Fallow period

[Hilltopreef90]

All the fish are gone from my display tank and based on what I’ve read and heard it’s most likely velvet that took out the fish in my tank.
I still have several shrimp, crabs, snails, and urchin and corals in the DT, I also have Chaeto in my refugium, other then leaving the tank fishless for 74 days is there anything else I need to do to eliminate all of the disease from my tank ?

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

All the fish are gone from my display tank and based on what I’ve read and heard it’s most likely velvet that took out the fish in my tank.
I still have several shrimp, crabs, snails, and urchin and corals in the DT, I also have Chaeto in my refugium, other then leaving the tank fishless for 74 days is there anything else I need to do to eliminate all of the disease from my tank ?

There isn't any chemical that you can safely add to a tank to kill off any resting tomont stages of parasites. The best thing to do is let the tank go fallow, but you'll need to actively quarantine all new fish going in, or have it done for you, else you may end up right back where you started from. I hear this quite a bit: a person loses fish, lets their tank go fallow, then adds new fish. The new fish get sick and the person assumes the fallow period failed, when actually, the new fish just brought in disease.

Here is a thread that discusses how long a fallow period should be:

45 Day Fallow periods

I've been doing some research into the "76 day fallow period". I never heard of that prior to coming to Reef2Reef this past summer. I had always used 32 days as the maximum time for a tomont to remain viable under tropical conditions, and then I would round up to 45 days to help ensure that...

www.reef2reef.com

Jay