Hi everyone, first time/long time.
I have a new tank (2.5 months)- 40g FOWLR. I have a CUC, Ocellaris pair, and a Coral Beauty Angel.
To save time and keystrokes, I'll get to the point. The CUC (dozen blue legs and a few snails) were the first creatures (aside from LR) I added to the tank after a 5 week cycle. After another week, I added the pair of clowns I picked up from the LFS. They were perfect from the start. About a week an a half ago, I added a carefully selected Coral Beauty Angel from my LFS (I'm lucky enough to have a hobbyist first/ salesperson second).
After adding the Coral Beauty Angel, I had a surprisingly high ammonia spike. I test weekly, but I noticed the CBA and the clown pair weren't as active and tested immediately the results were between .25 and .5ppm. I immediately did a 50% water change that day, then did 25-30% changes over the next few days while testing every day. After about 3 days, when ammonia levels had dropped (but not completely gone away), I noticed a whitish mucus on the clowns' bodies and fins. I googled, scanned this forum (and others), checked out the wetweb diagnosis page, etc. and Brooklynella seemed to be the overwhelming answer (or possibly velvet).
I have a 20H with hob filter setup for quarantine/hospital, but since the clowns were both eating fine and behaving relatively normally, I opted to keep them in the DT since A) if it was brook the tank is infected and B) I worried that the stress of netting and treating might be the death sentence. Over the past week or so, the behavior of both improved, the mucus/slime subsided and the tank parameters are balanced again: Amonia-0, -Nitirite- 0, PH-7.8, Nitrate- 5, Salinity- 1.024, Temp.- 78.
I know it's not easy to do without a picture, but any guesses as to what happened? I was certain that it was Brook (it looked exactly like the the photos I've seen) and I was certain that they'd die pretty quickly. Now I'm not sure, especially since both fish that exhibited signs survived and are back to normal. Would exposure to Ammonia cause a reaction that a newbie might confuse for Brooklynella? Is it possible it was brook, but the improved water quality allowed for symptoms to subside?
And part two of the question, what would you recommend to prevent this from happening again in the future? I have 35lbs of live rock, an HOB skimmer, and a marineland penguin 200 HOB filter for good measure. I've read that adding a little food in the days before adding a fish could help. It's not a huge deal as if I add anything else, it'll be a Royal Gramma and maybe a skunk cleaner, but definitely not for a little while. I just want to get an idea of what happened. I'm sure I went wrong somewhere (and my fish paid for it). I'd like to make sure it doesn't happen again.
I have a new tank (2.5 months)- 40g FOWLR. I have a CUC, Ocellaris pair, and a Coral Beauty Angel.
To save time and keystrokes, I'll get to the point. The CUC (dozen blue legs and a few snails) were the first creatures (aside from LR) I added to the tank after a 5 week cycle. After another week, I added the pair of clowns I picked up from the LFS. They were perfect from the start. About a week an a half ago, I added a carefully selected Coral Beauty Angel from my LFS (I'm lucky enough to have a hobbyist first/ salesperson second).
After adding the Coral Beauty Angel, I had a surprisingly high ammonia spike. I test weekly, but I noticed the CBA and the clown pair weren't as active and tested immediately the results were between .25 and .5ppm. I immediately did a 50% water change that day, then did 25-30% changes over the next few days while testing every day. After about 3 days, when ammonia levels had dropped (but not completely gone away), I noticed a whitish mucus on the clowns' bodies and fins. I googled, scanned this forum (and others), checked out the wetweb diagnosis page, etc. and Brooklynella seemed to be the overwhelming answer (or possibly velvet).
I have a 20H with hob filter setup for quarantine/hospital, but since the clowns were both eating fine and behaving relatively normally, I opted to keep them in the DT since A) if it was brook the tank is infected and B) I worried that the stress of netting and treating might be the death sentence. Over the past week or so, the behavior of both improved, the mucus/slime subsided and the tank parameters are balanced again: Amonia-0, -Nitirite- 0, PH-7.8, Nitrate- 5, Salinity- 1.024, Temp.- 78.
I know it's not easy to do without a picture, but any guesses as to what happened? I was certain that it was Brook (it looked exactly like the the photos I've seen) and I was certain that they'd die pretty quickly. Now I'm not sure, especially since both fish that exhibited signs survived and are back to normal. Would exposure to Ammonia cause a reaction that a newbie might confuse for Brooklynella? Is it possible it was brook, but the improved water quality allowed for symptoms to subside?
And part two of the question, what would you recommend to prevent this from happening again in the future? I have 35lbs of live rock, an HOB skimmer, and a marineland penguin 200 HOB filter for good measure. I've read that adding a little food in the days before adding a fish could help. It's not a huge deal as if I add anything else, it'll be a Royal Gramma and maybe a skunk cleaner, but definitely not for a little while. I just want to get an idea of what happened. I'm sure I went wrong somewhere (and my fish paid for it). I'd like to make sure it doesn't happen again.
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