My Deadly Hospital Tank

[daniella3d]

I think you got an ammonia skike and that burned the fish gill. There is really not much nitrifying bacterias on the water column. The good bacterias rest on the liverock and sand. When ever I put a fish in Quarantine I always put pieces of liverock and there is no ammonia at all.

I have been doing 4 weeks hyposalinity in a 20 gallons with 2 pieces of liverock that I took from my frag tank and that is enough to control the nitrification.

Of course what ever was on that liverock died, all pods, bristle stars, bristles worms etc.. I just syphon them out. But the good bacterias adjust and survive well and do the job well.

Remember that at the high PH we have in saltwater, the free and toxic ammonia is very dangerous, even just a trace of it will kill a fish in few hours. The lower the PH the less ammonia will be in the free toxic form.

Originally Posted by cwatkins

If I was ever sick I'd for sure not want to visit my hospital tank because nothing ever survives the night! (This has happened twice now).

So my theory is, by the time I am able to catch them and move them to the hospital, they are either beyond recovery and that's why they don't survive the night,

OR

I'm doing something wrong.

I've had my 90G with 30G sump for a year now and everything is well. But it's also more forgiving due to the water volume. I've got a dozen small fish and a few soft corals, all doing really well.

So both times I've setup the hospital tank, I've done a partial W/C and used the water from the DT to fill the hospital tank. I then use a normal heater set at 79 and I have an aerating maxi-jet style power head (Hagen maybe?). So I adjust it so it's moving normal amount of water in the hospital, and I open up the air valve so it starts aerating as it moves the water. (also throw in some PVC elbows, etc).

I setup the hospital Thursday night during a W/C and left it running overnight, and then Friday after work I caught the flame angel very easily and transfered him to the hospital tank. He's sick because a Clown has been bullying him and nipping at his fins, which were looking very poor (and he has that sick look to him with barely any tail fin left).

I dosed it with 5ml of Melafix, a drop of garlic, and a drop of selcon, fed him a very small amount of food and he went after some pieces.

Well all was well and he was eating, and then really early this morning about 1am before bed I noticed he wasn't swimming and was doing the rapid breathing thing. I checked the power head and it was aerating the tank still, so I figured that he must be on his way out.

And by the time I went downstairs to check on the tanks at 3:45am (Power outage -- another interesting story), well he was dead.

I also noticed the water in the hospital tank started to have a little tinge of opaqueness.

I ran across this today as well: http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/...dont-work.html

Maybe the good bacteria in my DT are what's toasting my hospital tanks?

What am I doing wrong, or is it just bad luck?