wich fish are still alive?? i have a blue line damsel if ya want it. i thought some of jims comments where a little strong but your in a interesting postion. if ya keep with corals go sps would be amaizing to see a massive colony growing in there. in retrospect do you think the sump cange had anything to do with the ich getting outa controle? sry for the losses couldnt imagine loosing any of mine (exept the damsel i want to kill him).
Anthony
Thanks for the offer on the Damsel.. I have 3 or 4 of them already. The survivors are:
1 Vlamingi Tang
1 6 line wrasp
3 or 4 damsels
1 Scooter Blenny
1 Diamond Goby
1 Marine beta
1 Engineer Goby
and I think there is a fish or 2 that I didnt include on the list.
As far as the sump change and its effect on the ich.. Hard to say. Ich was present before the change. Any stress is not good so I am sure there was some impact though I dont think it directly caused casualties. One thing however that might have is the PVC cement used for glueing the pipes. Up until recently, I was never concerned about the effects of PVC glue and the system. I noticed a few months back when I was switching to a beckett skimmer prior to the sump swap that I lost a very healty rose anemone within hours of turning the skimmer on. It wasnt until a week or so later that I lost a fish after doing another modification to the plumbing. At that point I made a connection. There were some casualties following the sump swap and while they may have been stressed induced, I felt more like it could have been the PVC glue fumes that were the cause. A couple weeks back, I installed a manifold for my reactors. I made a point to let the glue dry for a few hours. I also made point to keep the valves open and ventilate them without being hooked up to the water line to insure that vapors would leave the plumbing. Even after all that, when I hooked the water up, the first shot of water through it had a very strong PVC glue smell. It is my belief that if the fumes get suspended in the oxygen in the system, they cant be good for the fish. Especially any weakend ones. When the anemone died and I reflected on it, I summised that the PVC glue fumes were injected into the air/water mix inside the skimmer and consequently distributed through my tank. Enough so that it killed my anemone.
I certainly dont blame the ich for all my casualties directly as I did a number of drastic things to try to remedy it. Indirectly is another story.
As for Jim, I have to appreciate his passion and while him and I will always have differences in opinion, I do believe he is right in that copper certainly would have reduced the number of casualties. Where him and I differ is the potential issues both near and long term as a result of copper treatment. My bio load at the time was heavy and many indicate that denitrifying bacteria can be killed or compromised by copper. If that is infact true, I could have had a system crash or I would have had to do rediculous water changes. Then the is the issue of copper binding to all of my live rock which I have several hundred pounds of. That was a major concern of mine as I could have had all kinds of issues with inverts down the line as a result of copper remaining in the rocks and substrate.
What kills me about his most recent video is that he was the one who brough the corals to my tank.. I was perfectly happy with my fish population. He broke down a system with corals in it. He had 2 options. Put them in his tank which had a flatworm problem or give them to me. Well I was all for taking them and that got me fired up on corals again. The ich broke out a month after that..
Everybody loves drama and so I think Jim was trying to get a message across to beginners that one needs to decide what kind of tank one wants and also for them to understand the risks which is totally understandable. I did however call him out on his comments about the 95% figure he used as well as saying that I only had 2 fish left.. That was a bit of an over dramatization.
Jim is Jim and I have known him for 15+ years so I understand him and his motives. He is stubborn and a bit old school as well as set in his ways which works well for him. Im a bit more of a go getter and not afraid to experiment regardless of the risks. After 25 years of being in this hobby I am still learning, even from my own mistakes. I still dont regret not treating the system with copper though.
