Help! Fish breathing heavy, loss of appetite

[S0K]

Hello everyone,

So I am doing hyposalinity on my tank atm it's been about 2 weeks now because my kole tang had come down with a bad case of ich. He's still looking rather beat up right now but he is eating and I don't see any spots on him anymore.

BUT my yellow tang and my ocellaris clownfish have both stopped eating today and my yellow tang is pale indicating he is stressed and I see spots on him! How is this possible when the tank has been in HYPO mode?! I just checked the water params and they are as follows:

Sg: 1.009-1.010 (a bit high?)
Ammonia: 0
Nitrates: between 5 and 10 ppm
pH: 8 (I know it's a bit low...hard to maintain during hypo)

Tests done with Salifert test kits.

I am very worried because the yellow tang is always bright and bold and full of energy and the clownfish although generally kind of lazy always goes into beast mode at feeding time and he has proven to be the toughest fish I've ever had, he was my second fish bought since in the hobby.

Also, one of my chromis has gone missing since yesterday...he was tiny and I can't find him. No inverts or predators in the tank. I'm assuming he's dead but there's been no ammonia spike so can't be sure.

What's going on here? Is it because of ich?? What can I do I need suggestions fast I really don't want to lose these guys I feel like crying lol

I'm going to do a small water change right now

Oh the tank is 125 gallon fowlr, with 1 ocellaris clown, 1 kole tang, 1 yellow tang, 1 chromis and possibly 1 more chromis if he's still alive

[neoh]

temperature? surface agitation? Do you have a water pump in there, or anything that is circulating the water or breaking the surface to allow adequate oxygen?

[S0K]

Originally Posted by neoh

temperature? surface agitation? Do you have a water pump in there, or anything that is circulating the water or breaking the surface to allow adequate oxygen?

Temp 76

2 koralia 1500gph's, one on each end of the tank, plenty of surface agitation

[Spyd]

What is your alk level? It may be very low. Have you been dosing alk or a ph buffer at all?

Putting the whole tank in hypo was a little drastic IMO. If only one fish had ich, I would have just left it alone and fed some garlic puree with the food to boost all of their immune systems.

How long have you been in hypo for now?

[MitchM]

If that tank was put in front of me right now, I would remove fish that are showing signs of ich, along with some of the hypo tank water into a separate qt tank.
I would then start slowly raising the salinity of the display tank again.
The hypo is stressing out your currently healthy fish.
Find that missing chromis.

[George]

What do you use to measure salinity? There is a big difference between 1.009 and 1.010 in term of treating marine ich with hypo.
It's probably a good idea at this point to abort hypo treatment for now since it's not working for you. Raise your salinity to 1.017 slowly. The lower than NSW salinity is to help with metabolism of the fish and oxygen level.
After you get your fish look normal again, sans the marine ich, you can choose other methods to treat marine ich. Look up tank transfer method or copper to treat marine ich. You require additional tank(s) for those methods.
Good luck.

[S0K]

Salinity is 1.009 now after water change, I'm using a Refractometer. I said 1.009-10 because it fluctuates due to water evaporation

Lights are off still so can't see how the fish are doing this morning

I thought last night about moving them all to another tank and treating with cupramine but I thought first I'd have to get the salinity back up which will take about a week and if they're already breathing heavy and not eating then the raise in salinity plus added stress from moving the fish will just promote more ich growth and the fish will die before I even get to use the cupramine...

[S0K]

Urgg I wish I did cupramine from the start...but I wanted the ich gone from the tank completely and didn't want to move all the fish to a qt and stress them out further. I also didn't want to destroy my rockwork...sigh

This is a stressful hobby.

[George]

Originally Posted by S0K

Salinity is 1.009 now after water change, I'm using a Refractometer. I said 1.009-10 because it fluctuates due to water evaporation
...

yeah...I don't know if you have an ATO but usually when people do hypo, they set the ATO to a tight range so that salinity doesn't change. 1.010 is not going to work against most strains of marine ich. Heck, even 1.009 is high for some strains.

[Cujo#31]

My 2 bits....if ich is in display, it is there forever as long as there are hosts. Display has to run fallow for as long as u do hypo. In the end even Hypo isnt the esaiest route, and odds are good u will lose one or two in the process. Yes monitor salinity very carefully. The larger the volume of water u can run during hypo greatly decreases saline level swings with evap. As the restof the good folks here have said watch alk and ph closely. At the expense of redundant, raise alk levels slowly.
good luck on ur long and painful road. I feel ur pain brother.