Experienced Reefer, No QT Experience, Horrible Outcome

[jonnybravo22]

Hey all,

I had a parasite wipe out my tank last year and have decided to QT everything from now on. I've been reefing for something like 12 years and until recently haven't really had a problem keeping most fish alive (SPS is another story). I've even bred clownfish and successfully raised the fry.

But I've never done a QT tank before. I recently got some anthias fish and they didn't last 24 hours in my QT setup. It's very disheartening and embarrassing, and I guess I need help.

My setup is shown here:

1. 10G standard tank, wiped down with water and paper towels (but not vinegar) before use
2. 50W Heater
3. Sponge filter
4. Airstone (added later)
5. PVC elbow and tubing to hide in
6. Live rock (added later from the sump of my 3+ year old setup)
7. Rubber pad which was holding another pump before that was removed

Attempt: 3 small bartlett's anthias.

I drip acclimated for an hour, matched QT salinity to shipping water salinity (1.015); I used new saltwater water to fill the 10g; bath in methlyne blue for 45 minutes in a 5g bucket and put into QT;

Things I know I did wrong:
1. bad heater creating awful temperature swings
2. probably should have used bleach/vinegar to clean the tank initially

What happened:
They were happy and healthy, breathing normally up until the point where I put them into the QT. After a few hours I could see they were breathing heavily. I checked the temp and it was a ridiculous 85 degrees instead of 77, so my heater was bad. I tried another one, also was bad (stayed on in high temp water) so I unplugged it to let the temp come down; At the same time I checked ammonia and it was at 0.25ppm on API so I did a 25% water change and grab some Live rock from my main sump hoping it can drop the ammonia levels. I check back in a few hours and it's still 0.25ppm ammonia. Temp has dropped to 72 with no heater, fish are breathing heavily, and at this point I'm freaking out.

All this was happening overnight, so no stores are open. Fearing ammonia is the cause, I grab the fish, put them back in the 5g bucket warmed to temp (77) with all newly mixed water from my reservoir (mixed a day ago) and add some methylene blue for the purpose of reducing stress and making oxygen more available (or so I've heard about this product).

When 9am comes I run to the nearest pet store and get a working heater, and an airstone to add to the sponge filter, thinking that maybe the filter alone isn't enough gas exchange. I also get Amguard to at least stabilize the ammonia situation / render it non-toxic until I can figure this out.

When I get back I added the airstone, Amguard and working heater to the QT, and once temp was at 77 I moved the fish back. Only 1 was still alive at this point. It was breathing more rapidly than any fish I'd ever seen and a few hours later was unfortunately dead.

This is a huge setback and very unfortunate, and rather than throw my hands up and say who knows what happened, I'm trying to learn what can be done so this goes better next time.

I know the temp swings were not helpful. Don't know if that alone would kill a fish in 24 hours but coupled with any ammonia maybe. Particularly at high temps.

But ammonia should have been 0. I don't know why ammonia registered in the tank so quickly. my makeup water tests 0 as does my display tank.

Questions:
1. Is it possible for 3 small bartlett's to produce .25ppm in a 10g in only 3 or 4 hours? I know they have high metabolisms but...

2. If that's the case I don't know how you would ever medicate a QT because any medication that kills nitrifying bacteria (copper, methylene blue, etc.) will make it so the only ammonia reduction comes from water changes, and that would be impossible to keep up with if you get up to 0.25ppm every 4 hours. I'd be doing water changes every hour to keep it undetectable.

3. Am I missing something here?

I appreciate your thoughts.

 

[HumbleFish]

Read this: https://humble.fish/quarantine/

I hope it helps.

 

[dkeller_nc]

Am I missing something here?

Yep. You did two things incorrectly, in addition to the heater issues that you already know about. The first one was drip-acclimating fish that had been shipped. Never drip acclimate fish that have been shipped. During the shipment, the ammonia level in the bag water went way up, and the pH went way down because of the fishes' respiration. That acted to render most of the ammonia into the ammonium ion (NH4+), which isn't nearly as toxic to fish as neutral ammonia (NH3).

