Frustrating and lowpoints of this hobby

cthetoy

Active member
Got my tax refund 2 months ago and spent a good chunk upgrading my reef tank ie. new lighting, reflectors, CA Reactor, dosing pump, some LPS and SPS corals and of course some new tank mates for my fish. Lighting upgrade went well, got my phosphate down with Phosban Reactor which I also just purchased. Started my bi weekly water changed instead monthly. I also removed and rinsed my sand bed as well as moved them more towards the front away from the live rock so I can vacuum and clean it easier. Then came my new tank mates, a heni, juvenille Imperator Angel , Clown Tang,and a Red Sea Regal Angel. My current fish for 5 years are Powder Blue Tang, 3 yellow tang, 1 blue tang, Copper Band, and a Coral Beauty. My first mistake was I added the fish over the course of a month but never quarantined them and the new fish got ich as well as my power blue and copperband. Usually garlic does the trick as Ive done numerous of time before but this time it did not work. Now all the fish that had ich are all dead. I treated some in the main tank with garlic and I treated some in a quarantine tank with hypo treatment/garlic and the results were the same. All the other fish had no signs of ich and acted if nothing happened and are ok today

So I add 4 new fish and lose 6. I even bought another Imperator to cope with my lost and put him in another seperate quarantine tank. Ate quite well for 2 weeks and even ate from my fingers. Over the weekend the pump went out somehow and it was a super hot weekend. Tank temp hit 84 degrees and the Imperator was gasping for air. It also got ich in just 5 hours and died the next day.

Last night I had a hard time sleeping and kept thinking of the failures. I spent more to upgrade, more time reading this forum and yet I end up in worse shape. The only high point are some of my browned out SPS I had for 2 years are coloring up slowly with the upgrades but my fish had character and thats painful to lose not to mention countless sleepness nights and few hundred dollars down the drain in fish losses.

Yet Im not giving up. I guess I have to treat all new fish as if they have ich and start with the hypo treatment right away. Sorry for the long boring post.
 
Ugh, what a mess, Mike. I'm sorry to hear of your losses.

Bite the bullet and QT all your current fish with hypo and let the tank go fallow for a couple of months. Otherwise you may just continue to have this problem. Then QT all new fish with hypo and any inverts with fishless isolation for a minimum of 6 week -- with so many tangs you can't afford to skip killing off ich, because eventually it will rear it's ugly head.

I have lots of extra stuff if you need to borrow gear for QT tanks, but it's all for small tanks. One big tank willl be easier to maintain to do hypo for all your big fish. Maybe someone has an old tank that's big you can borrow? I borrowed a 60g when I QT'd all my fish for that one wierd parasite that slipped through QT, and it was nice to just have one extra tank.
 
Thanks Nicole for the QT offer. I may be upgrading my tank hopefully next year if my wife allows so I may have a 60G quarantine tank. My current 150G reef tank will become my sump and my current 60 gal sump will become my quarantine or a refugium for growing macro algae.

Ive been keeping reef fish since the early 80's when I was in junior high and its so frustrating with all the experience I have that Im almost back to where I started in keeping fish. Its been almost 5 straight years without a fish loss until now.
 
Sorry to hear of your loss. Gla dto see that your not giving up. I'm a bit against what Nicle says, if teh fish are fine and not shoing any signs of parasites, leave them alone. Removing them or changing their enviroment, ie hyop, may cause undue stress which could lead to a ich outbreak.

From my own tanks over the last 7 + yeasr as well as some research with others, some who have had reefs a lot longer than me, I've come to teh conclusion that ich is always present in your system no matte what. If the fish are happy, well cared for, healthy, and streess free, their immune system can keep the ich under control so that it is never seen. I've had only a few cases of ich show up in my tanks, some were the fish it's self had signs of ich when it was put in the tank. I did nothing but keep the fish fed and happy, making their enviroment as stress free as possible and the ich disappeared, never to return. Also none of my other fish contracted ich while the infected fish was in the tank. I have some very large expensive tangs in one of my tanks.

Again this is just my observations over teh years as well as some discussions with fellow reefers and researchers. You can take it for what it's worth to you. ;)

Good luck with your fish and your tank.
 
