lost all fish!!
 

need some input from everyone here!! I've got an established 92 corner tank that housed a 2" hippo, a 2"yellow tang, a clown fish, 2 pink anthias, a firefish, a cb shrimp large cleanup crew, and quite a few corals. All fish have been doing excellent for the last 4 months till 2 weeks back. I made a trip up to calgary and came home with a 3" naso tang, he did fine for the first day then broke out in ich and was gone the next afternoon!! Now i've never had signs of ich in this tank yet but 2 nights ago the firefish, clown and hippo showed minor signs of ich. yesterday i lost all three of them and now today i come home from work to find the rest of my fish dead!!! All i have left is the cb shrimp, all corals are looking awesome, all water tests check out ok ( even ran to the lfs to confirm my test to theirs) Anybody have any ideas as what happened so fast? Could ich have moved in and wiped out all my fish in a couple of days!! If so, should i start to un-ich my tank while all fish are gone?

Frustrated as **ck, but need second opinions please!!
Larry

Sorry to hear about this. That's horrible. It could possibly have been Marine Velvet to kill so fast like that. If you leave your tank fishless for 8 weeks the Ich or MV will be gone. The parasites cannot live without a fish host. Eight weeks is the recommended time for your tank to remain fallow.
Good Luck.

Sorry for your loss. I would leave the tank fishless for 6 to 8 weeks and allow the ich to completely die off. Then before you add anything else set up a proper quarantine system to avoid it ever happening again.

I would suspect an ammonia spike or some other chemical or metabolic cause if multiple fish die at the same time. Maybe test your parameters. To me it is unlikely that an infectious disease would kill everything at once, rather than one fish at a time.

i thought it was all very quick and sudden as well but my ammonia was at 0.1 after having two deceased fish in there till i got home.

I take it you have a corner upright.
Your tank was never suitable for one tang let alone 5. I it obvious that you have a love for tangs but wait until you get a large tank (6 foot to house them)

I doubt ich or velvet killed your fish.

The ich surfaced when the existing fish became even more stressed with the addition of the naso tang
IMO your fish suffocated to death for lack of oxygen f you have ruled out a extremely high heat spike.

how do you figure..lack of oxygen? No heat spike everything stays between 76@night and 78@day. I know having 3 tangs was a no-no and it gets said a bunch but they were all juvies.

I only see three tangs listed there.... did I miss something?

Definitely sounds more like velvet to me.

Trust me velvet looks like ich to start out with and it kills freakishly fast. Within 2 weeks of adding a fish that had velvet to my tank I lost a total of 24 fish to that disease with 2-4 fish dying each day everyday for a week straight. Most horrible thing to have to go though. I left my tanks 8 weeks fish free to get rid of the velvet. Lots of info on marine velvet in my signature link if you're interested. The best link on MV: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/20...ture/index.php

Do you ever get sick of preaching about Tangs??

lol.. theres always tang police out there somewhere!!
I'm gonna do some reading on mv and see if the signs and symptoms match at all.

Something else to keep in mind, a fish can have ich and marine velvet at the same time as well as any other parasite or disease for that matter. Unfortunately there is no written law that says a fish can only have one thing wrong with it at a time

Let's hope not.

Sorry for making a mistake with the number of tangs you have. I mistook 2" for 2.

The reason why I suspect lack of oxygen is that all the fish died quickly.
IME a pathogen like ich will take some time to kill all your fish.

Active fish like tangs are the first to go. You can see a tank which lacks sufficient oxygen
by observing the fish. They stay near the top and sometimes break the surface.

Don't know what causes it but the solution is to immediately place a powerhead near the top of the tank.

Leave the tank fallow for 6 weeks and start again adding fish slowly after you have observed them in a QT
Good Luck

This was the first thing I thought of as well and have experienced the rapid fish losses associated with it.

Cuz, you're not dosing any carbon sources are you (vodka, sugar, vinegar, Prodibio, Zeovit, etc)?

And Naesco please keep chastising people about improper tang husbandry - someone has to ensure more and more ignorance isn't perpetuated on this site.

no, not dosing anything.
so would the lack of oxygen be associated to the ich or say mv infecting the gills?
If done would adding the power head solve anything or just make things easier on the infected fish?