However, when you opened the bag and put the water/fish into the bucket, the CO2 left the water, and the fish were exposed to a massive amount of ammonia in the deadly form.

The second mistake was drip-acclimating them to a higher specific gravity. Again, never do this. Fish can handle a rapid drop in specific gravity; they can't handle a rapid rise in specific gravity.

The combination of the high temperature, burned gills from the ammonia, and an internal system that was probably highly acclimatized to the much lower shipping specific gravity did them in.

I'm sorry for your loss, it really sucks to lose fish, especially if you've no idea what happened. But now you do, and your next attempt will be far more successful. When you get the fish in the bag, use a needle to poke a hole in the bag to get a sample to determine the specific gravity; tape the hole up so there's no gas exchange. Adjust your QT to this specific gravity; float the bag in the QT for 10 minutes or so to equalize the temperature, then quickly open the bag, capture the fish with your hand, and transfer them to the QT being careful not to get any of the bag water into the tank. Never use a net.

Keep the tank blacked out on 3 sides - panicked fish don't settle down well. Attempt to feed them after a couple of hours; if they eat, excellent. If not, remove any uneaten food. Monitor the ammonia in the QT in the morning, and again at night. Change 50% of the water that is precisely matched to the tank's temp and specific gravity if the ammonia rises above 0.5 ppm. Use Amquel as necessary, but don't rely on it in the place of water changes.

When you're sure that the fish don't carry any disease, you can slowly start to raise the specific gravity of the tank to match your display. Typically, the specific gravity should not rise more than 0.002 per day.

 

[Tastee]

You may want to consider an ATO for your QT to assist in raising salinity. I made one for mine from a float valve kit and when I want to raise salinity I just add SW to the ATO instead of RODI. It's pretty easy to calculate how much salt you need to add to raise salinity by the desired level, and you can just add that to the ATO in one or more batches to allow salinity to gradually rise over several days.

I also suggest adding "˜bacteria in a bottle' and some items you have kept in your sump a day or so before you add fish (e.g. small piece of LR or filter material) to seed the QT with bacteria and kick off the cycle process. A small tank can complete an initial cycle surprisingly quickly with seeding.

Here is my QT so you can see the setup. I'm currently using it as a HT to treat a sick clownfish (but not in this photo).

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[jonnybravo22]

The second mistake was drip-acclimating them to a higher specific gravity. Again, never do this. Fish can handle a rapid drop in specific gravity; they can't handle a rapid rise in specific gravity.

Thanks for the reply. A note of correction - I did not drip acclimate to a higher salinity I matched my QT to the 1.015 salinity of the shipping water. Both the shipping water and my QT were at 1.015.

So in essence I didn't need to acclimate at all, I was just following the 'protocol' I'd been taught.

 

[jonnybravo22]

Read this: https://humble.fish/quarantine/

I hope it helps.

Thanks! Great article, super informative and very well-written.

A few questions not addressed in the article:

1. It looks like my setup exactly matched Scenario 1 so that should have been fine. Do you think it is normal that ammonia would register at 0.25ppm on API kit after just 4 hours in 10g QT tank for 3 bartletts anthias? If that pace kept up it would mean nonstop water changes.

2. In the scenario you laid out, does ammonia stay at 0? How often are water changes done for scenario 1 to keep 0 ammonia? Is it driven by the badge?

3. You don't talk about using copper in the presence of biological filter (seeded HOB) for Scenario 2. My research suggests that the same copper concentrations required to kill off parasites also kills nitrifying bacteria, thus nullifying the bio filter and presumably rendering that all useless given your plan (as was mine) to maintain copper for 4 weeks. Has it not been your experience that copper eliminates bio filter?

Citing this research. From it:

"Copper is also toxic to the nitrifying bacteria in the biofilter. At 0.3 mg/L Cu2+, copper sulfate inhibits ammonia and
nitrite oxidation; therefore, increases in ammonia or nitrite
levels in the system should be monitored closely during
copper treatments. By contrast, bacteria that can cause
disease in fish are much more resistant to copper, with
some only inhibited or killed at free copper levels as high as
1.25 mg/L (Cardeilhac and Whitaker 1988)."

