I thought I did everything right

[bnano]

I have possibly had the worst luck so far with saltwater tanks and now I need help- my tank is driving me crazy and I absolutely do not not have the money to throw at this hobby constantly like I am.

I have a 28g JBJ Professional that I splurged on a little on with a Tunze skimmer in the extra refugium space that's in the back and an in tank refugium.

Everything was perfect until I came back form a 4 day trip and my tank heater stopped working and the temperature flew down to 57 degrees. It killed an anemone and clown and shocked everything else pretty well. The spikes of the death caused a huge growth of algae which I started taking care of immediately via algae blenny and some snails. A few days later my dartfish that I thought had died randomly popped up in the tank- I had some renewed hope for my saltwater tanking hobby.

The parameters have been perfect ever since and they were nearly perfect even when the tank was 57 degrees.

So here I am today..... I bought a baby tang, 2 clowns, and a brittle star to complete the stock in the tank. Everyone looked great and not really to my surprise the tang had some ich the next day but I had little worries about it since I've heard most of the time it goes away.

The ich went away at least 3 days ago. Yesterday one of the clowns completely disappeared and I hadnt seen the starfish since he was added in the tank. They are quite little so I thought maybe he had neglected to eat enough but then..... a closer look a the tang revealed bubble eye. WHAT THE HECK!? My water is perfect but I prepared water for them and I checked that too before adding it into the tank, totally fine. Today, you ask? OH. Everything is dead including both clowns, a watchman goby, the dartfish, . No ich. No signs of anything. Perfect params.

What on earth just happened?

 

[Jerry W]

Please post real numbers for your parameters. Saying they are perfect doesn't say much. Include you salinity and pH. Your tank is nowhere near suited to that many fish, particularly any type of tang, regardless of how small it may have been. The tang was diseased and the life cycle of ich is such that it appears to go away, but them it comes back, in most cases much worse. Ich rarely goes away on it's own, and one infected fish will infect the others as well.The pop eye was lkely a bacterial infection which would need to have been treated. Brittle stars are quite sensitive to water quality so unless it is hiding somehwerei n a rock crevice, it likely has died as well. At this point, I would allow the tank to remain fallow for at least 6-8 weeks. don't add any livestock. Test paramters and allow the system to stabilize. Re-stock with small, hardy species and limit it to maybe 3 smallish fish. Hope the next go-around is better for you.

 

[426Hemi]

This is so bad it almost seems like a troll.

 

[staindsoul]

your rushing, take a deep breath, read ALOT before you do anything more. even if you had enough room for the new additions, you added them too quickly.

read up on ich, jerry is right. the safest thing is to wait and let the ich die in the tank.

 

[RA]

You say your water is perfect, but unless you did a big water change after the anemone died your water isn't perfect. Also if you do a lot of traveling a saltwater tank isn't a good option.

 

[emilypres]

Whats your ammonia, nitrates, etc...? Are you testing all of that? Not sure if you are aware but a small tank is very hard to keep stable, especially one that has just gone thru an anemone death, ich, and bubble eye. Even without seeing your water parameters, i highly doubt your water was near perfect. You said your clown had disappeared, a fish dieing in a tank as small as that and being still in the tank could cause all kinds of problems and would cause them very rapidly.

I too am battling ich and 11 days later I have come to the conclusion that the only way to beat it is to do what everyone here has been telling me to do...remove the fish and place in a QT tank and treat. Then treat the DT and leave the fish out of the DT for at least 6 weeks.

 

[sponger0]

Heaters fail. Its just something that happens.

One mistake is you didnt QT and obviously the tang needed it. Also tangs shouldnt be put in a nano tank. Bad bad idea. And you say you dont have money to keep throwing into the hobby, so obviously you dont have the money to upgrade to a tank big enough for a tang.

Damage can be a number of things from an infection to a scratch. Which could be explained by having ich. Just because you dont see it, it can still affect the fish, especially if the parasite got into their gills.

 

[thegrun]

This is so bad it almost seems like a troll.

+1, if this is a true story please slow down and research the hobby and understand the limitations of your tank, the biological processes involved and what types of livestock are suitable for your tank before you purchase them. There are so many things being done incorrectly here that it would take an hour to advise you on all of them. I am afraid you are headed towards nothing but frustration if you continue down your current path. Then again if you are just out trolling you elicited a paragraph from me so good for you!

 

[potterjon]

Not to make you feel any worse about it, but that is a lot of fish to add at once to any tank in my opinion. Especially a 29 gallon. Stick to one or two of your favorite fish and realize that you have a small tank and you can't have the ocean in your living room, but you can have a small part of it.
We have all made mistakes in this hobby and it can be disheartening and expensive. So read, read, and read some more and then take into consideration that these animals don't read the same information we do, and don't always act according to our info.
Btw, I run two heaters just in case one fails the other will pick up the slack. hth!

 

[potterjon]

I want to expand on the fact that your tank has a balance between livestock and bacteria. It has enough bacteria to handle the amount of livestock you have in the tank, so when you add three fish at once you are creating a spike in nutrients and the bacteria have to multiply to handle the load. Therefore, you create a spike in unwanted nutrients until you have enough bacteria to handle the load. That is why you add one fish at a time. So the bacteria can catch up.

