Fish Dying! Help

[fdcityronco]

Hey guys, I haven't posted anything on here as of yet but need some help and feedback. I'm consistently losing fish and can't figure out the cause. Quick back ground on the system, it's been up and running for approximately 5 months now. I built the tank from scratch myself and is roughly 180 gal total water volume minus rock and sand. I run LED lighting, Apex system, Trigger sump, PM skimmer and dose KH, CA as well as Aquavitro balance for PH. I have mixed reef with mostly frags of LPS and SPS with some other stuff. The tank itself seems to be dong great with my parameters as follows. KH 10.1, Ca 450, PH 8.0, No3 and No2 0, Ammonia 0, Phosphates .009 (Hanna ultra low) up from 0 3 days ago. I currently do not run GFO reactor but I do run it in bags. Current livestock is maroon clown (aggressive), 2 Chromis, 1 6 line wrasse and sand Goby various snails and crabs. My problem is a few weeks ago I lost a blue jaw tang and shrimp, 1 week ago I lost a powder tang (discovered salinity was high since water change but corrected), Yesterday noticed my sailfin was very pale and hiding with dark spots. She is typically extremely social with zero defects. This morning I woke up and she was dead along with my 2 black clowns?! All other fish look happy and healthy including the 2 clowns that died overnight. Any suggestions to check would be greatly appreciated! Rick

 

[sfin52]

Man, that sucks!!! Great looking tank. Have you lost any coral as well. Medicated tank? Have you lost any corals along the way? Any chemical being used around the tank.

Besides and salinity issues you had has anything else changed in the tank or around the tank? What’s the salinity?

 

[fdcityronco]

Thanks! No, none lost, all corals are looking really good! Although my bubble coral is very temperamental it started to die however I moved it and I believe it had too much flow. I have 2 newer Monti's that came from another tank that were starting to die but the new growth once placed in my tank is really taking over. I'm baffled honestly, no cleaning products ever used near the tank. I typically spray non-ammonia glass cleaner on a rag away from tank then clean glass. When the first fish died there was ammonia spike for an unknown reason and I treated the tank with primer then performed water change. Since then everything is good. It seemed to only be the Tang's however now the black clown over night?! My current SG is 1.025, its typically kept at 1.026 however I performed a water change yesterday after seeing the Sailfin's condition and lowered SG slightly. SMH

 

[sfin52]

How bad ammonia spike. Ammonia can burn fish gills.

 

[sfin52]

Any new fish added. Any pics from the dead fish. Or dying fish.

 

[fdcityronco]

The pic of the sailfin was taken yesterday. She ate a little but was hiding a lot which is completely out of character for her. The darker spots around her nose/mouth she never had before and at that point when the picture was taken she wasn’t as pale as she was an hour prior. I was suctioning the sand from the bottom of the tank and thought she just got stressed for some reason but again would be very non-typical for her. The ammonia Spike was November 8 at 1 ppm and I lost a fox face at which you could tell he had ammonia.

 

[mattgsa]

To me it looks like black ich. Just based off the picture of the tang.

 

[fdcityronco]

Thanks! I’ll look into

 

[Reefmon]

Following as I’m having the same issue. It really sucks and frustrating

 

[Big G]

Welcome to R2R! Sorry for your losses. Let's get you some help @Maritimer, @4FordFamily

 

[eatbreakfast]

It sounds like a disease to me. Fish affected, over a short period of time, but not all at once, and corals are unaffected. I'd be willing to wager that it's marine velvet.

 

[mattgsa]

It sounds like a disease to me. Fish affected, over a short period of time, but not all at once, and corals are unaffected. I'd be willing to wager that it's marine velvet.

Does marine velvet produce black spots, however, it sure does fit with the mortality rate.

 

[S-t-r-e-t-c-h]

It sounds like a disease to me. Fish affected, over a short period of time, but not all at once, and corals are unaffected. I'd be willing to wager that it's marine velvet.

I'll second this. The black marks look more like scarring from where parasites were attached than the parasites themselves.

I will say, that tang looked like it has been sick for more than a day. That you can see its spine says it was losing muscle tissue and so was probably sick for some time (probably from the onset of issues with the other fish).

It would be good to post a current picture of the remaining fish. It's possible they are also displaying symptoms.

 

[fdcityronco]

Thanks for the input guys! I will post pics of remaining fish once I get home. It’s certainly possibly I missed something with the sailfin but I will say I was monitoring closely due to the last death. The 2 black Clowns were the most recently added on Nov 5. They both have had dark spots for a few weeks however acted normal and I assumed since they were juvenile it was just them naturally starting to change color. I’m a firefighter and gone every third day however when home I monitor the tank and maintenance closely and so far to me it seems as if the fish displays symptoms then dies within 2-3 Days.

