Where do I go from here?

Harris3005 · Jan 29, 2018

Hi everyone,

Before Xmas I was dealing with an ich outbreak and just as things seemed to be settling down I went away for three days over Xmas. When I got home the main fuse had tripped and my house had no power for three days. I lost pretty much all my fish. I had a pair of clowns, a regal tang, powder blue tang, 5 chromis, starry blenny and worst of all my beloved breeding pair of mandarin dragonets. One chromis and my cleaner wrasse were the only two fish that survived. Strangely all of my corals seem to have pulled through and are looking great at the moment which is the only thing that kept me going.

It's taken a wee while to write this post as I'm just kind of getting over what happened, losing my mandarins was particularly difficult!

So where do I go from here? There's still two fish in the main tank and I've been doing the bare minimum on the tank since it happened.

I'm worried that the ich is still in there so I'm worried about beginning to re stock with fish?

What would everyone else do in this situation? Get the remaining fish out and into a QT and leave the tank fallow? The two fish remaining are back to full fitness and there's been no sign of ich on either of them.

Sorry for the long post any advice on what I should do now would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

nautical_nathaniel · Jan 29, 2018

Sorry for your troubles

there's definitely something special about a breeding pair of fish and I hope you can get back to that one day.

I would get the remaining fish out, QT them with medication and such, and let the DT go fishless as you were thinking. Continue feeding the corals thought since they won't have any fish waste/food to catch. You may want to try and rehome the cleaner wrasse since one little chromis probably won't be able to sustain it long term unless you have it eating frozen and prepared foods.

rockstarta78 · Jan 29, 2018

I am sorry to hear about your loss. Specially heartbreaking that you lost the breeding mandarin pair. If I were you, there are 1 of 2 options I'd consider (giving up is not one of the options). 1. Cleaner wrasses for me have been difficult to maintain long term, just for that fish alone, and since it has survived the crash, I'd leave it in the tank. I'd start feeding frozen food and get both my fish fat and healthy. Next I'd start adding new fish very slowly.

Second option, if you are confident with QTing wrasses, I'd QT both fish and go fallow for 6 ~ 7 weeks then start restocking the tank. Again, I'd go slow just to make sure the tank can handle the bio-load. With power being out 3 days, I would assume some of your nitrifying bacteria died as well. Also, I'm sure you have already done this, but I'd do some massive and frequent WC to get whatever nasty out of the system.

Harris3005 · Jan 29, 2018

Thank you both for the quick replies. I think I've been lucky with my cleaner wrasse in that it eats everything from frozen to RS Mysis flake food and small vitalis pellets.

I think I kind of knew the answer would be to get them out of the tank and let it go fallow.

I also made the decision about two weeks ago that if I did decide to keep going and restock I would QT everything i buy from now on so I've placed an order for a 100 litre cube to fit exactly into the only space I have for it to go. Should be here in two weeks or so.

To be honest I did a water change of about 125 litres a few days after Xmas but I've been struggling to find the motivation to do maintenance as it depresses me when I look at the tank for too long!