[fly guy]

I was just referred here to talk to leebca because was told he is da man.

heres the deal......both my 90 and my 225 got cooked over the holiday. Ill spare you the details but just say the tank that the tank this rabbitfish was in hit 100 degrees. A small tomini was what i thought was the only survivor.

I got the temp down and found hthe rabbitfish with his face stuck to a cls intake. I figured he was a goner and put him in the sump to give him a chance without intakes to worry about. I tried to feed him down there but he wouldnt eat. Yesterday afternoon he was swimming ok so i moved him back to the display. He is swimming strong enough that the intakes are not an issue but he will still not eat and his face and tail are starting to deteriorate. His face rapidly.

I have a TON of flow and if he wasnt swimming marginally well in it i would have already put him out of his misery. But he IS swimming well but still wont eat.

As far as water quality info i can give you.....i can just say it was a 100% sps tank with a ton of flow, barebottom and a big skimmer. I did pull a couple of decent sized waterchanges and i am confident the water quality is back up to where it was before the boil. I am going to begin restocking this week.

Any suggestions that may help to save this fish??

I will also add that his face didnt look 1/10 this bad last night when i moved him back to the display. the deterioration is moving fast.

Thanks in advance for any insight or suggestions

-bill

[leebca]

WELCOME TO REEFLAND!

Sorry to hear of the problem.

Actually one of the worst things that can happen is the lowering of the temperature. The raising of the temperature of course causes a great change in water quality, oxygen content and wreaks havoc on the physiology of the fish, BUT what destroys the mucous layer is the change in temperature, mostly the llowering of the temperature.

Faced with the two moves (a rise then lowering) in temperature I'd say the fish has some 'run-away' bacterial infection. It would not likely be just a typical surface bacterial type infection, but some of them will be of the opportunistic systemic kind -- the kind that don't normally infect a fish because they can't get through their mucous coating. These infections can move quickly.

The fish needs to be moved to a hospital tank where water quality is kept top notch. The fish will need treatment with antibiotics that are fairly strong and aimed at the Mycobacterium sp.

I would suggest treatment with both Nitrofurazone and Kanamycin. One product contains both. That is called Spectrogram.

However, there isn't much time left to help the fish. Once healing, the fish will eat. Having been fed well and healthy, the fish can go a few weeks without eating. If that last photo was of the fish 'in better days' then I'd say your Magnificent can live without food for a while. But it won't last long without immediate treatment. That treatment must be done in a hospital tank.

You can begin the hospital tank with old water from the aquarium, then for water changes on the hospital tank, use new made up salt water. Unless you have a biological filter standing by, your hospital tank will not have an active biological filter. Even if it did the use of this particular set of antibiotics would likely kill or stop the activity of the biological filter. Thus, you'll need to do daily water changes of no less than 50% of the hospital tank water. When the fish eats, it will need two or three such water changes per day, without a biological filter.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask. There is a lot of reading material in this Forum and references to articles that you may find useful. Check this link out for a list of other links:
Table/Contents - Link List

If you want to save this fish, it will cost you a lot of time and effort, if you act fast enough.

Please keep us informed.

[fly guy]

Thank you very much for the detailed response.

I with regret have to tell you he didnt make it through the day. I left for a few hours and returned to him stuck to one of my intakes(which dont have a ton of suction to them). It was the backside of him stuck and he wasnt completely dead. But the rotting that was going on on his head was nearly twice what it was in the pic i took this morning. So i think you are probably spot on that it was a serious infection and needed treated asap. I let him float around the tank every which way possible with no swimming respopnse for about 20 minutes and breath super heavily and I then put him out of his misery.

Out of curiousity. Do you think if he wouldnt have sustained the initial injury to his face where the infection started that maybe the infection wouldnt have happened??

I will also offer a little further detail as far as how i brought the temp down. Being as it was a sps tank and all corals were a complete loss, i was in no hurry to get it down even close to normal temps. (which is 80-83) I brought it down fairly slowly considering. down to 91 in the first 24 hours, then to 85 the next 24. Like i said before the tomini appears as though nothing happened. What would you have done in the same circumstances as far as bringing the temp down??

here is a pic of the 90 he was in the day after i got home. Unfortunately there was a 225 that was more mature and even more heavily stocked with sps that was a complete coral loss as well. 5 of 8 fish did survive in that tank.

[Frag Hag]

fly-guy,

What a heartbreaker! Sending wishes for a smooth recovery back to healthy tanks.

Shay

[weez1959]

I'm so sorry for your losses, I know how horrible it is to go through something like that, Last year I lost almost everything due to an anemone dying and getting stuck in a powerhead overnight. I lost all my fish except 2 clowns
(I guess they were immune to the anemone stings??) and a few corals as well.
Do you think the live rock was affected?

[leebca]

I'm very sorry, Bill. I sort of expected this, as I figured it unlikely you could respond fast enough.

There is a group of bacteria that specialize in 'flesh eating' ability. Without testing, I don't know of course, but that is the type of infection they cause and the speed with which they operate. These bacteria are on the opportunistic side of the pathogen chart. They don't get a foothold very easily but when they do. . .

If I am correct, then the sequence was more than likely some 'regular bacteria' started the degradation and these other bacteria took over. They were likely to take over because the fish couldn't mobilize its defenses fast enough. Why couldn't the fish do this?

There can be more that just a couple of reasons. It can be nutritional, water quality, environment, injury, etc. or any combination of these. In this scenario I'd have to put it down to environment.

I don;t know exactly what you did to bring the temperature down, however I would have done nothing (if there was only fish involved). I would let the system cool on its own. Temperature drops as little as 2F over 24 hours or less have shown to have a pronounced negative impact on the fish's ability to defend itself physiologically (immune system, mucous coating, etc.).

You were in a loss-loss situation, I'm afraid, with temperatures that high. Aerating the water with a pure oxygen source would be the only thing I'd do while waiting for the water to loose its heat on its own. Handling the oxygen, though, can be very tricky and dangerous.

Other than preventing the event itself, I'd say you did the best you could.

[fly guy]

Thanks for the kind wishes and condolences everyone.

Leebca....what you say makes sense. I probablydid bring the temp down way too fast in reference to what you just said. Especially being as there were only 1.5 fish to worry about remaining.

In the 225, which only hit 94.......none of the fish that werent dead in the first place were phased by bringing it down a little quicker. But i did have some non-sps corals that I was able to save in that system.

Anyway...thanks again for the welcome and encouragement, and thanks leebca for sharing your time and insight. I will poke my head in here more often. I had never even heard of the site until ralphie16 referred me here.

quote weez59-do you think the live rock was affected?

Not as far as the bacteria I dont. It was probably affected to some degree i couldnt explain, but In cooking(not in the oven) quite a few batches of rock i have found that the cooking process to turgor the phosphates out of the rock actually occurs faster at elevated temps of 90 and above. That bacteria is tough stuff.

Want to see the full ugliness of what happened to me last week??

Besides the clams and fish this is pretty much the extent of it. Hard lesson learned. Dont take anything for granted guys and CYA when you leave.

[leebca]

The graveyard.

[Yankee I Am]

Im pretty new but I am so so sry for the loss...