Maybe I'm over-thinking.

 

[jonnybravo22]

You may want to consider an ATO for your QT to assist in raising salinity. I made one for mine from a float valve kit and when I want to raise salinity I just add SW to the ATO instead of RODI. It’s pretty easy to calculate how much salt you need to add to raise salinity by the desired level, and you can just add that to the ATO in one or more batches to allow salinity to gradually rise over several days.

I also suggest adding ‘bacteria in a bottle’ and some items you have kept in your sump a day or so before you add fish (e.g. small piece of LR or filter material) to seed the QT with bacteria and kick off the cycle process. A small tank can complete an initial cycle surprisingly quickly with seeding.

Here is my QT so you can see the setup. I’m currently using it as a HT to treat a sick clownfish (but not in this photo).

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Thanks for the tip! Makes good sense to me.

I don't notice any bio filter in your setup. Do you rely on any or do you rely purely on water changes to handle ammonia? I see your point about seeding with a bottle or something from the tank but what do you have in your QT that will actually get seeded? I only see pvc.

 

[Tastee]

Thanks for the tip! Makes good sense to me.

I don't notice any bio filter in your setup. Do you rely on any or do you rely purely on water changes to handle ammonia? I see your point about seeding with a bottle or something from the tank but what do you have in your QT that will actually get seeded? I only see pvc.

I use an Aqua One Reflex 35 for my QT. That has an integrated sump in the back. The bottom and top right of the picture shows drains into the rear sump. That sump is 4 sections - drain overflowing on top to a second section with ceramic noodles, then through the bottom to a third section up through a sponge and over the top to a fourth return section where the heater and return pump is. It is a lovely little tank for this purpose. The stock tank has a carbon filter on top of the noodles which I took out (as it would strip medications) and I instead pop a small piece of Poly Filter there when using as QT without medications. I also use Poly Filter to remove copper after using it (have only done so once).


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[jonnybravo22]

Thanks to all for the responses. So far what I'm taking away from your thoughts are:

1. There's nothing wrong with the QT tank setup
2. Not hearing anyone suggest that there was some factory residue contaminant in the 10g tank that killed the fish or anything like that
3. The only thing I can see that 'killed' them was waiting too long in the initial acclimation, that hour in mostly shipping water destroyed their respiratory systems enough that they were doomed and all the running around doing water changes on the 10g wasn't really helping b/c it was too late from hour 1.


???

 

[jonnybravo22]

I use an Aqua One Reflex 35 for my QT. That has an integrated sump in the back. The bottom and top right of the picture shows drains into the rear sump. That sump is 4 sections - drain overflowing on top to a second section with ceramic noodles, then through the bottom to a third section up through a sponge and over the top to a fourth return section where the heater and return pump is. It is a lovely little tank for this purpose. The stock tank has a carbon filter on top of the noodles which I took out (as it would strip medications) and I instead pop a small piece of Poly Filter there when using as QT without medications. I also use Poly Filter to remove copper after using it (have only done so once).


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Ah, that makes sense. So to my note earlier about the research saying copper kills bio filter (nitrifying bacteria), that hasn't been your experience? When you treat with coper the ammonia stays low as a result of that bio filter?

 

[Tastee]

Ah, that makes sense. So to my note earlier about the research saying copper kills bio filter (nitrifying bacteria), that hasn't been your experience? When you treat with coper the ammonia stays low as a result of that bio filter?

I have only treated copper once in this tank and had no issues with ammonia. Both when I was completing medication free QTs and the time I treated Cu I measured for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates every few days. The highest ammonia and nitrites I ever measured was 0.25 ppm and that only lasted one test. Nitrates went to a high of 10 ppm on one occasion indicating the cycle was working perfectly. I don't test any more and just keep an ammonia alert badge as a fail safe. I know enough about how this tank behaves from prior testing to trust that the badge is enough info.

