Why are all my fish dying?

[PeterDolan]

I'm sorry for the loss of this little guy.

Uronema can't survive long without water, but soap will leave a residue that'll have an effect on future fish.

You can use vinegar and bleach to clean the tank and associated equipment, then let it dry completely.

~Bruce

Thanks Bruce. Glad to hear they'll be eliminated with drying. I'm tempted to find a friend who knows how to use a microscope to see if we can definitively identify Uronema in the system.

 

[4FordFamily]

We were doing 50% water changes daily and monitoring the ammonia levels twice a day. They never exceeded 0.25ppm, and nitrites + nitrates were both always zero. Would ammonia still be suspect, given the attention we paid to it?

We'll be acquiring a 20 gallon tank since we saw some fighting in the tank, and won't crowd them so much again.

.25 ppm in itself can be deadly, believe it or not

 

[GoPitt88]

When I stocked my 55 gallon DT, I used a 10 gallon QT as well, but when setting up the QT, I dosed it with Dr. Tim's Aquatics One and Only beneficial bacteria, and let it cycle for a couple weeks by adding a small amount of ammonia every day. I would never put fish in a tank that hasn't cycled, and that includes the QT. The cycle was over when my ammonia test was zero, my nitrite test was zero, and I was starting to get some nitrates. Then, when adding fish, I never did more than a couple at a time. Stock SLOWLY!!!! Nothing good happens fast in a saltwater tank.

 

[GoPitt88]

Seems to me that .25 ppm ammonia is too high. I always read yellow (zero), even in the QT.

 

[bsagea]

The tank was prepared the night before the fish arrived. It had been cleaned with soap, thoroughly rinsed with hot water, rinsed with a 3% bleach solution, then left to dry for 2 days. It was completely dry when we put freshly mixed saltwater in it the night before the fish arrived. It had been heated and was aerating for 12 hours before the fish were introduced to it. All of the equipment was similarly treated, except for the sponge bubble filter which was new.

Sorry for your losses. Always hard to lose a critter or a few of them. I have never cleaned a tank with soap or a bleach solution. No matter how much you rinse, you still may have some residue there. The only thing I use to clean a tank is vinegar and hot water. At worse, any vinegar residue will only affect the PH and that can be easily rectified. Hope things get better for both of you!
bsa

 

[PeterDolan]

Thank you everyone for your advice and kind words.

Four of the Chromis survived past the first week, all of the rest succumbed with large hemorrhages and/or significant lesions. We were able to get the four that survived the first week into a tank, and treated with Prazipro, Prime, and MetroPlex + Focus. We've been performing 50% water changes daily, as the tanks aren't cycled.

Two survived the following week before the same symptoms.

One survived another week before showing more lesions. We were very hopeful. I'm nervous that there may have also been some complications with PraziPro containing Malachite Green, as he showed some rapid breathing in the last day, but that could also have been Uronema Marinum attacking his gills. From the first appearance of a small lesion on his tail to death was about 18 hours, and he was almost completely unable to control himself in the last two hours. He was floating face-down on the bottom of the tank, occasionally pushing himself off the tank bottom with his mouth and spasming. I wondered if parasites had attacked his nervous system. I left the house to get some Clove oil for euthanasia, but he died before I got home.

The final survivor is currently doing okay - active in the water column and eating. He also showed rapid breathing yesterday, and we discontinued the PraziPro treatment and added activated charcoal to the tank to remove any from the water. Today his breathing is back to normal.

We've also kept several of the deceased frozen, and will be working with some biologist friends to try to positively identify any parasites. I wish I had some formalin on hand, would have been better to preserve them that way. I'll report our findings here.

I think we made a lot of mistakes in our acclimation and QT tank setup, and will be doing a lot of things differently next time. All of this, plus the unrest and violence around the U.S., has been pretty overwhelming, but I think we've learned a lot and will be much better able to care for our little aquatic friends next time.

Again, thank you to the entire community.