Nitrate Illness?

[scout]

I'm slowly moving a 3 year old 30 gal reef into a 72 gal 3 year old FO and made a BIG mistake. I got about 25 lbs of fiji from the LFS and it turns out it was not fully cured. I dumped it into the 72 with 4 fish in the tank (med emporer, flame angel, Royal Gramma, lyretail anthias. The tank was reading 1 ppm NO2 2 weeks ago. It's now down to less than .25 ppm. The NO3 is a little over 100 ppm today. The fish are very listless and the emporer has light pactches (splotches) all over his body. They are all still eating, but not with the vigor they showed in the past.

Cal -420
PH -8.0
alk -3.5
NH3 -0
NO2 - .25
NO3 - 110

Currently have approx 30 lbs LR, will be adding 5-10 more lbs from 30 gal tomorrow as well as doing a 20 gallon water change of RO water. DSB only 2 weeks old. In sump skimmer, Emperor 400 that has been on tank for past 2 years.

My question is are the fish acting this way because of the exposure to the past high nitrite or the current high nitrate, or is something else going on? BTW this is NOT ich.

I will try to get a pict of the emporer later tonight if that will help.

Thanks
Mike

[wgscott]

My fish are currently swimming in a sea containing an obsenely high amount of nitrate and they are healthy as can be, so my guess is that it is other stresses.

[scout]

Tradgedy! Last night I moved the rock around to get a better look at the fish and after much reasearch on the net, I diagonosed Marine Velvet. Was planning on heading to the LFS this morning and starting a hosp tank. Too late. Got up this morning and all fish are laying on the bottom of the tank.
I'm trying to figure out what went wrong. The bottom line is I added uncured rock to the tank. Did the rock introduce the Velvet or was it always present and the resulting water conditions cause the fish to be unable to fight it off. Keep in mind this was an established FO for the last 3 years.

Mike

[wgscott]

The disease definitely can be introduced from rock or anything that has water in it, as it is a water-borne parasite. This disease also will kill everything quite quickly.

Unfortunately poisoning, including ammonia poisoning or heavy metal poisoning, can do much the same with many of the same symptoms.

Was the rock in a tank at the LFS or was it delivered directly from the ocean? If it came directly from the ocean, it is hard to imagine that there would be a significant contamination of oodinium.

Don't add any fish for 3 months. This should be long enough to starve the parasites. Meanwhile use this time to get the reef balanced and established.

[scout]

The rock (fiji) had been in the LFS tanks for 2-3 days.
Everything I read last night said velvet died out in 4-6 weeks. I WAS planning on waiting 6-8 weeks, but 3 months? The way I feel right now, I would rather wait longer than shorter.
Can I go ahead and stock inverts? I assume they are not infected by the velvet? Im right in the middle of establishing my DSB.

Man I feel terrible right now. Who'd every think you could get attached to a bunch of fish!

Mike

[wgscott]

The longer you wait the safer you will be. "Three months" is arbitrary, but probably should be long enough. Meanwhile if it were me I would run activated carbon and a polyfilter just in case it was a toxin (remember it could be both). It is a good chance to let the invertibrates establish themselves, and no one says you can't buy the fish now and have them in the smaller tank, (one at a time) and quaranteen them in a well-established FO tank for awhile.

[wgscott]

Invertibrates should be fine by the way. They only parasitise fish. It will also be a good indication if there is anyting else wrong (ie., toxins).

I've been back into the hobby for about 5 years now and I haven't seen a case of velvet. (I haven't exactly gone looking for it either.) I'm not saying it is all that rare, but you usually don't see it because the fish are all dead so fast. If it came in with the rocks, you should try to find out if there have been any ill fish at the store. It would seem to me it would be spreading like wildfire through the LFS if they had it there.

[slojmn]

I would hold out on the inverts until your cycle is completely over. With the readings you had you were definately going through a cycle with that newer rock. If you are adding more fully cured rock then the cycle will probably be complete in a short itme. Just to make sure though get solid readings for a week or so before adding the inverts. Snails and shrimp will be affected by the higher nitrate readings. I have heard that the nitrite is very detrimental to the fish, even more so than ammonia. Of course the combo is a killer. Good luck and I am so sorry for your losses. I totally understand how attached one can become.

[ChrisPrusha]

I very sorry to hear about your tragedy.

I had marine velvet in my tank a few years ago and it killed a tang and a dwarf angel within a few days (the other fish, thankfully, were spared). What a lousy couple of days!

The advice given above is excellent...wait for the tank to cycle before adding anything else.

I am hopeful that you understand that this can happen to the best of us...I'm very glad to see you're jumping right back up on that horse! Good luck!

Chris