Ending Fish Death

[MrDellimore]

This morning I woke up to see my Solar wrasse dead and floating by my overflow.

I feel really awful about this. I have devoted hours of research and work to create my tank. It has been a tremendously satisfying hobby and I find myself constantly trying to expand my understanding. With all its complexity what I have really created is a home for fish and coral. With the death of a fish it feels as though my efforts were in vain and I didn't do a good enough job.

This morning I realized the gravity and what is at stake when the work I put into my tank is sub standard. I want to commit to and make the best efforts I can to protect the lives of the remaining 3 fish I have.

To give some background on my 180 gallon tank, I filled it with water November of 2019 and added 6 fish by the end of December. I traveled to Asia and left the tank on auto pilot for about 5 weeks. Before leaving I lost one clown and the royal gramma. I figured it was due to aggression because I would see the larger clown sometimes bully them.

When I came back from Asia on Feb 1st the fish looked healthy and the tank was covered in green hair algae. I was using an auto feeder that probably added too much food each time.

I am trying to isolate what caused this fish death so I can do my best not to repeat this and also to protect the remaining fish.

The things I did since Feb 1st until now are the following:

Started dosing Kalkwasser into my ATO
Drained the 75G sump and cleaned out all hair Algae
Did daily Auto Water Changes to lower nutrients
Starting feeding frozen shrimp and flakes instead of the auto feeder
Started to Run GFO to bring excess nutrients down for the GHA
Added new Clean Chaeto to the sump from Algae Barn
Added a Tuxedo Urchin to the tank clean Algae ( this died in the tank I found out this morning as well)

So at this point I am trying to pinpoint if any of my actions above could have killed a fish that was in my tank for over a month and looked healthy of if there might be some illness in the tank I am not aware of. If there is an illness in the tank I am not sure how I should go about treating the remaining 3 fish I have in there.

Any advice and direction would be greatly appreciated.

 

[brandon429]

pull the remaining fish, re fallow the tank, qt them

skipping fallow is the most likely cause of current and future fish issues

per the fish disease forum there is no other way that works as well

skipping fallow prep leads to about 80% fish loss if Im reading the patters there correctly/fish disease forum

*I know it may not look like disease, but patterns speak for themselves in the disease forum. no fallow, most fish are lost by month 6 attribute any way we want.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

How was your urchin doing prior to passing? Who died first, the urchin or the wrasse?

Seems like a lot of changes in a short time frame but I woudn't rule out illness yet if you have lost three fish due to unknown causes. How are the remaining fish doing? Do you have a tank you can use as QT?

 

[Webslinger]

Slow and steady wins the race. Bad things happen fast, good thing happen slow.

 

[Indytraveler83]

I'm not sure what the solution is but:

What are your water paremeters currently? Have they had any large changes?

Anything you can describe with the dead fish? Flashing on rocks? Swimming into powerheads? Hiding from lights? What we're their eating habits prior to death?

 

[artieg1]

I would observe for now, and only make one change at a time so you can test the impact. In the meantime, read up on the stickies and posts in the disease and QT forums.

 

[MrDellimore]

How was your urchin doing prior to passing? Who died first, the urchin or the wrasse?

Seems like a lot of changes in a short time frame but I woudn't rule out illness yet if you have lost three fish due to unknown causes. How are the remaining fish doing? Do you have a tank you can use as QT?

Urchin died first i think. I didn't confirm the death until this morning.

The remaining 3 fish seem to be fine. The wasse was also doing fine and actively swimming eating etc. I am buying a tank for QT today

 

[MrDellimore]

I'm not sure what the solution is but:

What are your water paremeters currently? Have they had any large changes?

Anything you can describe with the dead fish? Flashing on rocks? Swimming into powerheads? Hiding from lights? What we're their eating habits prior to death?

I will update my parameters tonight. Except for the kalkwasser and water changes there werent large changes.

Prior to death there were no obvious signs. The fish was swimming and very lively.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Urchin died first i think. I didn't confirm the death until this morning.

The remaining 3 fish seem to be fine. The wasse was also doing fine and actively swimming eating etc. I am buying a tank for QT today

High nitrates potentially killed the urchin or he was sick to begin with. Fish disease could have been present and popped up from all the changes at once. Ammonia from the urchin could have played a factor along with elevated pH from kalk.

Just spit balling but the rough and truthful answer is that only you can find out and you will likely not find out the true root cause. If you have the option I would QT.

