Hard lesson to learn. I was double dosing prazi with no improvement. This was my hail mary. All my fish get 30 days of hypo, 30 days of cupramine, 3 rounds of prazi, 5 days of fenbendazole, 2 rounds of levamisole, and 7 days of rally pro now.
I did the Prazi route with no results. Hypo did the trick in halting the carnage. After thirty days, no new fish were added for another month. Broke my heart when I lost my two year old C. burgessi and Tahiti. My problem is that I don't have room for a quarantine tank and am now restricted to buying quarantined fish. The LFS sends me e-mails every Friday with a list of their new stock, but I'm not going to take a chance.
My wife and I argued about it because I always am out looking for fish for about 5 different tanks and I like quarantining everything. We ended up putting a 76" industrial steel shelving rack in the spare bedroom, with a 75 gallon on the bottom shelf, and 4x 20 gallon tanks on the upper shelves for quarantines. Worked out nicely. Also threw a motile invert quarantine under the stand for my 240 gallon, since there was enough space next to the sump to squeeze one in there. It helps keep the "ugly" tanks from being scattered all over our house, which is already packed with tanks, furniture and everything else (the 2 of us with the baby on the way, 2 large dogs, 3 cats, a parrot, a bunch of plants, and all the display tanks packed in a 1200sqft ranch)
My wife is from Colombia which means that she is hard wired for cleaning. Twenty five years ago, I had a 50 hex salt tank in our dining room. After I spilled about a pint onto the hardwood floor, the tank was exiled to the basement. So now, there is the 50 softie reef tank, 40 breeder reef, 125 butterfly tank, 125 mbuna cichlid tank, 10 gallon fry tank, 70 gallon mixed cichlid tank, and a 40 to hold the goldfish until they go to the pond.
That's how it was at our old place. All the tanks had to be in the basement. Single story ranch now on a concrete slab, and she's slowly fallen in love with having the displays throughout the house. Helps I agreed to her putting a nano reef next to the bed in our room, with all the micro fish and inverts she likes.
When I re-did the basement, I used Benjamin Moore Kitchen/Bath paint. It's the best to use in high moisture areas. What is your current roster of butterflies?
Chaetodon xanthurus
Definitely don't get a pearlscale (Chaetodon xanthurus). I added a Pocillopora frag and a Seriatopora frag to the quarantine last night hoping to get the ornate butterfly (Chaetodon ornatissimus) to eat something, and while the ornate ignored the frags, the pearlscale butterfly (and lemonpeel angel) devoured them bothMy newest Butterfly. I am on the hunt for the right Butterflies that are SPS safe.
Probably Prognathodes aculeatus. Not horribly priced, pretty hardy, just not as common in the trade since it's a deeper water atlantic fish. Usually around $100 or so at my LFS in SE Michigan when they do happen to get one in. Almost bought one last time I saw it (only $60) but it had a wound on it's side and was gone the next time I went in. Still would really need a 48"x18" minimum footprint to do well, as they like to explore the rockwork for food.
Technically none are considered reef safe, but it's going to be a reef aquarium trial by fire. Gonna add a few different corals as large colonies, aiming for particularly noxious and cheap stuff (GSP, giant xenia, large gorgonians, large leathers, kenya trees). Whatever they don't eat will stay. I'll probably try an Acropora colony or 2 at some point as well. And most likely I'll add a few larger sponges, like red finger, yellow ball, yellow branching, and orange ear sponges. I'd keep a few nice macros (since I have a bunch of gorgeous Caulerpa species and some really nice Dragon's breath with my seahorses), but I have a pair of longspine urchins going in here that will mow it all down to nothing.
orphek.com
Good luck with the coral tests. Just a heads up on the macro, I tried many types with my butterflies and nothing was safe. I tried Codium, different Caulerpa, and several types of red with everything gone in hours.
Yeah, the urchins are gonna eat it anyways, so I probably won't bother in the display.
