Help, Fish dying

[oiliaN]

So, long story but i feel it needs to be in order to eliminate all possibilities, besides who doesn't love a fish story. I've been having a problem lately with livestock dying. Only fish though; Not coral, inverts, or macro algae. I've had multiple fish over the tanks two year life and sooner or later they all die seemingly overnight. None have lasted more than 5 months and some as little as 12 hours. With the exception of a purple dottyback which has been in the tank since I started it. I more recently learned that dottybacks are mass muderers and gave it its own micro tank. Relieved to think my problem had been solved. I bought a scopas tang and a yellow watchman goby to slowly start refilling the tank he too died in a matter of three days. The yellow watchman goby is, however, still alive so there's still a chance it was a freak incident with the scopas. I drip acclimate from a store that does not dose copper.

So now what I know; The tank is 90g with a 55 sump. My water is good. I use RO/DI from my home unit with an inline tds meter that read 0ppm. The tank auto tops off directly from the unit. The tank tests 0ppm on amonia, nitrite, and nitrate. The water is at 1.026 and stays 79 degrees. I have a large protein skimmer that pulls pretty dark skim every three days. A Fuge full of macro algae. and a normal 200 micro filter sock.

I have a handful of mixed corals in the tank that are doing quite well with the exception of some lack of growth from the harder corals. Snails and hermit crabs scoot around just fine. I have a purple reef lobster, very small, who is doing good. and an abalone who is very active.

Im really at my witts end trying to figure out what could be killing the fish in hours, days, or month yet isn't effecting anything else in my tank. I've assumed everything I can think of and eliminated it. I thought it might have been copper leaching somewhere, bought a test came back 0ppm. I thought it might have been ich, but everywhere said you'd see signs long before anything died and I didn't have any of them. Thought it was the dottyback, removed it. Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[cmcoker]

My suspicion is you may have a disease/parasite in there that isn't showing itself but still killing. I think @4FordFamily had velvet persist in his tank and kill fish for some time without obvious symptoms until he figured it out... Maybe he can chime in on that, (if I am remembering correctly)

Do you quarantine?
How long are the fish lasting and when did this start? How long between deaths? Like a fish every month, or multiple deaths in a few days
Any flashing, twitching before death?
Any spots, lesions, discoloration, bites marks?
Any heavy breathing, swimming into powerheads or high flow?
Eating?
Hiding?
Anything specific you can identify they do before death?

 

[mcarroll]

Scopas is a big sensitive fish for that relatively little tank.

Take a different (more conservative) tack with your fish selections, use your Goby's success as a lead. Pick smaller, heartier fish.

Give your Goby time to establish - perhaps give him (and you) a pistol shrimp.

In a few months after you have a good rhythm with making the goby fat and happy, make your next selection. Make it anything that is not a known ich magnet, for example no tangs!

Don't overdo your acclamations. If the source and destination waters aren't bad quality and the fish is healthy, it can be better to not do a drip and just do a fresh water dip and put em in.

Just saying for perspective.

A short acclamation is fine if you feel one is justified. 5 to 15 minutes should be sufficient in most circumstances.

You do have to be extra careful with larger fish in my experience - they seem more sensitive and consume oxygen and pee at a greater rate vs smaller fish. All in a (usually) tiny acclimation tank. It's definitely possible to nuke your new fish with its own ammonia during acclimation.

On a separate note, if you do plan on keeping fish for any length of time consider getting yourself a microscope.

I've been considering getting one myself and it looks like you only have to spend about 100 bucks. Maybe less if you are smart at shopping used.

Being able to do small biopsies on your tang would have gone a long way toward answering all of this mystery now. (Is biopsies the right word? Lol)

 

[oiliaN]

My suspicion is you may have a disease/parasite in there that isn't showing itself but still killing. I think @4FordFamily had velvet persist in his tank and kill fish for some time without obvious symptoms until he figured it out... Maybe he can chime in on that, (if I am remembering correctly)

Do you quarantine?
How long are the fish lasting and when did this start? How long between deaths? Like a fish every month, or multiple deaths in a few days
Any flashing, twitching before death?
Any spots, lesions, discoloration, bites marks?
Any heavy breathing, swimming into powerheads or high flow?
Eating?
Hiding?
Anything specific you can identify they do before death?

