disease outbreak - advice sought

mushcat · Mar 12, 2017

Horrible situation for my son and myself. We've had a healthy tank for 9+ months, 2 clowns, yellow tang, coral beauty, blenny, and lots of coral and cleanup crew. Recently purchased a butterfly under the advice it didn't need quarantine - and we've now learned the hard way about disease in a tank. In the last 2 weeks, we've had a die off. Butterfly, male clown, blenny - all dead. Signs of disease on tang and female clown. Coral looks OK. Probably ich - but no doubt its a parasite.

We have a quarantine tank set up now. One problem we have is that we are leaving tomorrow for a 1 week vacation, and this kind of fish care was not what we were expecting to have to arrange. I don't have a copper test kit (yet), but I have copper medication. I was planning on putting all the fish in the QT and having the fish helpers do a 25% water change on day 3.

Does anyone have advice counter to my plan? Would it be better to leave all the fish in the display tank until we get home in 1 week?

Other question. Assuming I remove all fish from the display tank, do I need to keep feeding anything to the tank (for the coral, anemone, shrimp and cucumber?

Thanks in advance for any advice

Humblefish · Mar 12, 2017

The timeline of deaths suggest velvet, not ich. Therefore I would follow this protocol for the survivors: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/velvet-amyloodinium-ocellatum.217570/#post-2499437

The most important part is to get the copper in QT up to therapeutic before you leave. Do you trust your tank sitter to be able to redose the appropriate amount of copper after the WC?

melypr1985 · Mar 12, 2017

Humblefish said:
Do you trust your tank sitter to be able to redose the appropriate amount of copper after the WC?

Yes, this is key. You would have to write very strict and detailed instructions for them. As in: Take out this much water, Put this much copper in this much water. Put water into tank. Make it easy to follow.