A Problem I Still Cant Solve

[jvaleno12]

Ok so flash back like 4 months ago my tank is doing great got about 15 fish and corals doing fine. Now I am down to 3 fish with multiple fish doing a complete 360 in health in 24 hours. Lets start with when everything started to go down hill quick. I added a yellow shoulder tang into the tank it got ich after about a week and its health diminished. I left him in there for a day or two before taking him out before he died. The ich showed some spot on other fish but nothing alarming and most of the fishs were fine after about 2 weeks no signs of ich. This is when I think I messed up big time, I decided to add a Powder Blue..... After reading and talking to people they said its not worth adding because it will get ich. I ended up getting the fish he was fine for about 1 week then I added 3 Pilot fish. The powder added up with full blown ich overnight. This slowly spread to every other fish killing about 1k worth of my stock. Beginner mistake for sure, the only fish to survive were my 3 pilot fish never showed any signs of ich so for about 48 days I just left them in the tank by themselves. They ate like pigs and added some decent size to them. So I slowly started to stock the tank back up and every fish I added would be fine for 4-8 days then show signs of stress then Ich would start to show up. I checked my water countless amounts of time it wasnt the issue. I started to feed little more to get them beefed up so not feeding wasnt the issue. Just this past weekend I lost a salfin tang and midas blenny in span of 36 hours both just lost all health rapidly. The blenny went from non stop eatting to 24 hours later watching the food go by his face while hiding under my overflow. Woke up to him dead this morning.
I talked with some ppl I think my current issue is the Pilot fish. These things fly around my 125 gallon tank and are about 4-4.5 inchs long. I think they are stressing my fish out to point the fish cant take it anymore. I cant think of any other reason they fish are passing away so quickly.

 

[Crabs McJones]

Are you sure it was ich and not velvet? Velvet looks similar but kills a lot faster, usually within 24 to 48 hours. Your best bet would be to get everything in a quarantine and start treatment. The treatment for ich and velvet is the same. 30 days of therapeutic copper and then let the tank sit without fish for 76 to 78 days.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

It's hard to say what the cause is. It sounds like you've been adding a lot of fish and quarantining none of them. Being stressed to death is not a likely explanation for how these fish died. Being stressed and catching ich or velvet, however, could very easily be what's happening here. Ich can stay in a tank indefinitely as long as there are fish present and up to 76 days if there are no fish present. Velvet can stay in a tank indefinitely if there are fish present, and up to 6 weeks if there are no fish present.

All of the deaths you're describing could be attributed to ich or velvet, with velvet being the more likely candidate.

 

[jvaleno12]

It was definatly Ich and not velvet. I spent hours on hours and analyzed it wasnt velvet. My last two fish the Salfin and Midas Blenny barely had more then 15 spots if that on them. The pilots were eatting about 75% of the food i put then the tank aggressive eaters.