So very frustrated!

[Tee]

I'm so frustrated, I've kept freshwater and brackish fish (discus, africans, columbians, scats, etc) for about 10 years with lots of success. Well a year ago I set up a FOWLR 29gal. with DSP powerhead and skimmer. I didn't but fish in it until about 6 weeks ago, 2 ocellaris clowns. I've had nothing but problems since, ich, refusal to eat, internal parasites, etc. The fish were in QT until about a week ago. They started eating well and everything seemed to clear up. I put them in the display tank and now the larger one is laying on the bottom(still upright) and the small one looks kinda translucent. The perameters are:
ammonia = 0
nitrite = 0
ph = 8.4
temp = 78o
P04 = .025
sg = 1.025

The QT perameters are the same

I also noticed they are very sensitive to the light. I have 4 no tubes, 2- blues actinics, 1- 50/50 and 1 full spectrum. When the lights are out they are much more active.

I'm getting so frustrated with the SW any advice/help will be greatly appreciated. TIA

[CaptainK]

Hi Tee,
What type of test kits are you using? And how old are they?
Also if the fish seem to be more active in the dark, maybe you might want to keep them that way and the slowly get them used to the light over a period of time?
What are you feeding them?
And last question from me, what gave it away that they had internal parasites or ich and how did you treat these?

-CaptK

[Tee]

Well I lost one. Reasons for ick and internal par. diagnosis: White salt like specs all over, white stringy feces. I treated with garlic food, and coppersafe in QT for 5 weeks. Both were eating well after treatment. Test kits are only a couple months old by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals.

[Mikeman]

where did you get them? Were they eating at the lfs?

[the_blue_tuna]

Sorry to hear things are going so rough for you. If I recall you have had lots of problems with these clowns right from the start . The spots sound like Ich. The stringy white feces I cant comment on as I have not ran across that myself. The Ich can be continually perpetuated by stress. If these fish were weak/sick to start with and you treated the Ich but did not cure the cause the symptoms (white spots/parasites) will just keep returning. If you think the lights are bothering them you can remove a bulb or two , although I dont really think that is your cause. It sounds like you may have just got some bad specimens to start with. Time is your friend now. By that I mean dont try to introduce any new fish for awhile. See how the remaining clown does. You dont have any inverts in your tank yet do you? If that is the case you may want to try hyposalinity on the remaining fish rather than pulling it out and putting it in a Qtank. I have links on how to do this on my page . You can get to it through the link in my sig. You dont want to add copper to the main tank though unless you just cant avoid it. Hope things turn around for you soon!!!

[Tee]

I'm definitely going to wait before getting anymore. They were wild caught so I'm going to go with tank raised later down the road. They were both eating at one point but never stopped to white stringy feces. I'll try the gradual hypo. Thanks for your help. I really appreicate it.