I don't quarantine. Though it is a common practice my lfs quarantines before they add to stock and insist there's no need for me too.

Its been like this mostly from the beginning, Some fish last hours some days some a month or two. Examples; 5 out of six Chromis dead over two days one still alive going on 1 month, Flame angel dead in 3ish weeks, Powder blue lasted a month or so, Purple dottyback has been alive since the beginning, in a different tank but the same system with the chromi for a few days now. I had a dragon goby jump after 12 hours. No Flashing, I was watching for that when I thought it was ick. Breathing is normal, but they do hit the power head every once and a while, I figure its just because. They eat everyday. The recent scoaps tang was the only fish I actually saw die. He was fine all day, ate durring feeding, was swimming around, then I found him pressed against a rock breathing, but not swimming, he kept breathing for a couple hours, but never swam. From more research I now think it may be a case of stay voltage. However your parasite/disease idea hold alot of water too.

 

[oiliaN]

Scopas is a big sensitive fish for that relatively little tank.

Take a different (more conservative) tack with your fish selections, use your Goby's success as a lead. Pick smaller, heartier fish.

Give your Goby time to establish - perhaps give him (and you) a pistol shrimp.

In a few months after you have a good rhythm with making the goby fat and happy, make your next selection. Make it anything that is not a known ich magnet, for example no tangs!

Don't overdo your acclamations. If the source and destination waters aren't bad quality and the fish is healthy, it can be better to not do a drip and just do a fresh water dip and put em in.

Just saying for perspective.

A short acclamation is fine if you feel one is justified. 5 to 15 minutes should be sufficient in most circumstances.

You do have to be extra careful with larger fish in my experience - they seem more sensitive and consume oxygen and pee at a greater rate vs smaller fish. All in a (usually) tiny acclimation tank. It's definitely possible to nuke your new fish with its own ammonia during acclimation.

On a separate note, if you do plan on keeping fish for any length of time consider getting yourself a microscope.

I've been considering getting one myself and it looks like you only have to spend about 100 bucks. Maybe less if you are smart at shopping used.

Being able to do small biopsies on your tang would have gone a long way toward answering all of this mystery now. (Is biopsies the right word? Lol)

I will take that advice. Suggestions? I was thinking coral beauty once everything is tested and ready to go again.

 

[ZoaCollector]

Do a 50% water change and 25% subsequent ones until flushed. Run activated carbon.
It's possible you have a toxin from something that either died or stressed out.
Possibly a sea cucumber or fish.
When I first started I caught a box fish, didn't realize they release a toxin when stressed and loss all my fish. Couldn't figure out what killed them then, and kept adding fish. Finally after months someone informed me about box fish. I flushed a lot of fish because of this lack of knowledge.

 

[JadeM]

lower salinity a bit that might help as fish easily adjust to more fresh water systems compared with going into a saltier system as they have certain amount of salt in them check out a vid on youtube by majestic aquariums(about the salinity and fish try finding it

 

[4FordFamily]

Because of the sheer volume of fish moving through LFS there are none that even remotely prevent parasites from making it in to your DT.

I did have a strain of velvet that plagued me for months that I could not identify until one day a chevron tang showed a classic velvet symptoms and I figured it out. Somehow my hippo tang lasted 30 days but she had survived really bad bouts of ich and had a very healthy immune system. Not proud of that but nonetheless.

Anyway, seemed like some fish would be fine. Most of my wrasse were largely unaffected which was in line with prior velvet cases I had seen. My sleeper goby was fine, everything else would drop dead - tangs, Angels, foxface, anything else I bought in as soon as two days or as long as a month. Angels rarely lasted more than a couple weeks it was particularly devastating for them.

