affan
In Memoriam
I had a 55 gallon freshwater tank for about six months. Then I converted it to a reef. Maintained my reef tank (an absolute beauty!) for about a year and a half until Katrina struck and destroyed everything. I never had a problem in my reef. Before I jumped into the hobby, I did extensive research. Stayed up 'til the wee hours just reading and reading stuff online. Everything I did by the book, and one step at a time. Never had any problems except for an occasional algae bloom. Then came the 100g tank. I set it up in late last November. Cycled it with a blue damsel and then in the 2nd week of January added a clownfish. Everything seemed perfect, all readings were normal and lo and behold! the clownfish came down with Ich. No problem, I thought. Went to the LFS and picked up a bottle of Kordon's all organic Ich-Attack after much persuasion by the LFS owner who holds a degree in Marine Biology. Two days into the treatment and the clownfish died, completey covered with white spots. I continued to treat the water for yet another 14 days, however. Few days later, the very same thing happened to a Maroon Clownfish, and then a Punctato Butterfly fish. Both of these died in the hospital tank while being treated with Kordon's Rid-Ich+. In february, from the same LFS I brought home a Yallow Tang. A few days later, I added a Grey Poma Angel and two baby clownfish. Couple of days go by and boom: the tang, the angel, and the clownfish all immediately came down with a severe case of Ich. I put them in a Hospital tank, and treated them with Cupramine. Perhaps it was the test kit, perhaps it was my own error overdosing, but over night all four of them died except for the damsel which didn't seem to have any signs of ich but I was treating it nevertheless. So then I did an 80 % water change in my display tank. Did not add any fish in the display tank for a full three weeks until I saw this purple tang at the LFS that I could not resist. Brought him home, quarantined for 2 weeks and then I put him in my display tank this last Sunday and last night I noticed a little bitty white dot on his dorsal. This morning there were two or three and believe it or not exactly an hour later he was completely covered in white spots and now he is not doing well at all. This is my story. Sorry for the long post but I just don't understand what I am doing wrong. The damsel has lived through it all and has never showed any signs of contracting the disease. It's a 100 gallon tank. Fluval 404 and an Emperor 400 for filteration along with about 100 lbs of live rock. Substrate is a 3" bed of livesand. I am running a Berlin for skimming. The temperature is 77/78 degrees. Sg 1.025, pH 8.0 - 8.2. There's never any sudden fluctuations in any of those conditions. Ammonia is undetectable, nitrite and nitrate levels are non-existent. I checked for copper with 3 test kits and they all showed 0. I follow the best practices when it comes the fish's diet, the water quality etc. I've always bought my fish from that LFS and didn't have any problems. I spent almost 4 hours in there one day staring into each and every tank checking to see if there was any Ich in any of their tanks as I know that they use a central filteration system. I always do my research before adding or removing anything. All in all I take great care of my tank but this Ich has got me stumped. I have been a silent reader of these forums for almost 6 months now. What am I doing wrong? What's causing these fish to one after another get Ich and then die? Could anyone help?
