The big tear-down

[FishPharmD]

Ok, I'm at my wits end here. My tank has 3 big problems:

1. One fish has a bad case of ich, despite a week of treatment with Ich-Attack (appeared to improve the first couple of days, but appears to be getting worse by the day). Some of my corals are showing a stress reaction when I dose the Ich-attack, pretty sure they don't like it much. Today, the fish is swimming funny and showing erratic behavior, scraping against rocks. Tried to catch him for 2 hours today to put him in an LFS hospital tank, but he is too skittish. I know he needs copper or formalin, and I'm afraid he's going to spread it to the rest of the fish (no signs of infection on any of them yet)

2. Can't get my NO3 below 15-20, despite a month's worth of frequent water changes (have turned my total tank volume over about 3 times in the last 45 days)

3. Hair algae very thick, no new growth recently but not any real noticeable reduction, either.

For these reasons I am seriously considering tearing down my tank tomorrow so I can catch the fish, scrub the algae off the live rock, and do a significant water change during which I can get to the dead areas behind the LR structure (I'm pretty sure I've got lots of detrius back there and it is contributing to my NO3/algae problem).

The compounding factors are that I have some sensitive corals, many attached to some rocks, and I want to minimize the damage as much as possible. I don't want to kill my nitrogen cycle when I scrub the algae off the LR. And I have a zebra lionfish, don't want to get stung.

Can everyone give me advice or opinions before I start? I am planning to get some styrofoam boxes from my LFS to temporarily hold my fish, corals, and LR in so I can clean the tank and scrub the LR.

Any and all advice and opinions are greatly appreciated!

[marxsman]

Have you tested for phosphates? I also had a hair algae problem years ago in a smaller tank (20gal). I used a Nitrate and phosphate sponge to absord the nutrients. It actually worked. The cause of the spike..well.. I do not know. I know I became very aware of how much I was feeding and my water changes. I also found out treating for ich in a reef tank can kill more than it appears, pods, worms etc and also cause a nitrate spike.

[showfish]

If I was in your shoes, I would move everything (fish only) to a QT and treat with copper based medication. The inverts would have to be moved to a seperate container temporaily while you clean the tank. Once the cleaning is done, move the inverts back in, but let the tank run fallow for four to six weeks. This way you make sure to get rid of the ick problem. After this period you can move your fish back to the display tank, and your right back in business, but this is just MO. You might want to try the Ruby Reef product, it is called kick ick. This product has been very effective in my ick cases, and really seems to be effective when the parisite is in the free-swimming stage. However it may require more than one treatment cycle. It has not had an effect on any of my corals.

[FishPharmD]

Marxsman--Phosphate is 0.5 ppm or less, been using phosphate binder for ~6 months. Have a mesh bag full of PhosGuard in my overflow box, plus phosphate binder sponge media in my power filter.

Showfish--
My LFS uses Kick Ich in their stock tanks on occasion, but I went with Ich Attack on advice from people on this board. I've never lost a fish to Ich before, but I'm pretty sure I'm fixing to if I don't act fast. Will take the advice to move ALL fish to QT since the others probably have sub-acute infections that haven't shown up yet.
What does it mean to "run your tank fallow"?
I'm pretty intent on getting rid of the algae....it is BAD....but I want to do all this without killing my cycle.

[showfish]

Running fallow means (without fish). This is really the only way to make sure you rid the entire tank of the parasite. In order for the parasite to survive it needs to have a fish host. If there is no host the parasite will die. I know its difficult to have an empty tank for this long, but you can keep the inverts, and its a good time to add that piece of coral you always wanted.

[FishPharmD]

Just wanted to give an update....

So I removed all the coral, the LR, and took the fish to the LFS QT. Everything went great over the weekend, corals came out, got rid of the algae. But yesterday, the LFS called and said that 2 of my fish had died and the others weren't looking good. They said they were eating and looking great on Sunday, but on Monday they came in and they were all dying. So I brought the ones that were left home, and to make a long story short, all I'm left with is a lionfish I got about a month ago. All my fish I've had for 3 years are dead. This is really discouraging. What went wrong? I noticed some of them had sunken in stomachs and their spines were visible. NO ICH though.

[BubbaWPB]

Sorry to hear about your losses, Casey.

[Poseidon]

WOW! That stinks. Not to blame the obvious, but are you sure the tanks @ the LFS were in good shape? Some of the LFS in my area had notoriously poor water quality, others didn't know a hydrometer from a refractometer, and still another swore miracle mud was the best thing since sliced bread...

Sorry to hear about your losses!

[FishPharmD]

Yeah, after having a tank full of healthy, thriving, (expensive...sigh), fish for the last 3 years, all of a sudden they're all gone. You can really grow attached to fish that you raise from little minnows into vibrant adults, each with their own personality.