 

[oiliaN]

Do a 50% water change and 25% subsequent ones until flushed. Run activated carbon.
It's possible you have a toxin from something that either died or stressed out.
Possibly a sea cucumber or fish.
When I first started I caught a box fish, didn't realize they release a toxin when stressed and loss all my fish. Couldn't figure out what killed them then, and kept adding fish. Finally after months someone informed me about box fish. I flushed a lot of fish because of this lack of knowledge.

Carbon is something I was looking into, but people talked me out of it saying it was pointless if I had a skimmer. I do keep up with 25% water changes every other week just because it cant hurt and ill try anything. Ive never had a sea cucumber or anything that is known to release toxins. When a fish dies I have the body out within hours, if there's even a body left after the crabs get to it. Ill try a larger water change this week, there is a chance an undetectable toxin is coming from somewhere.

Because of the sheer volume of fish moving through LFS there are none that even remotely prevent parasites from making it in to your DT.

I did have a strain of velvet that plagued me for months that I could not identify until one day a chevron tang showed a classic velvet symptoms and I figured it out. Somehow my hippo tang lasted 30 days but she had survived really bad bouts of ich and had a very healthy immune system. Not proud of that but nonetheless.

Anyway, seemed like some fish would be fine. Most of my wrasse were largely unaffected which was in line with prior velvet cases I had seen. My sleeper goby was fine, everything else would drop dead - tangs, Angels, foxface, anything else I bought in as soon as two days or as long as a month. Angels rarely lasted more than a couple weeks it was particularly devastating for them.

We all have to walk before we can run. This whole scenario sound very much like whats happening to me. So far three fish have lived (purple dottyback, green chromi, and a yellow watchman) and everything else has died (tangs, foxface, angel) How did you identify and what was your solution?

 

[4FordFamily]

Carbon is something I was looking into, but people talked me out of it saying it was pointless if I had a skimmer. I do keep up with 25% water changes every other week just because it cant hurt and ill try anything. Ive never had a sea cucumber or anything that is known to release toxins. When a fish dies I have the body out within hours, if there's even a body left after the crabs get to it. Ill try a larger water change this week, there is a chance an undetectable toxin is coming from somewhere.



We all have to walk before we can run. This whole scenario sound very much like whats happening to me. So far three fish have lived (purple dottyback, green chromi, and a yellow watchman) and everything else has died (tangs, foxface, angel) How did you identify and what was your solution?

A chevron tang eventually showed the velvety areas on fins, swam in to powerheads, and more importantly the dusting. My hippo showed this a little a month prior to this when she died but hippos look strange and seem to lose slime coat before dying which looked a bit like this and I am used to normal "ich looking" parasites and faster deaths for tangs. She was just tough because she had been in captivity with me for years and had a healthy resistance. Too bad I killed her I was pretty sad.

Anyway, I used cupramine in the DT. My 55 gal qt was taken and I've since removed it all via cuprisorb and carbon as I have in the past and what few coral i did have will return this week probably

 

[mcarroll]

Scientific articles always insist positive identification is necessary BEFORE treatment and that it's VERY easy to confuse different parasites.

Basically that implies that you need a microscope to tell what you're dealing with.

Can't remember where I read it, but somebody recommended just getting a dissection microscope rather than a standard microscope if the cost is about the same. The ultra high magnification from a standard microscope isn't really necessary, and a dissection microscope will give you stereo vision. Possibly also a wider field of vision. It may have been @Paul B

 

[cmcoker]

Scientific articles always insist positive identification is necessary BEFORE treatment and that it's VERY easy to confuse different parasites.

Yeah, but working in the veterinary field, you don't always have that privilege. Positive identification can be difficult, unaffordable, certain percentage of error in testing, etc.

Sometimes you have to go with what the symptoms tell you and treat, and many of the common diseases we see in the tank respond to copper or praziquantel.

We are not doing scientific research in our tanks that requires a positive identification, an educated guess will usually do.

 

[mcarroll]

That is a list of cop-outs

Is it better than guessing? Yes. I have found no authoritative reference that suggests treating any disease without positive ID.

Is it affordable? Yes. A microscope or dissecting microscope seems to cost around $100.

