New Fish Killed Tank

[azreefbuild]

I have a 100 gallon tank reef tank. It has been up for 8 months after cycling and no issues. My kids and wife surprised me with a pair of green chromis on Sunday not from my regular fish store as I was talking about getting a pair. They acclimated them as they have seen me do before.

On Monday the turned up dead and I removed them. No marks of being picked or attacked. I could not see any spots on them or anything.

Tuesday my other fish started to die until today Friday. They all died one by one except small clown fish. I had a six line wrasse, fire fish goby, two white tail chromis, kole yellow eye tang, and the small clown that is still alive. I also have snails and hermit crabs that are still alive.

Can I test the water for disease? Is there something that was introduced by the chromis that would kill the other fish?

 

[b0bab0ey]

Any visible signs of disease of any of the deceased? Also, examine the surviving clown closely. It could be any number of diseases, but Velvet or Brooklynella would top my list being it killed everything so quickly. Chromis are also very susceptible to Uronema, but you should have seen red sore spots on this fish if it was that. I would start Googling and searching on here for the above diseases, and also Cryptocaryon irritans. Here is a good place to start:

http://www.chucksaddiction.com/disease.html

Unfortunately, I think you just learned the hard way that you should QT every fish before introducing them to the DT.

 

[h2so4hurts]

Did you have a power outage, that could do it too? Brook or velvet are likely candidates. That seems like a super fast timeline for crypto to kill a tank though.

 

[MrTuskfish]

I agree with the two posts above. There are no water tests that will ID the problem. Velvet, especially, can often be tough to ID. You NEED a QT, it isn't just a nice thing to have and probably would have limited losses to the Chromis. It may/may not be a factor; but Chromis seem to be dying like flies lately. I have no idea why.

 

[cngreg]

Brooklynella and uronmena on chromis usually manifest as discolored blotches behind their pectoral fins. Do you remember seeing that? It's where they nip eachother and open teh skin up through teh slime coat allowing these often ambient protozoans opportunistic access. Did your other fish get hazy, did you see the eyes get cloudy? I agree with h2so4 that this timeline is too fast for ich or even bacterial disease.

 

[azreefbuild]

There was a small discoloration, on the chromis, but no signs of cloudiness around the eyes. The Sixline was the last to die and it did seem sluggish and labored when he died. The clown seems to be doing well at this point and no effects. Taking water from the tank to my LFS in the morning. This is my first tank crash, I am hoping that the rest of tank mates will survive.

 

[necco]

I'm sorry for your loss.

I just recently have gone through a total velvet wipe out of my tank. All my fish seemed normal except my clown was acting a bit weird and scratching itself against the rocks. Some spots showed up around the head of the new addition kole tang. I had thought it was ich and started hyposalinity. 2 weeks into treatment my clown started to show velvet signs on its skin. All the fish at that time started to show signs of rapid breathing. Then i lost my royal gramma. By this time i knew it was velvet and raised the salinity back up as fast as i could. I started cupramine treatment but it was to late. 24 hrs later the rest of my fish past.

If its velvet a water sample won't find it, only a gill clipping under a microscope will determine it. Only copper is effective at killing it at the stage its free swimming. If i didn't misdiagnose and started cupramine instead of hypo, there is no doubt in my mind my beloved fish would still be here. Only 1 of my fish showed visual signs 2 weeks in the hypo, and by that time it was to late.

I'm not saying that this is velvet, all i'm saying is if your fish are not showing any signs of anything else i wouln't take the chance and start treatment as soon as posible.

I usually don't post much as you can tell from my post count vs year joined, but i'd hate to see anyone go through what i just have

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

[snorvich]

Based on the timeline (only), I would agree with Tim above that the most likely was velvet.

 

[StaghornE]

How are your corals? Because this happened so fast do you think it's possible this wasn't disease or a parasite. What if the wife and child who aren't accustomed to working in the tank didn't was there hands? Or what if the vessel/water they used to acclimate the chromis was contaminated. I've seen a tank severely damaged before by a mother in law "cleaning" around the tank. I've also seen a tank wiped out by dust from Sheetrock compound in the same room as the aquarium. An experienced person would know to avoid these situations but most people wouldn't think twice about it. Good luck buddy.

 

[necco]

After reading this again when I wasn't so tired. I'd have to agree that this does seem kind of fast to be a parasite. If it were a parasite it would need to go through most of its stages coming from the infected fish before attaching to another host. Even then the parasites would need to be in increased numbers to start causing deaths. Then again do you think that your fish might have been sick before the introduction of the chromis?

 

[azreefbuild]

The corals and the invertebrates are doing well. The snails and the hermit crabs are active and moving around. The anemone and the clown are still doing well and no signs on the clown. They used the new acrylic container to transfer the chromis, but washed it out with our R.O. water before use.

 

[Dr Colliebreath]

As others note, it likely with either velvet (maybe brook, but you don't note the typical signs) or an external chemical introduced on someone's hands.

As the other organisms are doing fine, it is less likely to be a chemical. To be safe, I would put a bag of carbon in the sump where there is a lot of water flow.

Assuming it is not chemical, I would remove the clown and let the tank set without fish for 10 weeks. I would treat the clown with Cupramine in a separate quarantine tank, and then quarantine all other fish before introduction to your reef. If you leave the clown in, you will always be subject to an outbreak.

Sorry to hear that such a nice gesture by your family turned out so bad. Make sure to keep them involved in the tank as their interest is a good thing. This could have happened to anyone.

 

[azreefbuild]

The clown , the corals, and the starfish are still doing well. No issues with the hermit crabs. My regular fish store thinks it was a chemical or something introduced by the chromis. They recommend to continue to monitor until the middle of next month. And they have not seen anything odd with the clown. I did add Carbon to the sump as recommended and we will stick with the one fish store that we have received the majority of our fish from.

 

[3rdimension]

Tell your wife and kids to NEVER get their fish at PETCO ever again!!! If they didn't get them there, this is just another reason why having a quarantine tank is vital! Even though you can't see signs right away, fish still carry disease.

 

[Garrett11]

The same exact thing happened to me :/ i got 2 chromises from petco cuz they were super cheap....terrible idea... like 3 days after both died then over the following week lost a yellow tang a pacific blue tang 2 fire fish a bi color pseudochromis a black wrasse i think that was it, but all i had left was two clowns and a manderin, none of the fish showed any signs at all, just dropped