If I introduced several fish at once I would test again and more frequently, as well as plan to complete regular partial WCs, but for small volumes of fish I know it will cycle quickly enough to sustain them.


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[jonnybravo22]

Thanks to all for the responses. So far what I'm taking away from your thoughts are:

1. There's nothing wrong with the QT tank setup
2. Not hearing anyone suggest that there was some factory residue contaminant in the 10g tank that killed the fish or anything like that
3. The only thing I can see that 'killed' them was waiting too long in the initial acclimation, that hour in mostly shipping water destroyed their respiratory systems enough that they were doomed and all the running around doing water changes on the 10g wasn't really helping b/c it was too late from hour 1.


???

This answer is neat and buttoned up but for me it is not entirely satisfying. I have acclimated many fish via the drip method without having a QT and have never had a fish die so quickly when putting it into my main tank as these did going into QT.

Also, does the above explain why the breathing got more rapid after a few hours vs. being that bad from the start after drip acclimation? To me it does not. They were breathing 'fine' the moment they were put into QT. A bit fast but I'd expect that after getting chased around the bucket for netting. It wasn't until 8-10 hours later that they were showing signs of serious distress.

This is made more complicated to discern due to the heater issue.

 

[Tastee]

Let's approach this problem logically. Your QT process is fairly standard so other's experience should be quite relevant.

What do we know?
Here is what I have from the post. First disclosure, I am Australian based and have no experience with shipped livestock (I buy from an LFS and take home myself within 5-15 mins), so are basing my opinions on this from my reading.

1. Your QT is new and this is your first experience QTing.
2. You have drip acclimated from shipping several times before successfully.
3. The fish did not show signs of distress in the shipping bag or immediately after transfer into the QT.
4. You had issues with your heaters, leading to elevated temperatures in the QT.
5. You did not do much to sterilise the QT before use, but did not explain it's prior use so it's hard to assess the implications of this.
6. Fish started to show signs of distress after several hours (8-20) in the QT. The obvious distress signs were heavy breathing.

From this I would concentrate on the fish distress behaviour.

Heavy breathing can be caused by a number of reasons - lack of dissolved oxygen; need for more oxygen due to other physiological issues, inability to consume oxygen effectively due to organs (e.g. gills) being compromised.

Possibly the elevated temperatures caused a bacterial bloom?
That would reduce O2 levels, and if temperature dropped, killing some bacteria, possibly generate an ammonia spike (over several hours).

Did ammonia levels gradually rise due to limited bacterial filtration?
Possibly but not likely to be a cause in isolation as this would take more time than you experienced. If the fish were compromised due to ammonia spikes in the shipping bags however this could happen more suddenly than is normal.

Did toxic ammonia levels rise in the shipping bag?
Possible but was not noticed immediately. Fish survived this process and did not show signs of distress. As above this may have compromised the fish however.

This is all based on the limited information you have posted. You have access to much more information than this, so if you follow this logic you may reach different and better conclusions.

Good luck!


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[pisanoal]

This answer is neat and buttoned up but for me it is not entirely satisfying. I have acclimated many fish via the drip method without having a QT and have never had a fish die so quickly when putting it into my main tank as these did going into QT.

Also, does the above explain why the breathing got more rapid after a few hours vs. being that bad from the start after drip acclimation? To me it does not. They were breathing 'fine' the moment they were put into QT. A bit fast but I'd expect that after getting chased around the bucket for netting. It wasn't until 8-10 hours later that they were showing signs of serious distress.

This is made more complicated to discern due to the heater issue.

You say you have drip acclimated many fish, are they fish that were shipped? There is a big difference due to the time in the same water. How the fish were packed can also make a difference. Some places ship in less water.

I have drip acclimated fish from shipping before, but only more sensitive species and only after putting an ammonia binding product in. If you order from blue zoo aquaticsfor example they send some in a little pipette and instruct you to add some to the shipping water. However, if you are matching salinity in your qt all that is necessary is float for temp and in they go. I only drip from blue zoo because they instruct you to and provide the right materials to do so.