 

[MrDellimore]

It will be a challenge to get out the tailspot blenny and yellow coris wrass but I can try to remove them and treat them for sure.

Are there any tell tale signs that I can look out for to see if treatment is needed? As far as I have seen they have all looked very healthy and been in the tank for over a month

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Check out the articles on fish diseases but if it killed that quickly (no real observed symptoms and very sudden) I would suspect velvet. It might be accompanied by a white dusting, rapid breathing and swimming toward a powerhead. Not an illness expert.

Personally (and without a ton of information to go on) I am not convinced its disease and I would monitor closely while QT tank cycles. I would just check parameters again and slow down on changes. QT regiment can start once its cycled if you think it is needed.

 

[MrDellimore]

Thanks so much. I will do my best to follow the advice given and make gradual changes.

I will also do my research on velvet. I am not opposed to the idea if it will lead to a safer environment, but if possible I would hope that I dont need to drain the entire tank and start over.

 

[brandon429]

No drain

can use all current items, the quick summary is this: simply pull fish or catch em

theyre held somewhere else for about eighty days.
your current tank made fishless now has no hosts for fish disease strewn about inside


The majority of disease agents starve in eighty days with nothing to feed on

during this time fish are preventatively treated. Put fish back, now system is as disease free as they know how to make it.

*the hassle is future additions. Hard items like rocks, snail shells, corals can and will bring back fish disease ruining all your prep

so they can only be added after eighty days fallow in another tank see how that works

new fish simply need to be quarantined ones, you can buy already qt fish to handle future purchases. But hard items have to pass through 80 day fallow before going into your tank, that’s the hassle


**you could potentially delay the fallow and build up nice corals


then fallow, and not be adding lots of stuff. Grow your current stuff out. This makes all future fish as high level as can be for this year in our hobby, it’s using the top science. You can still feed corals and snails and shrimp in current tank, but don’t add anything new regarding hard scape items and don’t get contaminated lfs water near it.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Thanks so much. I will do my best to follow the advice given and make gradual changes.

I will also do my research on velvet. I am not opposed to the idea if it will lead to a safer environment, but if possible I would hope that I dont need to drain the entire tank and start over.

Yeah if you have not done a full QT on your fish then its not a bad idea to plan on medicating and going fallow. Let us know what happens.

 

[theMeat]

Do you have coral?
Any other inverts alive?

 

[MrDellimore]

Do you have coral?
Any other inverts alive?

Zero coral
A few crabs, snails, and 2 conchs they are all alive and seem pretty happy. The snails look like they are trying to reproduce and spew out this white liquid sometimes.

 

[hans4811]

No drain

can use all current items, the quick summary is this: simply pull fish or catch em

theyre held somewhere else for about eighty days.
your current tank made fishless now has no hosts for fish disease strewn about inside


The majority of disease agents starve in eighty days with nothing to feed on

during this time fish are preventatively treated. Put fish back, now system is as disease free as they know how to make it.

*the hassle is future additions. Hard items like rocks, snail shells, corals can and will bring back fish disease ruining all your prep

so they can only be added after eighty days fallow in another tank see how that works

new fish simply need to be quarantined ones, you can buy already qt fish to handle future purchases. But hard items have to pass through 80 day fallow before going into your tank, that’s the hassle


**you could potentially delay the fallow and build up nice corals


then fallow, and not be adding lots of stuff. Grow your current stuff out. This makes all future fish as high level as can be for this year in our hobby, it’s using the top science. You can still feed corals and snails and shrimp in current tank, but don’t add anything new regarding hard scape items and don’t get contaminated lfs water near it.

+1...good advice.

 

[artieg1]

I would try not to get too discouraged. I think pretty much everyone has been right where you are. Removing fish to QT and going fallow for ~76 days is a great way to eliminate velvet and ich, but I would hesitate to go that route unless you can confirm the parasite. Read up in the disease forums. If the fish that died did not exhibit any of the velvet symptoms, then I'd consider other possibilities before going fallow.

I have to say, part of the benefit of strictly adopting a QT regimen is this: newly introduced fish just die sometimes (they're exhausted and stressed). I'd rather have the fish make it through QT and observation for 6 weeks before introducing to my DT. But if it does not make it, I'd prefer it not make it in a QT tank. That way, you just have peace of mind that if it dies, you don't have to figure out exactly why and it didn't infect your DT.