Dead Ocellaris (Im new to the hobby)

[aaronw1198]

Need a little help/advice

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Hello everyone. I have been lurking around this forum for the past 6 months really wanting to start a saltwater tank. About 3 months ago I decided to pull the trigger and ease my way into the hobby. I started off slowly, I had no interest in rushing things. So for the past 3 months I have had a 50 gallon tank with HOB filter and 2 Hydor circulation pumps, heater, 40 lbs of dry rock, and 4 lbs of live rock. I wanted to keep things simple and upgrade as I went along. Well my tank finished its fishless cycle in a little under 2 months so I waited another 2 weeks and added a small CUC; 6 scarlet hermit crabs, 1 Astraea Turbo Snail, and 3 bumblebee snails. The hermit crabs and snails are doing awesome. Most of the hermit crabs have molted and the snails seem fine. So I took this as a small victory. A couple of weeks ago I finally decided to add a fish.

Parameters
Temp-78 F
Ammonia- 0 ppm
Nitrites- 0 ppm
Nitrates- 0 ppm
Salinity- 1.024 sg
pH- 8.2

Went to my LFS and they had 2 awesome Ocellaris Clownfish which they said were tank bred. Fell in love with the tiny little guys so I decided to pick up the pair of them. Tool them home and slowly drip acclimated them for approx 3 hours. They were great in the tank for the first 2 days! They had awesome color to them, were very active, and eating great. On the second day one had died. He showed no signs of distress and had no abnormalities on his body. I kind of chalked it down to be being unexperienced.

Parameters the day of the death
Temp-78 F
Ammonia- 0 ppm
Nitrites- 0 ppm
Nitrates- 10 ppm
Salinity- 1.024 sg
pH- 8.0 tested early in the day when I discovered his body

I kind of expected a slight increase in Nitrates just because I was finally adding something to the tank increasing the bioload and adding the extra nutrients from feeding.

Well now almost a week later the second Ocellaris isnt looking too good. He has stopped eating, was gasping at the surface, and his mouth/lips appear to be swollen and pale. He has stopped gasping at the surface for now, but he still wont eat and his mouth is still swollen and pale. It doesnt appear to have any mucus or slime on him at all. He has no other body abnormalities that I can see. No spots of any color. I have researched this and it seems most the time it involves a new clownfish and a host anenome causing the swollen mouth but I do not have any corals or anenomes at this time.

Parameters
Temp-78 F
Ammonia- 0 ppm
Nitrites- 0 ppm
Nitrates- 0 ppm
Salinity- 1.024 sg
pH- 8.2

Everyone has told me not to get frustrated in this hobby. And I am being patient, taking it slowly. Testing my parameters often. But is hard to not get a little frustrated because I dont know what is happening and I think I am doing everything correctly. If you have any advice or suggestion of what it could be please let me know. Thanks.

Update: The second fish died last night. He was still wasnt eating that day but he was acting a little better, not gasping at the surface and swimming normally. Neither fish rubbed up against objects in the tank or showed any abnormal body conditions except the swollen and pale mouth.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2456112

This link has some pictures. Any help or advice would be awesome! Thanks.

 

[GroktheCube]

Sorry to hear about the loss of your first fish, that's got to be frustrating.

As I'm sure you've gathered by reading a bit on this forum, most of us are big proponents of a quarantine tank. I'd make getting one up and running priority one, because it will make new arrivals much easier to deal with in the future.

Also, I'd recommend against doing such a long drip in the future. IMO/IME, long acclimation for the vast majority of animals does far more harm than good. Ideally you want to have your QT already set up running at a salinity within spitting distance of wherever you're sourcing your fish from. The "standard" recommendation on these boards is to do a ~20 minute drip if salinity isn't within spitting distance. FWIW, I think that even this is extremely conservative.

Based on your description of appearance and behavior, and taking a quick peak at the photos, I'd suspect either flukes or brooklynella. Residual ammonia poisoning from the long drip is also possible, but unless it was a very long car-ride from the LFS, that probably wasn't it.

