600 Gallon Upgrade Build

Yes this is something you'd hate to see but this was how my fish looked upon death.

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The girlfriend is not going to be happy.
 
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Oh man that sucks Wayne! I know you think this was from an lacl overdose but that picture looks like marine velvet to me. Im not trying to harp on the cause of the death, I just want to help you find a cure. You said the achilles had ich and lost an orange shoulder relatively quickly. The symptoms are very similar to Ich and I copied this from a RHF article "The signs of Marine Velvet infection are rather subtle. Respiratory difficulties seem to be one of the most common signs. Other signs are a decrease or a complete loss of appetite, rubbing against objects in the aquarium, erratic swimming behavior, and a dusty or dull velvety sheen, from which this disease gets its common name. Amyloodinium has shown a preference for first attacking the gill tissue of fish (Noga & Levy, 1995 and Stoskopf, 1993), so once it has spread to the body, I would consider the fish to be heavily infected and perhaps beyond hope of recovery."

If it is velvet than the rest of your fish are at risk as well. I did some reading on issues with Lacl dosing and most people said the only tangs that had reactions were from the zebramosa family. The majority of the fish you lost were non-tang fish. I truly believe the best thing to do and I realize it wont be easy or possible is to qt the rest of the fish and go fallow with the dt. Just my .02 here Wayne because I really do want to see your tank be a successful tank given how much time and effort you put into this.
 
SPotter said:
Oh man that sucks Wayne! I know you think this was from an lacl overdose but that picture looks like marine velvet to me. Im not trying to harp on the cause of the death, I just want to help you find a cure. You said the achilles had ich and lost an orange shoulder relatively quickly. The symptoms are very similar to Ich and I copied this from a RHF article "The signs of Marine Velvet infection are rather subtle. Respiratory difficulties seem to be one of the most common signs. Other signs are a decrease or a complete loss of appetite, rubbing against objects in the aquarium, erratic swimming behavior, and a dusty or dull velvety sheen, from which this disease gets its common name. Amyloodinium has shown a preference for first attacking the gill tissue of fish (Noga & Levy, 1995 and Stoskopf, 1993), so once it has spread to the body, I would consider the fish to be heavily infected and perhaps beyond hope of recovery."



If it is velvet than the rest of your fish are at risk as well. I did some reading on issues with Lacl dosing and most people said the only tangs that had reactions were from the zebramosa family. The majority of the fish you lost were non-tang fish. I truly believe the best thing to do and I realize it wont be easy or possible is to qt the rest of the fish and go fallow with the dt. Just my .02 here Wayne because I really do want to see your tank be a successful tank given how much time and effort you put into this.
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Thanks for the info Steve but non of the fish are displaying erratic behavior or loss of appetite. I lost the tangs way before the LaCl treatment. No unusual is happening as I have been watching the tank closely and monitoring the fish. I can't QT the fish until a fellow reefer gets his tank back up and running as I am housing his fish until he finishes moving into his new house and recycles his tank.
 
Sorry for your losses. I know it can be very discouraging when you are doing everything you can to provide them the best environment possible and things like this happen. Keep your head up.
 
Thanks muttley and dotcommer.

Today was the first exchange I performed on the ZeoVit reactors. So I took 1 liter of stones out of each reactor and replaced them with new stones. I also started dosing the bio mate to help bring down the phosphates as they are down to .22 with all the water changes that I have performed.

Also the past week and a half since my debacle I was doing 25-30 gallon water changes to get the treatment out the tank and today I did a 100 gallon water change. Hopefully I can see the results when I get back home today.

My fish are starting to breathe slower(those that were affected) and eating.
 
Wayne, Keep your head up man. I'm really Sorry to hear about your loss but I'm sure you'll get through it. This hobby definitely has it's ups and downs but the payoff however is always priceless.
 
Not much of an update but positive things are happening to the tank.

I can officially say that all fish are breathing normal and eating well. I had purchased a product called Bio Mate to aid in my phosphate problem which I tried with the LaCl and failed miserably.

