What happened?

[reefergeorge]

I want to hear others ideas before I jump to conclusions..

My tanks has been set up for five years. The last fish was added 18 months ago, and last coral 9 months ago. I had ich at the beginning from not QTing but seemed to go away after a week.. Since then I have QTed everything for 8 weeks and haven't seen any signs for four years now.

Now the problem.. I wanted to get the trigger and a wrasse out of my tank so I could add inverts and go full reef. I went to the LFS and they lent me a trap they had in one of their tank. When I got home I rinsed it off under tap, since it had a little of their water left in it, and put it in my tank. Most of the fish hid for a while and seemed stressed about it being in the tank, but I caught the trigger after about an hour.

Skip two days forward and my purple tang is sitting on the sandbed leaned a little to the side and hiding in the rocks. The next day he is dead..
That night my foxface started breathing fast and staying in the corner just like the PT. I woke up the next morning to find him dead also..
Now it looks like my sailfin isn't his normal self, but doesn't seem as bad as the other two. My puffer and coris wrasse are acting normal but I don't know for how long..

In my 6 years in the hobby I have only lost one fish out of my display. He was six, and I hear that this was old for a coral beauty.

I'm think I am going to try to catch to catch the sailfin and do a fresh water dip to see if anything falls off of him. I have a micoscope to check out anything that does..


What do you guys think happened? Thanks!

 

[reefergeorge]

To add:
Corals in the tank look great, nitrates <10, 0 ammonia and nitrites, ph 8, mag, 1365, sg 1.025.

 

[b0bab0ey]

It sounds like possibly the tank your LFS took the trap from was infected with a fast killing parasite, such as Velvet. You may not have rinsed it off thoroughly enough. The only sure way is to either soak it in a bleach/water solution or let it air dry for 24 hrs before putting it in your tank. Sorry for your loses.

 

[Lostinthedark]

Once you have ich its there for life even if it doesn't visibly affect the fish. Is there anything else that might have stressed them?

 

[MrTuskfish]

Ich wouldn't kill this fast. Any signs of parasites at all? Spots. peeling skin, etc? The breathing problems precede almost anything lethal. You may never know, but anything from a LFS is always suspect.

 

[reefergeorge]

So after the sailfins FW did, I was looking under the microscope at particals i found in the bucket. I found something that at 100x looks like a cheerio, and at 400x looks like a grub curled into a circle surrounded by thousands of greenish transparent balls. Not sure if it came off of the fish or not but, it's a start.

I tried googling but is there any site with microscope shots of things we come across?

 

[reefergeorge]

Sailfin died today, but I may have started treatment early enough to save my puffer. Setting up a hospital tank able to handle a 9" fish isn't fun.. I guess after so long without problems we can get a little lax and it comes back hard.