Dead Chromis and Uronema Marinum HELP!!

[Lee_is_007]

I just bought 4 blue green Chromis and almost immediately 1 died from what looks like uronema marinum. Then the next day or two 2 more died until today the last 1 died.

I got them to cycle my new tank that has been running for about 4 weeks. My water is perfect so I'm 100 percent this parasite came with the Chromis from the LFS.

My question is how do I get this parasite outta my tank? It still lives without a host fish on detritus and algae. I still have in my tank live sand, choice live rock and about 4 hermit crabs. Does anyone have any idea how to rid this problem? Any success stories with this parasite? Will a UV sterilizer rid the problem? Formalin?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Lee

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[benjc]

Uv may help control it, but won't erradicate it. If I recall correctly, formalin or any formaldahyde containing treatments would be effective. Otherwise breaking down and drying out the tank, rock, and sand is the way to go.
I've been where you are; I had my tank fallow to erradicate Ich, and setup a uv to knock-down the uronema population (chose to accept it in my tank), skim heavily, and work to reduce the stress level among the fish in my tank. And qt everything.

 

[Lee_is_007]

Thanks for the input Benjc.

I guess I'm just going to UV it and see in about a week or two. I'll try a yellow tail damsel and see if he does OK seeing how they are very hardy.

Do you have any idea how you would use the UV treatment? Like keep the UV on 24hrs for the first 2 or 3 days then just 5 hours outta the day for the rest of the week? I've never had to use one before

 

[MrTuskfish]

This seems to be a problem with every new chromis lately; i have no idea why. I would stay away from these fish for a while, something is going on with them. At least get the fish into a HT/QT to limit exposure to other fish. Usually, you'd have to treat all your fish; but I just don't know how this "epidemic" of Uronema behaves. Assuming that's what it is, I'm not even sure of that.

 

[h2so4hurts]

It's a ciliated parasite. You can kill it with formalin or freshwater dips (infective from 20-31ppt salinity). All courtesy of the Noga Fish Disease textbook.