The ammonia toxicity from shipping/dripping is definitely enough to cause the symptoms you were seeing at the time you were seeing especially combined with temperature/other stress of the whole process. If the fish were stressed and then started to go hypoxic from the gill damage, you might expect them to start breathing faster trying to get oxygen as they gl downhill. Of course at some point they will turn the corner and get very sluggish.

The .25 ppm ammonia should be taken with a grain of salt when using API. They are notorious foe showing a alight false positive. If you do some research on that, you will find a number of people echoing that. So at 4 hrs I dont think you were getting a real reading unless you added shipping water to the qt with the fish, which should not be done (sounds like that's not what happened.

 

[dkeller_nc]

I'd echo what Tony said. API isn't very accurate, nor is it horribly convenient - being instructed to shake the living crap out of one of the reagent bottles to produce an accurate test result is a red flag, IMO.

At any rate, I would say that the ammonia in the shipping bag is probably enough to have caused the fishes' death, and depending on how you transferred the fish from the acclimation bucket to the QT, it's possible there was enough residual ammonia from the bag water in the acclimation bucket to cause the small ammonia reading from the API test.

A note about QT - many (including me) choose not to medicate fish automatically. Copper, in particular, is toxic to fish. It's just that it's a great deal more toxic to parasites than it is to the fish.

The only thing I do prophylacticly is to do a hyposalinity treatment. Almost all fish will tolerate this extremely well if your refractometer is accurate and you have an ATO on the QT so there's no big specific gravity swings. And for fish stressed from shipping in general, the greatly enhanced oxygen levels in a tank at 1.010 helps get them eating and generally recovering from their ordeal.

Also, I really would consider blacking out all but one side of the QT tank, including the bottom. Especially for skittish species.

 

[HumbleFish]

1. It looks like my setup exactly matched Scenario 1 so that should have been fine. Do you think it is normal that ammonia would register at 0.25ppm on API kit after just 4 hours in 10g QT tank for 3 bartletts anthias? If that pace kept up it would mean nonstop water changes.

API test kits are notoriously inaccurate. I only use Giesemann, Red Sea or Salifert. Or a Seachem ammonia alert badge works even in the presence of medications, so that is probably your best bet for QT.

2. In the scenario you laid out, does ammonia stay at 0? How often are water changes done for scenario 1 to keep 0 ammonia? Is it driven by the badge?

If no meds are present in the water, you always have the option of using a reducer (e.g. Prime, Amquel) to immediately neutralize ammonia. However, with Scenario 1 water changes (as needed per the alert badge) are standard practice for controlling ammonia in QT.

3. You don't talk about using copper in the presence of biological filter (seeded HOB) for Scenario 2. My research suggests that the same copper concentrations required to kill off parasites also kills nitrifying bacteria, thus nullifying the bio filter and presumably rendering that all useless given your plan (as was mine) to maintain copper for 4 weeks. Has it not been your experience that copper eliminates bio filter?

Copper will put a dent in your nitrifying bacteria populations. So will antibiotics. However, the surviving bacteria will adapt and propagate more resistant strains. The key here is to always keep your QT bioload moderate, so the surviving bacteria can still keep up with processing the ammonia. When I first setup & cycle a 40 breeder QT (for example) I only put in 3-4 fish to start. After a couple batches have gone thru therapeutic copper, I'll up the no. of fish in QT to 6-8 because I am more confident in the strength of my biofilter. Unfortunately, after a few months it becomes necessary to sterilize and recycle your QT because the bacteria population becomes so great that it actually starts to biodegrade the meds you dose. Not copper, but Chloroquine, prazi, metro, antibiotics, etc.

 

[jonnybravo22]

You say you have drip acclimated many fish, are they fish that were shipped? There is a big difference due to the time in the same water. How the fish were packed can also make a difference. Some places ship in less water.

