Help needed!! Urgent! Fish dying

sufunk

sufunk

New member
I have a about 4 year old 180g display with a blue hippo, Liuetenant tang, blonde naso tang, 1 lyretail anthias, 1 false perc, 1 mandarin goby and a golden dwarf moray eel. All have been in the tank for well over a year and the tangs for at least 3 years.

Yesterday, all was perfectly fine. Last night all was fine exceot my hippo wouldnt come out to eat. I thought it was a little weird but she does that once every few months.

Tonight, i come home and only my false perc and mandarin are visible. After searching, i found the others.

The lyretail came out but looks like he is covered in ich, VERY pale and will not eat.

All 3 tangs are hiding under the rockwork and all look the same. Not a single spot of ich but very pale and discolored and moving their lips like they are gasping for breath. The hippo also hassome cloudy eyes.

The false perc is perfect and eating and swimming like a pig. The mandarin looks perfect and is hunting rocks and the eel is perfect and eating.

Ammonia tested 0. Nitrates tested about 20. nitrites 0 ph 8.1

From the looks of them, i am VERY worried they will be dead by morning??? What if anything can i do??? My hippo ive had for over 5 yeard and my daughter will be DEVASTATED!!!

Please any help is appreciated!!!
 
Have you added any new fish lately? It sounds like you may have ick or already turned to velvet disease. Any swings in temp? Or any changes to the tank?
 
I'm no expert here. I would first perform a 25% WC and add more circulation.

Was there any new addition recently? What type of filtration are you running?
 
I'm sure some people will say that it puts unnecessary stress on the fish, but I believe in FW dip to give the fish a fighting chance. As for the reason for the outbreak, have you changed anything recently? let anyone you don't completely trust alone with your tank? What about your equipment, could something have failed?
 
I agree with a big water change. Out of curiosity, do you use an alcohol-based hand sanitizers like Purell? There have been some reports of these causing fish wipe outs in previously stable tanks that seem to be traced to those. I learned about it when I had a similar crash a few years ago. Fish were fine one day, terrible the next (pale, not eating, very lethargic), and everything died with two days except one banggai. Corals were completely healthy throughout.
 
Is there any way CO2 could have gotten in your system, leaking CO2 canister for Calcium reactor?? This happened to me some years back and the fish were pale, gasping and some had already perished. The water change brought oxygen into the system immediately and the fish that were alive recovered, unfortunately the stress of the event brought on massive ICH, which I had never seen in my tank previous to that event.

Good luck and keep us posted :(
 
I did add a powder brown tank about 2 weeks ago. He had been at my lfs for a few weeks and was healthy and eating. I had him in my QT tank for 11 days but he wasnt eating well. He looked perfect, no ich whatsoever or anything else but he was barely eating. He seemed stressed out since it s a small qt so i put him in the display. After 2 days, he died after getting picked on by the lieutenant and still not eating. He looked like he had a little ich but nothing major.

That was about 10 days ago and i've watched them very closely since then. As of last night, they all looked PERFECT. No ich, no nothing, eating fine, swimming fine, no problems at all.

My filtration is a 50 gallon sump fuge and i run a asm g-3 skimmer. All equipment is running fine.

No temps swings out of the ordinary. No new chemicals added. No one else went near the tank to poison it.

I rarely if ever use purell and if i do, i rinse my hands VERY well before putting them in the tank.

I'm stumped?????? The hippo looks like he will die VERY soon. I'll be amazed if he is alive by morning. My daughter is going to be CRUSHED. We bought that fish when he was tiny and had it in her 36g tank that we got her when she was 2 so she would start sleeping in her own room. we've had it almost 6 years and she LOVES that freaking fish! This is NOT good!
 
slojmn said:
Is there any way CO2 could have gotten in your system, leaking CO2 canister for Calcium reactor?? This happened to me some years back and the fish were pale, gasping and some had already perished. The water change brought oxygen into the system immediately and the fish that were alive recovered, unfortunately the stress of the event brought on massive ICH, which I had never seen in my tank previous to that event.

Good luck and keep us posted :(
Click to expand...


No calcium reactor or co2 tanks. Other than the skimmer i only run a little phosban reactor with some phosphate media in it. I cant for the life of me figure out what did this to them so fast. All the tangs have been in the tank for close to 3 years and other than some very minor bouts of ich that they got over in a few days, ive never had a problem with them.

I've had some trouble keeping acros but as far as fish, my fish in my display tank have been bulletproof. Every fish i have in there have been there since i 1st set it up. I lost a few lyretail anthias because i couldnt feed them often enough without ruining my water but other than that and a false perc that jumped, ive never lost a fish in my display tank.
 
Sounds like a pathogen.... Velvet/brook... Do a 25% water change asap, also turn the lights off to calm the fish down... Foods soaked with garlic extreme can also help... Good luck.
 
The situation is acting similar to introduction of SOME contaminant. Water changes are the best short term solution. However, a mandarin and clown fish both have slime coating protection. Any chance you introduced oodinium (velvet)?
 
I don't think ich will kill the fish in 2-3 days and if I remember right when my tank got velvet a year ago the first fish (Tinkeri) that died was about the 4th day. The others followed pretty fast thereafter.