 

[sfin52]

I would say they brought it in. Since all fish died after the addition.

 

[Big G]

Thanks for the input guys! I will post pics of remaining fish once I get home. It’s certainly possibly I missed something with the sailfin but I will say I was monitoring closely due to the last death. The 2 black Clowns were the most recently added on Nov 5. They both have had dark spots for a few weeks however acted normal and I assumed since they were juvenile it was just them naturally starting to change color. I’m a firefighter and gone every third day however when home I monitor the tank and maintenance closely and so far to me it seems as if the fish displays symptoms then dies within 2-3 Days.

Lots of fish suppliers are below therapeutic level dosing with copper. Keeps the fish looking good to sell and stalls off some of the disease. But then you take the fish home and diseases like ich and recently velvet come roaring back. Clowns seem to be somewhat resistant and are the only ones that often survive. But they are carriers probably in this case and can take as long as 30 days for the disease to start taking effect. Fish are going to need to be put into a qt; the display tank is going to need to be fallow for 76 days to starve out the disease. Sorry for your losses.

 

[fdcityronco]

Thanks Big G and others for their input. Here are the other fish currently in the tank and none of them exhibiting signs that I see. Hard to get good images because these guys aren't as social.

 

[Maritimer]

The fish in your last post don't _look_ like they've got obvious velvet - but looks can be deceiving. Velvet has a nasty habit of infesting a fish's gills, and killing the fish before physical symptoms even surface. Behavioural ones sometimes do, though; were any of the affected fish acting unusually reclusive, hiding from light? Were any of them swimming into the flow of a return or powerhead? Both of those can be symptoms.

The sailfin tang was _very_ thin when she passed. Was that a recent development, or a longer-term condition?

If you are dealing with velvet, you'll want to set up a quarantine system and move the fish into it for treatment ASAP. Velvet doesn't mess around.

Humblefish has written an excellent article on identifying and treating the disease, here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/velvet-amyloodinium-ocellatum.217570/#post-2499399

~Bruce

P.S. - Welcome to Reef2Reef! While sorry that it's under such saddening circumstances, we're glad to have you here!

 

[4FordFamily]

The fish in your last post don't _look_ like they've got obvious velvet - but looks can be deceiving. Velvet has a nasty habit of infesting a fish's gills, and killing the fish before physical symptoms even surface. Behavioural ones sometimes do, though; were any of the affected fish acting unusually reclusive, hiding from light? Were any of them swimming into the flow of a return or powerhead? Both of those can be symptoms.

The sailfin tang was _very_ thin when she passed. Was that a recent development, or a longer-term condition?

If you are dealing with velvet, you'll want to set up a quarantine system and move the fish into it for treatment ASAP. Velvet doesn't mess around.

Humblefish has written an excellent article on identifying and treating the disease, here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/velvet-amyloodinium-ocellatum.217570/#post-2499399

~Bruce

P.S. - Welcome to Reef2Reef! While sorry that it's under such saddening circumstances, we're glad to have you here!

I agree entirely.

Add to the fact that melanarus (and other wrasse), clowns, and some gobies can be extremely resilient to velvet, it makes sense that they remain. However, they’ll act as Typhoid Mary’s for reinfecting new Fish as you add them. I agree with @Maritimer, @S-t-r-e-t-c-h, and @Big G

 

[fdcityronco]

The fish in your last post don't _look_ like they've got obvious velvet - but looks can be deceiving. Velvet has a nasty habit of infesting a fish's gills, and killing the fish before physical symptoms even surface. Behavioural ones sometimes do, though; were any of the affected fish acting unusually reclusive, hiding from light? Were any of them swimming into the flow of a return or powerhead? Both of those can be symptoms.

The sailfin tang was _very_ thin when she passed. Was that a recent development, or a longer-term condition?

If you are dealing with velvet, you'll want to set up a quarantine system and move the fish into it for treatment ASAP. Velvet doesn't mess around.

Humblefish has written an excellent article on identifying and treating the disease, here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/velvet-amyloodinium-ocellatum.217570/#post-2499399

~Bruce

P.S. - Welcome to Reef2Reef! While sorry that it's under such saddening circumstances, we're glad to have you here!

Maritimer, you hit the nail on the head for sure! Although I honestly didn’t notice her dropping weight or looking sick until 2 days ago, she has been swimming into the power head current for 2 weeks. To be honest I thought because of her temperament she was just playing and I had just changed my ecotech power heads to the tidal flow setting, so I didn’t think anything of it. Both the sailfin and the powder brown however hid under live rock caverns 2 days before they died. The sailfin did come out a little and eat but then went back and basically hid. She diminished rapidly in approx 48 hrs or less. Thanks so much for the info and I will review the article and figure out how to quarantine the remaining fish. Thx!