Marine Velvet horribleness

[fishoholic]

Originally Posted by Powertec

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.

[marie]

Originally Posted by fishoholic

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

[Powertec]

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.

[my2rotties]

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.

[Atomikk]

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!