Marine Velvet is such a mean parasite

[Thunk]

4 days ago I noticed my bi-color blennie was hiding and not wanting to move, he was dead the next morning along with my powder brown tang. Thats when I noticed the velvet on my dragon goby, moved him to QT where he died the next day. Then dosed the QT with copper and moved my clownfish in there. and one of them just died this morning, it looks like his mate is going to die now. Meaning within a few minutes. She is starting to rest on the bottom them do those fast twitchy swims before falling back to the bottom. My coral beauty has still evaded capture to be put in qt and she looks ok but I know she has it. I mean everything else in the tank does.

4 days and it looks like I will have lost all my fish save one.

I'm pretty bummed out

One thing I am going to start doing is to medicate all new fish ahead of time with some Seachem Focus and Metranidazole (thanks jonthefb!!!)

Anyone have any idea how long my tank must be empty of fish before the velvet runs its life cycle? I was thinking about 6 weeks.

 

[danorth]

I'd give it longer. 8 weeks. Not worth it. I had a 55 get cleared by it, except for 1 puffer. 30 days later after qt, puffer went into a new tank so did the velvet. I stripped that tank down and washed it in the yard. I didn't have live rock or anything at that time.

 

[happyface888]

Yeah it sucks big time. samething happened to me killed everyone of my fish and left one hanging. This stuff is pretty bad it even got my damsel...

 

[hanas]

How long after noticing the "dusting" appearance did it take for the fish to succumb to the disease?

I'm just trying to rule it out for my Purple Tang, since it's been a couple weeks of me noticing something like that, but I can't be 100% positive that's what it is, since it's not a yellow dusting or any real color, for that matter.

 

[Thunk]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11759797#post11759797 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Nami19
How long after noticing the "dusting" appearance did it take for the fish to succumb to the disease?

I'm just trying to rule it out for my Purple Tang, since it's been a couple weeks of me noticing something like that, but I can't be 100% positive that's what it is, since it's not a yellow dusting or any real color, for that matter.

I noticed the dusting after the bicolor blennie and tang died. Niether of them ever showed signs of it. I noticed the dusting on my clown fish and 4 days later he died. They say that if you can see the dusting of marine velvet that it is almost always too late. Very few fish survive even after treatment has begun. The dusting can range from white to brown in color. sort of like a powdered sugar.

Its hard to see. Problem is once you see it that means it pretty much taken over the gills.

Is your purple tang acting strange? Gasping? fast breathing? sitting on the sand listless?

 

[hanas]

it's breathing fast after eating, but in general it seems normalm aybe slightly increased, but nothing extreme. No signs of scratching or loss of appetite, and is extremely active. I can sort of notice a dusting of greyish-white, but the light has to hit the fish right to see it. But it's been weeks with this and it's behavior hasn't changed. So I'm not sure what to make of it.

 

[hanas]

In addition to above, none of my other fish have displayed anything abnormal at all (mystery wrasse, gold-stripped maroon clown, yt damsel, and mandarin.

 

[Thunk]

Humm I would be surprised if your tang had velvet since its a very fast killer. If you want to be safe you could always feed some Focus with some parasite medication mixed in just to be safe. If you do that and then see the spots go away you might consider QT. Do you have any pictures???

 

[hanas]

I've been garlic with the Formula 2 pellets for the past week just to boost it's immune should it be parasite, but I suppose I could try Focus as well. The feces of the PT is brown, which if I recall correctly means that no internal parasites are attacking the fish.

As far as a picture goes, I don't think it would help diagnos at all since it would look just like a normal PT. The light has to hit it right and you can only make out something when that happens with the fish facing you straight on.

Maybe I'm being to "over obeservant" and making a problem out of nothing. But the respiration does get more rapid after feeding (the tang has a huge belly! FAT! so maybe that is normal.

 

[Thunk]

Yea that sounds like he is just getting excited when he eats. Do you have a lazy cleaner shrimp? He could just be dirty, lol.

 

[hanas]

LOL, I have 2 cleaner shrimp, they don't even touch him! Thanks for your help, I'll ride it out and see if anything else obvious comes up. I never like to QT unless I'm 100% sure of a diagnosis or problem.

Thanks Again