I've never heard of it. From what I read about velvet it seems like that is what my fish have, but sometimes I wonder.

Here you go, http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FA036

Here are a couple links to info on it!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrio
http://www.reefs.org/library/aquariu...97/1197_5.html

We couldn't figure out where it had come from but after talking to a few people from the U.S we linked it to the food as the tank conditions were pristine. It is basically a bacteria that in out case had been from a frozen pack of Brine shrimp that had probably been contaminated when it was packaged. So in our case when we moved them all to the hospital tank we kept feeding the food not knowing that,that was the problem and just kept introducing the bacteria to there systems which in the end killed them all.The bad thing about Vibrio is it can also make us sick...Which was great to hear after i had my hands in the tank trying to catch 10 fish!! They can get lesions on them..But we noticed nothing unusual with the outside of them just at the end you could see that they had almost ruptured inside as when we pulled them out you could see the red under there skin.
Reminded me of Ebola in fish:(

He very we'll could be immune to whatever is going on..
Is there slime coat sluffing off?
With the vibrio they all seemed fine and then within about a 12 hour period i lost all of them but the checkerboard and one of my angels and neither one of them were sick at any time.

This whole entire horrifying ordeal sound eerily similar to how my large angels died. I had my emp and majestic angels for over two months and the majestic came down with these symptoms and died. One week later my emp had these symptoms and died. I suspected cyanide poisoning since the fish were bought at the same time and were from the same store. Sadly i had added a queen angel to the sytem three days before the emp got sick and died. I had the queen for seven days and it got sick and died three days later. Luckily none of my other fish fell ill and are healthy to this day.

When I brought the bodies to a couple of stores I was told it was a species specific bacteria and I would not lose anymore fish unless they were angels. One store told me to not add any angels for a few weeks and the bacteria would die off on its own without angels as hosts. I do not know what bacteria it would have been as I was not told details.

I had my regal angel on hold at the LFS for three months and set up a 90g QT tank plumbed into my system. If I have a sick fish I can turn a couple of ball valves and cut it off from the water column. I then picked up the regal and put him into the QT tank with the system water and watched and waited. I was given a bright yellow powder in baggies to treat the water on the QT if the regal fell ill. He never did and is in my display healthy and happy.

I do not know what the medication is, but am glad to have just in case. The thing with this type of disease is that it shares symptoms of many other diseases and you do not know the course of treatment to go with. The fish that did get sick and died ended up with ich before displaying the other symptoms. Nobody else had it so I fed medicated food with garlic and thought I could let them fight it off.

I really thought this was happening with Laurie's fish and thought she may lose all the angels at worst. I had no idea she would have such a heartbreaking disaster. I was sick and broken hearted watching three of my beautiful angels die in a week. I cannot begin to imagine losing the amount of fish she has lost in such a short time span.

Now when I add fish I put prazipro and cupamine into the bag the fish came form for over an hour... now I don't know if that will help if a fish is infected with this type of bacteria. Qting a fish of course helps to not spread the disease but if we don't know what we are dealing with, how do we even begin to treat a sick fish.

I am so very sorry for your losses Laurie.:cry::cry::cry::cry:

Sorry to hear this. Copper would have been the best method of killing Marine Velvet. Always keep a hospital tank nearby for cases like this. You could have taken all the infect fish out and medicated them. Copper is the only way to eradicate velvet.

I know personally how it is to lose most of your fish to velvet. And know personally how to eliminate it from a fish. QT/HT and Copper are you last line of defense against ailments such as this.

Take a deep berath. Its ok. If need to cry, do so. It is really really tough!

"Velvet Disease (Oodinium)

Is similar to ich however these organisms are smaller, like gold-coloured dust, while ich is white, larger and more rounded. Velvet disease ("rust disease") is highly contagious, however it is a curious dinoflagellate that contains chlorophyll-like plants, including algae. It may be difficult to see until a heavy infestation develops. Bleeding can eventually occur, with the skin peeling off. When the gills are affected the fish will have difficulty breathing and may die from asphyxiation. Velvet is a rather uncommon disease. The remedy often used for velvet is copper (try Aquarisol by Aquarium Products). The fish affected should be quarantined and the tank darkened for best results."

