Pale B Cardinals and spotted clownfish... HELP

indyjaco

Member
Hello,

After a nice vacation I came home at 1AM to find my tank looking like ***. Both of my clownfish are covered in white dots that appear more like a fungus then ich (which i've seen before). They also seem to be blind (bouncing into things) and are having trouble with the powerheads.

My yellow tang and flame angel has no spots on it but is bumping into things as well when I got home and seems blind.

My Banggai cardinals have also lost all of their color and seem almost pale but don't have any spots on them. They just seem to be freaking out.

I've been gone since Tuesday morning and everything was fine then. I also came home to a horrible algae problem to which GFO seems to be doing nothing and is giving me more fits then I want to allow

Help please. I am in the process of making some water to setup the QT tank, none of these fish were QT'ed (started before I knew what was what). Hopefully when i wake up I can have some direction.

I thought it could be lymphomis since they were on a flake diet as I was gone.

Thanks
 
I doubt a flake diet for several days would have anything to do with lympho. I think we need a lot more info. Pics would really help. Did someone feed the fish, or have an auto-feeder? Helpers are notorious for dumping in with the fishies. How was top-off handled? Was your lighting controlled while you were gone? Six days of non-stop lighting possible?Water params? (Ammonia, PH, SG, temp). Anything that changed during your absence may help. It sounds like something got into your tank, or they were grossly overfed an a big ammonia spike occurred.
 
Sorry for rambling last night:

I had an autofeeder setup. My roomate did casual watching of the tank when he was home, pretty much made sure pumps were running and did feed on Friday and Saturday, amount fed is unknown.

Lighting was controlled by my fixture, top off is with a float setup and looked fine when I got home.

I was reading very slight ammonia last night on my red sea kit after I posted this. I changed carbon before bed last night (incase something did get in the water) and this morning the cardinals had improved, and ate several peices of mysis at lunch. My male clown looked better (ate), but I lost the female. She had some blotchyness to her skin. I can try and get pictures tonight.

SG 1.025
Temp 78.5
Ammonia ~.1 is my guess
PH is around 8

I also had a lot of diatoms on the glass when i returned home and my cyano is going crazy again.

Thanks MrTuskFish.
 
Glad to see its improving. Lots of WCs and running a good carbon should solve whatever it is/was. I'd also dose with an ammonia neutralizer; like Prime, AmmoLock, etc. Whatever got into your tank, or whatever went wrong, could have easily damaged your bio-filter and you should monitor ammonia closely for a while. If you do dose with an ammonia neutralizer, most ammonia tests won't work. the stick-on ammonia alerts do, though. I don't like to just throw stuff at a tank; but Stressguard may help too. Its a good and very safe slime coat and wound protector. It also de-toxifies ammonia.
 
Me again. I hate doing these posts to show how little I know and where I've gone wrong, but I am learning from this.

It looks like whatever I had before is back (never left) and killed my Mccoster Wrasse this morning. He was fine on Tuesday and eating plenty, I didn't see him eat at lot yesterday (usually eats several mysis) and at 5 am this morning he was lunging to the surface seeming to grab air and sporadically swimming. At 7 he was gone.

His body seemed to be mostly ich free maybe a dot or two but on one of his last breaths he let out what seemed like a cloud.

I was on day 2 of dosing my tank with prazi due to what I thought were flukes on my YT. He has cleared up a little.

At this point I am going to setup a QT tank and run the fish through a copper treatment and go fallow. I am moving in Mid April so my hope is between now and then I will have my issues under control. At my new residence I can get my proper QT protocol in place. Any other suggestions are welcome.

I don't have any pictures of the other fish. My 4S takes horrible photos of the tank with the blue balance.

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
shot of the clown that is now in QT. Not sure he will fair well.

It looks to me like velvet. I am planning to treat with copper as soon as I can get my hands on some.
 

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