We are not talking about doing research, we are talking about diagnosing and treating fish diseases (and maybe others) at home.

University of Florida publishes excellent guides for free, unlike most published science. And folks would do well to read more of those scientific treatment guides than just the part saying "use X med to treat Y disease."

They always emphasizes stress reduction and health - complete, responsible care and treatment.

These documents target aquaculture, not science btw....farmers. None of this should be out of our reach. Links coming.

 

[cmcoker]

That is a list of cop-outs

Is it better than guessing? Yes. I have found no authoritative reference that suggests treating any disease without positive ID.

Is it affordable? Yes. A microscope or dissecting microscope seems to cost around $100.

We are not talking about doing research, we are talking about diagnosing and treating fish diseases (and maybe others) at home.

University of Florida publishes excellent guides for free, unlike most published science. And folks would do well to read more of those scientific treatment guides than just the part saying "use X med to treat Y disease."

They always emphasizes stress reduction and health - complete, responsible care and treatment.

Not a cop out, reality.
How stressful is it to scrape your fish and do a gill biopsy? People freak out about moving them into a qt, so now we add scrapes and biopsy to people who are hobbyists, not medical professionals?
If you have vet that treats fish nearby that maybe an option, but expensive and I expect the mortality is high.

To consider a $100 microscope affordable, depends on you income.
Then to expect a hobbyist to be able to identify the parasite/disease to accurately determine the id? Unrealistic in my opinion

 

[mcarroll]

It was unrealistic to do a lot of thing before we figured them out.

 

[jetmaker]

That is a list of cop-outs

Is it better than guessing? Yes. I have found no authoritative reference that suggests treating any disease without positive ID.

Is it affordable? Yes. A microscope or dissecting microscope seems to cost around $100.

We are not talking about doing research, we are talking about diagnosing and treating fish diseases (and maybe others) at home.

University of Florida publishes excellent guides for free, unlike most published science. And folks would do well to read more of those scientific treatment guides than just the part saying "use X med to treat Y disease."

They always emphasizes stress reduction and health - complete, responsible care and treatment.

These documents target aquaculture, not science btw....farmers. None of this should be out of our reach. Links coming.

In the past when a fish died over night or a couple days it was possibly a poison caught fish.

 

[mcarroll]

http://sfrc.ufl.edu/fish/outreach/extpubs/

In particular, check out the section: "Fish Diseases – Parasites".

Some links from that section:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FA/FA16400.pdf
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/VM/VM00400.pdf

Guides for two of the more common ones.

Use of the meds constitutes only a small percentage of the info in either one. And again, these docs are targeted at fish farmers, not scientists or doctors.

Even if they were targetting scientists, is that really a good excuse not to get a microscope? Bah!

 

[cmcoker]

Figuring them out is not the issue if you have the means to. Many people do not have the skill, and /or money to do so.
How many threads are there of people who cite cost as the reason for not using quarantine?
Add a microscope and it's even more out of reach.
Puppies and kittens are dewormed prophylactic, regardless of fecal testing results, and given vaccines to prevent disease. This is the same to me as using praziquantel to deworm new fish, and doing some treatment for ich, like copper, TTM, or CP With out evidence of disease.
I am familiar with the University of Florida's guides. I am also aware of how many people dont get how to use a microscope as well. Visit any freshman science lab, it take time and practice, not something that is in abundance when you have fish actively dying

 

[mcarroll]

Let's try that out...

"R2R Disease Forum:
If you are going to treat disease, don't bother identifying it first. Science is hard.

A best guess, with the help of other amateurs, is good enough."


Does that sound right to anyone? That's the pinnacle of our experience?

LOL

 

[mcarroll]

[...]
Puppies and kittens [...]

Puppies and kittens, like farm animals, are domesticated. (Also, is that considered "best practice"?)

The vast majority of fish we keep are, unfortunately, not.

There are very few (any?) marine fish which we know anywhere near as well as domesticated animals.

Instead of taking a more cavalier attitude, we should be taking a more conservative attitude.