I was very meticulous in the way that I caught them and transported them from my tank to the LFS. I am in tight with my LFS and so they pretty much give me free roam around there. They only had one tank available for treatment that was out of the open system. They've not had the best luck keeping fish alive in that tank (which was typically used as a stock tank) in the recent past, but most deaths were isolated and evolved slowly. Never did they decline overnight or even in a couple of days that I was aware of. I tested that water with every test they had in the store (including copper), and other than a 40ppm NO3 (which I corrected with a ~40% water change before adding the fish), it checked out o.k. and I added copper to the proper level myself. I was hesitant to put them in THAT tank but I was sort of out of options. What's strange is that what they were there for (ich) never showed up on any of them. Even the ich on the tang was vastly improved the next day (Sun), and they were all eating and swimming ok. By Monday afternoon, they all had shrunken stomachs, were very wasted looking, and none could stay afloat within the water column. I thought that it might have something to do with their air bladders, but my inexperience with fish diseases doesn't help me out.
Does anyone have an idea about what might have happened here?

If you are reading this thread and are considering doing what I did, PLEASE think twice.... LFS QT tanks can be VERY unstable, even with proper care and seemingly good water parameters.

It was my choice to put them in that tank and therefore my fault that they died, since I knew the tank had a questionable history. I don't hold the LFS responsible, but needless to say won't use their QT tank again. I'm sure that I could have treated the ich in my own tank with a different product or some other way.

I had 6 beautiful, healthy, thriving fish one day, and the next day *POOF* they are all gone ......

[almostdiva]

Casey,

Very sorry for all of your losses....

Obviously something crazy w the LFS tank. Some kind of toxin (cleaner, bleach, something in there that wouldn't show on a test but is still bad for your fish).

Did your lion make it? You can spend the next 6 weeks evaluating fish and deciding what you want to keep and building an amazing tank. I know it's not much in the way of consolation...

What fish did you lose?

Rebecca

[zhenya]

It was my choice to put them in that tank and therefore my fault that they died, since I knew the tank had a questionable history. I don't hold the LFS responsible, but needless to say won't use their QT tank again. I'm sure that I could have treated the ich in my own tank with a different product or some other way.

I had 6 beautiful, healthy, thriving fish one day, and the next day *POOF* they are all gone ......

Sorry to hear this, Casey..

Not to point the abvious and dwell on what happened, but just to make a point for future readers of this thread, I think that you're probably right that you could;ve done it better by not going the LFS route.
Simple rubbermade container, 25-30 gallons, heater and hang on filter would;ve kept your fish alive much better. I;ve done it in the past without problems for three four days.

I know all to well how it feels loosing all of the fish, I came back from vacation one day to find all of my 9 fish dead.... Sorry you had to go through it, Casey.

[tkendall]

Sorry to hear about the fish. I too lost all of my fish in a LFS in Lubbock over Chistmas break when I was in college. They were just supposed to fish sit for me until I could get back into the dorm.

Keeping a small quarantine tank running is a really good idea. Just keep a damsel or some such hardy fish in there to keep the bacteria going. If you don't like having another small tank running all the time you could keep a power filter running with biological media in it and use that on whatever kind of container you want to use for the QT. Of course you have to clean the unit thoroughly and replace the media in the filter everytime you reconnect it to the reef to avoid contamination.

[dougc]

I feel your pain. I have lost all the fish in a tank twice, once to a tank crash and the other to a broken tank. We do get attached to these creatures. I have several times spent many times more than I paid for a fish trying to save it from disease. People probably thought my wife was nuts when she brought our guinea pig to the vet, but that ball of fur meant something to her. I hope your lion makes it.

Although the possibility of a problem in the LFS tank cannot be ruled out, neither can the possibility that the trigger brought a pathogen into the tank be ruled out, either. Years ago, before quarantine and cell-phone were household words, I had my tank get pretty much wiped out more than once by the simple addition of a new fish. Although it is commendable for the store to quarantine new arrivals, I would not trust that they had isolated each fish to the extent necessary to satisfy me. I used to frequent a store that quarantined new fish for two weeks, but I still gave them a month in quarantine after bringing them home.

You don't even really need to keep the quarantine tank going all the time. I have a small Fluval filter with a filter pad that I keep in my sump all the time. It provides a ready-made biofilter that I can use at a moment's notice. After I use it in the quarantine tank, I remove the filter pads and replace them with new ones.

[optical]

sounds like they were just stressed out. i had a fish die probablly due to stress. i tried to catch it for an hour, totally flippin him out. he was breathing heavy and didnt eat the next day and he died that day. imagine what it would be like if you were one of the fish in your tank with some big monster trying to get you! i would probablly be scared to death too. its frustrating...sorry though, thats too bad.