What I'd do different next time:

If I see a fish in obvious respiratory distress, especially if it's severe (gasping a surface), and the fish isn't obviously in hypoxic conditions or experiencing ammonia poisoning, I'll do a fresh water dip ASAP. To do a freshwater dip, match the temperature and pH to the fish's tank water as closely as you can. You can raise the pH using any sort of alkalinity buffer. I aerate the water very well, and leave the fish in for 3-5 minutes.

After the dip, allow the contents to settle, and carefully check the bottom of the container for gill flukes. The smaller ones can be half of a millimeter (~1/48th of an inch) in length. They're usually very pale white, almost clear, and are often oval or teardrop shaped.

If flukes fall off during the dip, this is a definitive diagnosis, and a few rounds of prazipro will clear it right up.

If flukes don't drop off, but the fish improves afterwards, it's probably velvet (or maybe brooklynella, but that doesn't always respond to FWD alone), and treatment should be started immediately. My go to in this case would be chloroquine (as long as there are no chloroquine intolerant fish like wrasses being treated), as it will treat both velvet and brook, and can be dosed to a full therapeutic dose immediately unlike copper, and is not as hard on the fish as formalin.

If the FWD does not help the fish in respiratory distress, there are a few possible causes:
-Ich (Cryptocaryon)
-Brook (though an FWD often offers at least some relief here)
-Severe pre-existing gill damage
-Hypoxia
-Some sort of poisoning

Super condensed version:

Set up a QT. Don't drip for so long. Be prepared ahead of time to treat the most common ailments. Using easy prophylaxis that is minimally stressful to the fish like prazipro or TTM is probably a good idea. Immediately give a freshwater dip to any fish in severe respiratory distress without an obvious cause like ammonia poisoning, hypoxia, or obvious crypto/velvet/brook.

 

[aaronw1198]

Thanks for the reply. I will perform the acclimation process you described next time I get a fish (which wont be for atleast a couple of weeks) and it is going in the QT tank for sure. It was foolish of me to put them directly in the DT. Do you recommend leaving the DT without any fish for a couple of weeks incase it was a parasite? I am in no hurry to place more fish into it. I am ok with taking my time, especially after this happened.

 

[GroktheCube]

I'd definitely suggest leaving the DT fallow for a while, just to be on the safe side. It wouldn't hurt to go the full 72 days required for ich, just so you can have 100% peace of mind.

In the meantime, you can do a little reading, and figure out how you want to go about QTing the fish.

Personally, I like starting out with tank transfer method (TTM), because it's quick and easy prophylaxis against ich. After that, I move fish into a cycled longer term QT tank, where I give them two rounds of Prazi and observe them for another 4-6 weeks. Some people go longer than 4 weeks, and it certainly doesn't hurt, but IMHO parasites other than crypto are very unlikely to remain asymptomatic for 4-6 weeks.

 

[snorvich]

Excellent advice above from GroktheCube :love2:

 

[aaronw1198]

Thank you for the valuable information. I really appreciate the help. I thought I had researched and had a good idea of what I was doing. I still have much to learn.

 

[GroktheCube]

Excellent advice above from GroktheCube :love2:

Thanks, I learned by listening to the best!

Thank you for the valuable information. I really appreciate the help. I thought I had researched and had a good idea of what I was doing. I still have much to learn.

I think even the most experienced hobbyists would readily concede that they have a lot to learn! We all make mistakes, and act with the best information we have available when we make a decision.

Earlier this year I needed to deal with an ich outbreak brought on by my impatience. I started aquarium keeping when I was in middle school, and grew to be a big fan of proper QT for fish pretty early on. I knew that inverts could potentially carry ich (or other diseases), but that it was very unlikely. I was too impatient to set up an invert QT tank and let things sit there for 11 weeks. As a result, I ended up with ich in my 120g DT, and needed to break down the tank to catch and treat all of the fish. After deciding it was a good idea to toss some new arrivals in with them while they were going through TTM, one of those new arrivals brought along velvet, which I then had to scramble to treat. It turned out OK in the end, and my fish are now happily back in their home, but it was certainly a learning experience. Moral of the story: Patience is a virtue, discretion is the better part of valor, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, etc.

You now know that you can do better next time, and you can take advantage of the fallow period to do even more reading, and come up with a more detailed plan for how you'll QT next time.