Given that the fish is in a reef to catch them to treat in a QT will cause more stress than they probably can handle right now. That's a tough decision you've there.

edit: I would still recommend immediate WC and the same for the next couple of days. Even better if you can do 33-40% WC right now then 25% everyday for the rest of the week.
 
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Taking a close look and checking some pics on the net, i'm 90% sure it is velvet. I dont understand since i had the powder brown in qt for a while and saw zero signs of any problems.

I just tore my takn apart, took out 200 lbs of lr and DESTROYED my rockwork and corals but got them all out and into my qt. I dosed the qt with copper and have my fingers crossed.

Looking at them close up in the qt they are all in REALLY bad shape.

The tennenti looks HORRIBLE. Skin is peeling off and very discolored. He easily looks the worst but was definitely the most active trying to catch them.

The hippo looks pretty bad and almost let me pick her up once i got all the rock she was hiding under out. Once she hit the qt, she freaked out and splashed like mad. She looks BAD but i still have some hope for her.

The blonde naso also looks very bad but is by far the most active and still swimming fairly normal so i have hopes that i at least saved her.

I'd say 5% chance the Tennenti makes it, 25% the blue hippo and 50/50 with the blonde Naso by the looks of them.

We'll see what happens in the morning:( I didnt want to stress them out getting them out and 3 good sized tangs in a 20g long qt cant be good but my gut told me without a copper treatment they definitely would have been dead by morning.

3 tangs on their last leg in my qt and my display torn to hell and looks like dogcrap! Not a good night! This is HORRIBLE!!!!!!! Theres a very,very good chance i will just sell the tank and get out of the hobby if my tangs die:(
 
Most likely the Powder Brown tang brought in the disease, if that was your lastest addition. I would QT the whole tank with copper and hope for the best, otherwise it can wipe your tank out. I have had this after QT with a Powder Brown tang, it got ick again and gave it to everyone, had to QT everyone. Most likely it had velvet and when it got stress it spread in your tank.
Hope things get better for your tank.
 
If the tangs last long enough to make it through treatment, realize the other fish are still infected and need to be treated or else they'll reinfect the tangs upon reintroduction. The eel is sensitive to copper, by the way, so be careful with that one and only use cupramine.

I'm betting it was the powder brown, too. I had fish in QT for 3-4 weeks before velvet sprung up, and by the time the symptoms started and it was identified as velvet, it was too late. The 3 fish in QT were all dead within 48 hours of showing the first symptoms. I would say it is certainly possible the powder brown brought in velvet. Good luck. It's good you got them into copper treatment.
 
IPowderBlueTang said:
Most likely the Powder Brown tang brought in the disease, if that was your lastest addition. I would QT the whole tank with copper and hope for the best, otherwise it can wipe your tank out. I have had this after QT with a Powder Brown tang, it got ick again and gave it to everyone, had to QT everyone. Most likely it had velvet and when it got stress it spread in your tank.
Hope things get better for your tank.
Click to expand...

Thank you.

I cant dose the display with copper, too many corals and invertebrates.

I just looked at the qt again and the tennenti has zero chance imo. He is laying on the bottom upside down just barely flapping his fins.

The hippo isnt much better, laying on its side barely breathing.

The Blonde Naso is still upright so he may still have a chance.

Maybe i'll feel different in the morning but almost definitely, this is the end for me. My daughter has a 36g in her room that i'll put the Dwarf moray and false perc in but the mandarin and Naso(if it makes it) i'll take to my lfs and sell my display.

That dang hippo was the very 1st fish i ever bought. I was one of those idiots that went and got a tank for my daughter so she could have a Dori and Nemo bc she loved finding Nemo so much. She was less than an inch long when i got her and stayed in my daughters 36g for a few years. I actually bought the 180g just so she would have a better home since she had outgrown the 36g and i felt bad for her. If she goes, i dont even want the damn tank anymore!

I feel like throwing up i'm so sick right now:(
 
Terrible.

Things happen. Follow your heart. Do your best by the fish that remain. Do anything you can to sooth and ease the suffering of the fish that are looking very poorly.

Forgive yourself and do what must be done.
 
the Tennenti is dead and i just took him out. I had him for i think a little over 2 years, definitely a cool fish:fish1:

Dori looks the same but definitely still alive. Shes laying on her side at the bottom but still moving around a little. She has little rust colored bumps on her. With a light, you can see a few of them blowing off in the current. I dont know if that is a good sign?bad? or doesnt matter????

The Blonde Naso almost looks decent. A little pale, discolored and looks like shes gasping but still upright and swimming around a little.

Hopefully, it looks like the Blonde Naso MAY make it but im really worried that my Hippo wont.
 
I don't know about rust colored bumps... I probably wouldn't stress them with a camera flash if you were thinking about taking a photo for identification, though. I'd wait until morning and then take a photo without flash. The fish is stressed enough.

I'm very sorry to hear about the tennenti, and I really hope you caught the other two soon enough.
 
Sorry to hear this for you. It is a bummer. I lost a lot of nice fish to a powder blue tang. I couldn't pull them and treat them at the time. Hang in there.
 
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