 

[MrTuskfish]

Ich doesn't "just go away". Its still in your tank and will remain in a fishless tank for 10+ weeks. You can't just into this hobby without doing some real learning first. Your problems won't be solved by "throwing money" at them. Don't buy anything until you've read a couple of good books on our hobby from cover to cover. Folks on this forum are willing to help, but you must do some real research first. When you're ready to get your feet wet again, ask questions and do some research BEFORE you buy.
I almost agree with 426Hemi above. Your description of events is hard to imagine. If your problems are real and you're getting advice from someone: the advice is terrible. This hobby is a wonderful lifelong addiction; we'll lose you soon if you don't do your homework.

 

[Cymonous]

Whats your ammonia, nitrates, etc...? Are you testing all of that? Not sure if you are aware but a small tank is very hard to keep stable, especially one that has just gone thru an anemone death, ich, and bubble eye. Even without seeing your water parameters, i highly doubt your water was near perfect. You said your clown had disappeared, a fish dieing in a tank as small as that and being still in the tank could cause all kinds of problems and would cause them very rapidly.

I too am battling ich and 11 days later I have come to the conclusion that the only way to beat it is to do what everyone here has been telling me to do...remove the fish and place in a QT tank and treat. Then treat the DT and leave the fish out of the DT for at least 6 weeks.

Not to de-rail the thread, but you are not suppose to "treat" the DT for ich with any chemicals. You leave the DT fishless for 9 weeks. Nothing else.

 

[MrTuskfish]

Not to de-rail the thread, but you are not suppose to "treat" the DT for ich with any chemicals. You leave the DT fishless for 9 weeks. Nothing else.

This is vital info.
IMO, every hobbyist should read the ich stickies in the disease section of our forum. Its hard to fight a deadly enemy you know nothing about.

 

[Gregs138]

Yeah, I'm a "noob" that just restarted a tank a few months ago-but I have a few years of prior experience when I was younger. My rule of thumb taught to me by a good LFS owner circa 1990 is that in saltwater you add one fish about every 4 weeks for the reason mentioned above. You are going to cause an ammonia spike.

And you need to research the fish you are putting in there too. A star fish is a very very fragile creature. Clowns fine. That baby yellow tang...will grow to 9 inches. Your tank is probably 2-3 feet wide? How would you like being stuck in a 6'x6' room for the rest of your life? Not fun.

When you get ich in a freshwater tank, you just bomb the whole tank with meds. In salt, you don't. Or at least use it as a last resort. The trick is not getting it in there in the first place. My guess is that you used to run a freshwater tank because your actions are alot like how you run freshwater. There are some different "rules" in salt.

 

[Fish Bowl]

Imo, all that money put into a Tunze Skimmer could've gone to a bigger better tank

Aside from that when it comes to heaters I would recommend getting 2 smaller ones rather than 1 bigger one and putting those two smaller ones on controllers for maximum security against failures in the future.

Of course if that's not an option, pick out the most reliable heater you can find and at least on that end you'll be a bit better off.

And the best advice to anyone who's new to the hobby or anyone in the hobby in general? QT anything that's wet, NO EXCEPTIONS. Along with also not going to hastily into something without being prepared (Knowledge,Research,Money/Funds/Time) because you will be wasting a lot of time and money in the case where you don't do so.

 

[sponger0]

Imo, all that money put into a Tunze Skimmer could've gone to a bigger better tank

Aside from that when it comes to heaters I would recommend getting 2 smaller ones rather than 1 bigger one and putting those two smaller ones on controllers for maximum security against failures in the future.

Of course if that's not an option, pick out the most reliable heater you can find and at least on that end you'll be a bit better off.

And the best advice to anyone who's new to the hobby or anyone in the hobby in general? QT anything that's wet, NO EXCEPTIONS. Along with also not going to hastily into something without being prepared (Knowledge,Research,Money/Funds/Time) because you will be wasting a lot of time and money in the case where you don't do so.

Could have, would have, should have, doesnt matter.

I just replace my heater every year and heater have never failed on me. Buy quality and get one that has a seperate controller for adding security without buying a $300 aquacontroller.

 

[trinity1012]

your rushing, take a deep breath, read ALOT before you do anything more. even if you had enough room for the new additions, you added them too quickly.

read up on ich, jerry is right. the safest thing is to wait and let the ich die in the tank.

+1 if your loosing animals and such the last thing to do is buy more.you have to crawl before you can walk.
is there really a right way????

 

[emilypres]

not to derail but what is +1 mean when people put it in front of their posts?

 

[sponger0]

not to derail but what is +1 mean when people put it in front of their posts?

Means "I agree"

 

[TellyFish]

There is no such thing as 'luck' in our hobby. Each man makes his own way.

As others have mentioned, learning is a great part of this hobby. You will (and should) learn all sorts of stuff about things you never even wanted to know in the first place. As with so many of life's greatest skills, you must become a student before being successful. This board is a great start but don't stop there. Read literally, all the things.

Keep a single small fish for a month or two before adding one other small fish. 29 gallons is pretty small and there is not a lot of room for error in a tank so small. Limiting your fish will help make it easier until you get the hang of it.