Sick fish....QT tanks and the headaches... how do you cope?
 

So.... fresh into saltwater i have everything up and running and all my tests are good...
all of a sudden i see my powder blue covered in slime... so im googling like crazy and have about 50 diffrent causes and i go check on em.... Dead.
next day i see both my clowns covered in it... So i buy a QT tank.... Didnt want one... never needed one in 20 years of keeping freshies but i did it...
Lost 1 clown a day after the move but the other is doing great...
I chaulk this up to brooklinella?
All my other fish in the display seem fine and everyone eats like pigs but from what i read stress is the kicker... How do you avoid stress when adding new fish?
Ill try the FW dip from now on but i guess it dosent work with the clownfish desies anyways....
Ive been following the "do you QT" poll and really i agree a health new fish should be fine to toss right in but at the same time.... marine fish are little A holes that are insistent on causing whatever trouble they can....
In fresh you could raise the temp... add some salt and cure just about anything....
Is there any tricks i dont know i can use for my display that will help this out....
Im feeding garlic with my food just cus i believe its a wonder cure for myself so it must work for fish :)

Now... In the QT i still keep live rock and sand right?
I have a heater and filters with no carbon....
Still trying to find the right treatment for this slime sluffing Im still guessing is clownfish desies.... weird they were fine for months till the powder got stressed though?

It coulde be marine velvet, or it could be broklynella, hard to tell.

It is important since the treatment is different and with broklynella only formaline works, and for velvet you need Cupramine.

If the other fish are not infected, I would think broklynella. The best way to start would be to do a dip in formaline and then put the fish in quarantine and continue treating with formaline. You can try Seachem Paraguard, as this is a broad spectrum med that is effective againts many things like ick and bacterial infection.

If you treat with Cupramine don't put any liverock in the tank because it will be contaminated with copper. If you treat with Paraguard put some cycled liverock in the QT so that biological filtration will be working.

Now you would need to treat all the fish and leave your tank without fish for 6 weeks, because if you reintroduce the fish into contaminated water they will become sick again, plus not just because your other fish don't show sign yet, it does not mean they will not eventually start as well. Most parasites have cycle.

AS for saltwater being harder to treat for disease as freshwater...I can see you never had to deal with discus plague...I spent one week hardly getting any sleep trying to save my discus from that deadly disease. I managed to save them all but one but darn I was exhausted from the lack of sleep after that week. I never had any problem with my marine fish but I do what's right..and I quarantine. If a problem would show up it would be limited and easy to treat fast in quarantine. I nearly loast my discus because I did not quarantine...lesson learned.

Sorry to hear of the lost. If you suspect Brooklynella try using formalin, I've used this in the past and had good success with it, however I cannot quite recall the exact dosage I used. You should get on the medication regime immediately upon discovery to be effective, the longer the parasite is free to do its damage the faster they reproduce, and eventually death will occur to the host fish.

For a QT tank(should be mandatory for a PBT) no live rock is required, but some hobbyists do however use live rock. I just used some four inch PVC for hiding, no light, but I use a dedicated skimmer and run some carbon.

There are no 'tricks' just careful planning and patience. Research the fish you wish to purchase and put them through quarantine, same with corals. I know, it's easier said than done. Good luck.

Almost anyone i talk to around here dosnt QT anything.... as most of the stores we frequent have copper tanks ect anyways and will hold fish a while for you as well.
Seeing as everything was healthy and eating prior to adding them i figured i would have the same luck...
And luck is what i chaulk this up to with salt water....LOL
Im not about to tear down my display... Ill deal with the QT and do a dip from now on i guess... but if its stress that causes it then a dip is just increasing the chances...

Maybe u have some parasite or bacteria in ur tanks water, maybe try a uv sterilizer. Just an idea. I know it helped out in my tank.

I think a quarantine tank is a MUST for all large tanks simply because of the number of lives invested (and often the number of dollars) in the tank. One new fish can wipe out the whole tank. Marine Velvet is probably the scariest SW disease.

Copper is the devil imo. I won't buy it. Copper doesn't treat anything that a different (safer and better) medication could treat. For Velvet and Brookynella I use Formalin (dips) which is easier to use and is safer for the fish.

Personally, I dip all incoming fish in FW (RO/DI) with some methylene blue after they are done drop acclimating (to the quarantine tank). You NEED a digital pH meter for this as you have to match the pH of the freshwater with the pH of the quarantine tank. It takes a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of baking soda to raise the pH of RO water. Here's a great reference: http://www.reefland.com/forum/marine...ne-fishes.html. This same author also has a great reference for Formalin dips, although I don't think that all incoming Clowns should be dipped as most are captive bred these days and tougher...if they are wild caught, then yes they should be dipped. http://www.reefland.com/forum/marine...ne-fishes.html

Here's something I typed out for someone else (I'm feeling lazy):

Well I hate to say it but I would be leaning more towards Velvet then anything else as its a fast killer, it wiped out my very first 65 gal in a matter of days after it had been up for almost 6 months, I only had one survivor a yellow tang. I really don't know where it came from or how to treat for it, if you even can because it kills so fast.

I don't have a QT set-up full time but can put one together in a matter of minutes. I usually only buy fish from a few LFS & from well established tanks.

A UV will do nothing for Velvet, has one on my 65 to no avale. All my fish would eat until the last day or 2, all of them had a very slimy coat & where very pale. My Volitan Lion was the hardest one to watch go because of the way Velvet eat away at it huge fins, desolved them right to the cartilage. It was so very hard to watch.

Good luck mate, hope I am very wrong for the rest of your fishes sake.

Luck has the strange habbit of turning around...

Sorry for the loss in your tank, hard lesson learned it sounds like. It still baffles me to hear about ppl who don't QT livestock before adding to the DT... I've only been in the hobby for two years and i've already heard more than enough stories to justify the time & expense, nevermind the couple occasions where my QT has already saved my ass! It's not that expensive, not that hard, i can't think of a good reason to not QT... And IMHO just because ppl get away with it does not make a legitimate reason. Russian roullette, just not worth the risk.... Btw if it wasn't answered above, no it's not recommended to have sand and live rock in the QT, unless you don't mind throwing it out on a regular basis (can't clean it properly if needed).