Ich will attack the gills creating difficulties for the fish in an already low oxygen tank

If a reefer sees fish dying it is always an excellent practice to place a large powerhead near to top of the tank to allow for more oxygen exchange.
Even if there is no lack of oxygen, more oxygen would assist a fish whose gills are damaged by ich.

o.k. I see..

So i'm left fishless but with all my corals still, how long should i leave things sit? 8-10 weeks? Anything in particular i should do or add during this period? stick to routine water changes, more? less than 15%? There is still a cb shrimp thats lovin life with no fish is he o.k. to remain in there?
Sorry for all the ???? but i definatelly don't want a repeat of any of this..

8 weeks should be long enough to leave it fishless. Take the opportunity to lower the nutrients by not feeding as much (do feed the shrimp once or twice a week though) and keeping up with water changes. It's also a good time to research the fish you would like to have in there and maybe set up a quarantine tank to quarantine all new fish... so you don't have the same troubles again

What Marie says.

so after all the caos, I've broke down the display tank and crammed all my rock and corals into an extra 55 i had empty. I wanted to change a few things with the tank and now was about the best time i will get with no fish in there. I'm basically not taking any chanced and will be replacing 100% of the water. Everything will get dipped prior to transfer back to the 92. I've heard of people doing 100% water changes before and it not affecting their coral, so basically i'm seeing if anyone can say yes i have done this or no re-cycle and start everything over? I don't have anything to hard core for corals a bunch of zoa's, paly's, hammer, ric's, doughnuts and 1 green plate.
Let me know what everyone thinks please!!

I do 50+% water changes with no ill effects.

Answer this question. Which is more stressful on corals?

1) Being packed into a small bag and shipped by air 13+ hours from SE Asia to YVR, then go through customs, the wholesaler & into the retailer's tank, all in roughly one day?

2) OR, being taken out of your tank, and placed back in within a couple of hours with all new clean water at the correct temp, pH & salinity.

As you stated, most of your corals are of the reasonably hardy variety. SPS I would worry about. The stuff you have should be ok as long as your new water parameters are good.

We all take corals out of one tank & into another all the time (that's what happens everytime we buy or trade for a coral). Its not like the corals are going from good water to bad water, but the opposite. The new water should be better than what they were living in before.

JMO & JME,

Anthony

Just so you know replacing 100% of the water won't get rid of the ick. The cysts settle on the substrate and can take up to 6 weeks to hatch into the parasite that infects fish. The best way to insure an ick free tank is to leave it fishless for 6 to 8 weeks and quarantine and treat if necessary all new fish.

In my opinion, i would not replace 100% of the water. I have not personaly gone throught what you have described through out this thread, but i have had to compleatly disasemble my 75gal bow front and reassemble due to moving to new houses three times. I have always kept about 50% at all times, and this is due to the reliance of the built up bactiria in the water aswell Ls,Lr. The way i look at water is the more seasoned it is, the better it is for our little eco systomes. Just like wine the older the better.

On another note i'm truly sorry for your loss, my brother inlaw just went through a simaler desaster ..... it was not easy for for him and it was not easy for me to have to uthinize the ones that were suffering.

Feel this should be said....tank water contains little to no beneficial bacteria.

sorry on my mistake, this is not what i had bin informed apon.

I was not shooting on solving ich by draining my water, It will still run fishless for another 6 weeks, i Seen this as an oportunity to change a few things with my setup and in order to do it the tank needed to be drained to move it. I've kept 55 gallons of old water with my corals but was just curious if i should return that to the setup or go with 100% new water?

p.s. The old setup had about a half inch of sand only at the front, nothing under the rocks and i'm thinking now i'd like to go with a cleaner no sand set-up, how much does everyone think this will throw things out of whack for the first while?

In that case go ahead and use new water, as long as the salinity/temp is the same and the new water is well aerated I don't see a problem

awseome!!

p.s. I really do appreciate all the tips and advise everyone offers!! I really wish i'd found this forum years ago!!