Bite the bullet and QT all your current fish with hypo and let the tank go fallow for a couple of months.

Umm I'm not sure if I know what your talking about...
Hypo = hyposalinity? I assume that will rid fish of ich?? :confused:

Fallow? = fishless???

Thanks,
Chris
 
Chris -- yes, your definitions are correct. Hyposalinity, done properly, kills the ick parasite without harm to the fish. Also, without a fish host, ick trophants die off and the cycle is broken.

"Ick is always present" is a common and oft-repeated belief, one which I used to share, but I totally disagree with it now.

Ich is easily killed by methods which are verifiable and can be duplicated over and over -- hyposalinity. Any other "cure" cannot be so verified, except for copper, which is riskier and much more difficult to do correctly. Given that we know exactly how to kill it completely, there's no reason to live with it.

In day to day reality, I think that ick *IS* present in almost every tank, because I have yet to meet a single person that QT's everything from the day they start the hobby onward, and while using QT is 100% careful not to share tools and implements or move from one tank to another with wet hands. It can arrive and survive on anything wet, including casual droplettes. Myself included; I had to learn the hard way.

Hang in there, Mike.
 
so at what salinity does ich die for future reference??? :) I'm setting up a 20H QT tank now as a matter of a fact..

Thanks,
Chris
 
i know ich is a concern, but please remember that there are other "bugs" out there that you should be concerned about as well: brooklynella hostis (brook), uronema, amyloodinium ocellatum (marine velvet). noga lists velvet as a WM-1 (warm marine, very common), brooklynella is WM-2 (common), uronema a WM-4 (rare). figures i'd get the rare one, thankfully i QT.
 
We've all been there.

Hang in there.

Simplify.

Put things in perspective.

Last night I had an epiphony when I realized, it's just a box of water. Family, career, house, social life, etc, etc are all way more important. Don't let the box of water run or ruin your life.

I've had days where I just have to ask what the hell I got myself into.

Just remember, you don't ever have to spend any money on it. Just simplify.

My 2 cents.

Josh
 
If its just a box of water it wouldnt cost that much $. Of course family, social life,school is more important... So what I do when a fish dies I pretty much say " Dumb fish, who starves themself to death?" I pretty much try not to care. And of course just do everything right the 1st time so you can spend less time fixing your tank then enjoying it.

There are no shortcuts in this hobby, and if you prefer to take them prepare for a dead end. Something I learned early in my 1st year of reefing.

Sam
 
Thanks for all the encouragement. I do know that some of my fish were immune to ich because they did not even had one single visible cyst on them and duriing another ich outbreak 5 years ago the same fish did not get ich as well.

Sometimes its hard to say if I should quarantine in the first place. You have half the people to suggest they do better in the show tank with the least amount of stress and ich would go away if they are subject to the least amount of stress. The other half said quarantine no matter what.

I guess I got the "Gotta have this one more cool fish" bug and when it died I tried to replace that fish and give it one more try and keep my morale high. Sound like an alcoholic but its fishoholic. This is the low point now but looking forward in reaching the high point and have my tank look like the Tank of the Month one day.
 
well here's a low point.
my new regal died. I had him in a blocked off section in my sump and he was eating mysis and even some clam but for some reason today just died. was fat and no sign of sickness. really sucks....my favorite fish.
 
yeah...just buried him.
man, i thought my female was gonna get a bf. it's really weird, dont even know how it happened. it took less than 15hours from when i noticed it was sick till it died
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7505767#post7505767 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by john37
yeah...just buried him.
man, i thought my female was gonna get a bf. it's really weird, dont even know how it happened. it took less than 15hours from when i noticed it was sick till it died

John,
Sorry to hear about your lost. You were one of the reasons why I wanted to keep a Regal Angel also. Are you going to get another one later? I used to have a Moorish Idol for at least a year. I neglected my reef keeping when my daughter was born and then my fat MI just got skinny and died. I said to myself thats its easy to keep because I kept one for almost over a year. Since then I am never able to keep a Moorish Idol alive for more than a month.
 
thanks guys, yeah i think i'll try and get another one. i really love these fish and my girl regal needs a boyfriend.
 
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