Before the Bio Mate my phosphates were around .32-.35 on the Hanna Checker. I have been using it about a week now and today they were tested at .21. My Nitrates are still hovering around 5-10 ppms and I am cool with that as they are sorta assisting with lowering the phosphates. Will update in about another week to see where all the readings will be. I am awaiting the zeoheads input on my progress and adjusting to my dosing regiment.
 
Wayne, just a thought, have you analyzed upstream of your PO4 problem to figure out how your are winding up with elevated levels? Are you using filter socks? Using low-phosphate foods? Pre-rising your frozen foods? Skimming wet? These are just a few of the ways to keep DOCs out of your water column in the first place and contributing to elevated PO4. In our book, it is always better to elimnate these things in the first place, rather than trying to add something else into the system to combat them once they are in there.
 
prop-frags said:
Wayne, just a thought, have you analyzed upstream of your PO4 problem to figure out how your are winding up with elevated levels? Are you using filter socks? Using low-phosphate foods? Pre-rising your frozen foods? Skimming wet? These are just a few of the ways to keep DOCs out of your water column in the first place and contributing to elevated PO4. In our book, it is always better to elimnate these things in the first place, rather than trying to add something else into the system to combat them once they are in there.
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Yes I did Mike. My first problem I know is the rock is leaching the phosphates for sure. I rinse my food and run it in a net before feeding the tank. Also I changed all filters and DI resin on my RO/DI unit as I was getting false readings and the water out of it was testing .16. And the temp lights over my tank isn't making it better as I think they are expired and also attributing to the problem. Also I didn't have the proper dosing of the ZeoVit and that raised my nutrients which also aided in my problems. Things should be back to normal in a couple weeks so we shall see. I have a breeding pair of Darwin clownfish also and was told if I wanted them to breed I had to feed my tank 3 times a day. Do you have any suggestions for low phosphate food? Other than dr g's brine and mysis shrimp I feed omega on super veggie flakes, omega one marine flakes and new era marine grazers along with seaweed.
 
Newbie Aquarist said:
Yes I did Mike. My first problem I know is the rock is leaching the phosphates for sure. I rinse my food and run it in a net before feeding the tank. Also I changed all filters and DI resin on my RO/DI unit as I was getting false readings and the water out of it was testing .16. And the temp lights over my tank isn't making it better as I think they are expired and also attributing to the problem. Also I didn't have the proper dosing of the ZeoVit and that raised my nutrients which also aided in my problems. Things should be back to normal in a couple weeks so we shall see. I have a breeding pair of Darwin clownfish also and was told if I wanted them to breed I had to feed my tank 3 times a day. Do you have any suggestions for low phosphate food? Other than dr g's brine and mysis shrimp I feed omega on super veggie flakes, omega one marine flakes and new era marine grazers along with seaweed.
Click to expand...

Generally you want to feed food that will be almost entirely consumed, since all food has phosphate in it to some degree. I've found using high quality pellets instead of flake helps with this, since the pellets are more likely IME to be hunted down and eaten than every piece of flake food.
 
anbosu said:
Generally you want to feed food that will be almost entirely consumed, since all food has phosphate in it to some degree. I've found using high quality pellets instead of flake helps with this, since the pellets are more likely IME to be hunted down and eaten than every piece of flake food.
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Good point. Besides if they can't finish the food in under a minute then they will just have to wait until the next feeding.
 
Ive always liked the idea that flakes float around more in the water column rather than pellets that sink to the bottom. I think free floating foods tend to be consumed with a better chance than a sinking pellet unless a crab or fish hunts it down. I ocassionally feed pellets so i know my crabs get some food too. Also small feedings have really helped me keep my water quality up... no more dumping entire cubes of prerinsed mysis and big pinchfuls of flakes or pellets. I think that is the biggest contributor to high levels of nitrate anf phosphate, that we overfeed.... just my opinion.
 
+1 it is best to strain out the food from the preservatives/additiatives that they are shipped with or leach from.
 
This is a great article by RHF and he talks a lot about the impact or lack of impact that rinsing food makes in his opinion. In his tests and calculations, rinsing frozen food will only reduce the amount of phosphate/phosphorous that is being added to the tank by 1%. Im not saying that you shouldnt rinse but you will be better off feeding less if you want to significantly reduce the amount of phosphate you are putting into your tank.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/3/chemistry
 
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