I have drip acclimated fish from shipping before, but only more sensitive species and only after putting an ammonia binding product in. If you order from blue zoo aquaticsfor example they send some in a little pipette and instruct you to add some to the shipping water. However, if you are matching salinity in your qt all that is necessary is float for temp and in they go. I only drip from blue zoo because they instruct you to and provide the right materials to do so.

The ammonia toxicity from shipping/dripping is definitely enough to cause the symptoms you were seeing at the time you were seeing especially combined with temperature/other stress of the whole process. If the fish were stressed and then started to go hypoxic from the gill damage, you might expect them to start breathing faster trying to get oxygen as they gl downhill. Of course at some point they will turn the corner and get very sluggish.

The .25 ppm ammonia should be taken with a grain of salt when using API. They are notorious foe showing a alight false positive. If you do some research on that, you will find a number of people echoing that. So at 4 hrs I dont think you were getting a real reading unless you added shipping water to the qt with the fish, which should not be done (sounds like that's not what happened.

Thanks. Often the fish I've acclimated were from the same vendor shipped to me. There is one important difference that I remember about this acclimation process. Because I was acclimating to the same salinity, I treated the acclimation as less critical, but in doing so I did not do my normal procedure, which would have been to double the volume then dump half and repeat twice.

I now realize it would have been better to just temp acclimate and drop them in QT since salinity was already matched.

Thanks for your help and input.

 

[jonnybravo22]

Tastee, HumbleFish, Dkeller, pisanoal thank you all very much for all your insights.

So I am reading that basically I erred in acclimating, and of course in temperature swings.

I've also learned not to fear too much the impact of copper on bio filter, so I can actively work to promulgate a biofilter for ammonia attenuation.

Based on this I'm willing to try again with this setup. I think I'm going to quickly wipe the tank with vinegar just to remove that concern.

And I'm thinking I might like, record this or maybe even live stream it next week if I get another shipment in. I can keep you posted. Feels like this should be doable!

 

[Bary]

Yep. You did two things incorrectly, in addition to the heater issues that you already know about. The first one was drip-acclimating fish that had been shipped. Never drip acclimate fish that have been shipped. During the shipment, the ammonia level in the bag water went way up, and the pH went way down because of the fishes' respiration. That acted to render most of the ammonia into the ammonium ion (NH4+), which isn't nearly as toxic to fish as neutral ammonia (NH3).

However, when you opened the bag and put the water/fish into the bucket, the CO2 left the water, and the fish were exposed to a massive amount of ammonia in the deadly form.

The second mistake was drip-acclimating them to a higher specific gravity. Again, never do this. Fish can handle a rapid drop in specific gravity; they can't handle a rapid rise in specific gravity.

The combination of the high temperature, burned gills from the ammonia, and an internal system that was probably highly acclimatized to the much lower shipping specific gravity did them in.

I'm sorry for your loss, it really sucks to lose fish, especially if you've no idea what happened. But now you do, and your next attempt will be far more successful. When you get the fish in the bag, use a needle to poke a hole in the bag to get a sample to determine the specific gravity; tape the hole up so there's no gas exchange. Adjust your QT to this specific gravity; float the bag in the QT for 10 minutes or so to equalize the temperature, then quickly open the bag, capture the fish with your hand, and transfer them to the QT being careful not to get any of the bag water into the tank. Never use a net.

Keep the tank blacked out on 3 sides - panicked fish don't settle down well. Attempt to feed them after a couple of hours; if they eat, excellent. If not, remove any uneaten food. Monitor the ammonia in the QT in the morning, and again at night. Change 50% of the water that is precisely matched to the tank's temp and specific gravity if the ammonia rises above 0.5 ppm. Use Amquel as necessary, but don't rely on it in the place of water changes.

When you're sure that the fish don't carry any disease, you can slowly start to raise the specific gravity of the tank to match your display. Typically, the specific gravity should not rise more than 0.002 per day.

Great advice! I had not thought this out either. Might explain some unexplained past issues I've had as well.

 

[jonnybravo22]

In preparation for the arrivals this week, I made a video showing how I'm set up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Mm5z_N5LE