The above quote is exactly what is happening to my fish. My valmingi is dead my sailfin is almost dead my king doesn't look good. The bleeding is occurring and the skin is peeling off of my female clownfish and Sohal tang faces :cry:

Going to try Fresh water dips now, I figure they're pretty much dead anyway maybe the FW dip will help.

OMG!!! Why can't this just be over for you. I can't imagine what it is like to dread waking up in the morning and then coming home for work...

I wish I could help in some way.

Yep, that's what it's been like since last Thurs. BTW your support and friendship have been very helpful.

I lost my falco hawkfisk and 1 chromis last night. Did FW dips on most of the remaining fish (to scared to do one on my CBB and cleaner wrasse, who both somehow seem ok still) and it seems to have helped, no one was dead this morning. The sailfin is still on his side or upside down for the most part so I'm thinking he wont make it and my clownfish and sohal are swimming around still, but the skin on their faces is mostly gone, really horrific looking :sad:

I was scared to ask yesterday but did it effect both tanks?
Again sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo sorry for you!

Yes both tanks are all plumbed together through a 90g sump. Had to pull out all the fish from both displays and QT'd them all. That's why there is so many dead, it effected everyone :cry: Still have to catch the red corris wrasse from the fowlr display, I can't believe how good he is at hidding. Was just thinking about it and since this past thrusday (april 16) I have lost 16 fish, how ironic :cry:

Edit: some people are wondering who's left etc. so I will edit my original post and add 2 lists of who's made it and who hasn't

Do you have any chance to copper treat your fish in a QT? If so, I think you should. FW dips will not work. Trust me on this. You will only stress the fish out even more.

Hey Laurie I am hoping the last of them pull through since they endured the very worst. I wonder if you should put anti biotics in the water at some point to help the healing fish not get infections. I would perhaps look into that since they survived this long and you probably don't want an infection to set in in their weakened state. I have no idea if this would be an issue but I am just trying to think ahead of "Murphy's law". I almost have a feeling that you might have to, but really don't know for sure.

Anyone else have any advise on this?

She is treating them with copper, the fresh water dips is an attempt to give the fish a bit of relief

Probably not a good idea while the fish are still undergoing copper treatment. Adding too many things to the water could make the water quality go south.

I agree. One treatment at a time IMO. Copper will work if dosed properly.

Very good point indeed. Would the copper keep any bacteria at bay during treatment? After they are done treatment should they be put on anti biotics just in case? I just wonder what the typical protocol is for people that have a serious disease to deal with, since it seems so many :neutral:things could go wrong. Now I wonder if I should treat any new fish with an anti biotic soak prior to going into the system.

No please don't, using antibiotics as a prophylactic is a bad idea. There are enough problems with bacteria building immunity to available antibiotics.
Quarantining new fish for a full 8 weeks should give enough time for any problems to make themselves known. Once problems are known then they can be treated appropriately

Thanks Marie for answering Atomikk question for me, it's exactly what I would of said.

I will be doing only one treatment at a time. However I was wondering how to help the sohal heal his open wounds, if he makes it through the copper treatment.

Just called home (haven't left work yet) and my sailfin tang and my female clownfish are dead. I have to say this really sucks! Everyday for the past week it's like "who's turn it is to die today" I will be glad when this whole ordeal is over and I pray :pray2: that some of them survive it.

Please don't think I am suggesting anything to Laurie... I just see fish at the LFS being treated with antibiotics, or other things in separate tanks quite often. This is why I made mention of it... I do often wonder what the immune systems will be like on my fish when they come home.

This is why I mentioned antibiotics... I just didn't know what you do for that.