Fallow Period Thread

[ctopherl]

I was really enthused by the various possibilities of H2O2, so I did some bench testing. I didn't have any current active disease issues to test it on (but that's a good thing!) so I did some basic chemical tests. I haven't read Humblefish's current thoughts on this (I'll look at it in a bit) but some of his assumptions posted here on R2R some time ago didn't stand up to my testing, specifically in regards to not using plastics, not aerating, etc. Here is the link to what I found:

Hydrogen Peroxide Bench-testing

Bench testing of the effects of hydrogen peroxide in aquariums.

www.reef2reef.com

The most important thing I found is that there are now H2O2 test strips (both low and high dose versions) that can be used to actually determine relative activity of the peroxide. I think these are used for potable water testing, but their application is HUGE for aquariums, as peroxide activity is completely dependent on the level of peroxidase in the aquarium, and the only way to know that is through testing.

In regards to using this for Uronema - since that specific issue is intercellular (internal) I do not see how any bath treatment can reach those protozoans to affect a cure. It could have some benefit in limiting the protozoans in the system itself, but once the disease is internal, I can't see how any bath could work. I see that same issue with copper and chloroquine treatments for this problem....they just fail.

Jay

That makes a lot of sense! Luckily my tank is currently fishless so I am only concerned about free swimmers right now

Also worth noting the post I linked was not written up by HumbleFish himself, just posted on his site forum.

 

[ctopherl]

UV up and running. Not the prettiest install but it's mostly quiet and should get the job done. I know people claim it's "more effective" to run off the DT directly but this is better than nothing. I at least have the "out" spout pushing water to the next chamber to attempt to not just process the same water over and over.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

UV up and running. Not the prettiest install but it's mostly quiet and should get the job done. I know people claim it's "more effective" to run off the DT directly but this is better than nothing. I at least have the "out" spout pushing water to the next chamber to attempt to not just process the same water over and over.

So the intake and output are both in the sump? Definitely not the ideal situation. You mentioned the plumbing is in two different chambers, you probably have, but make sure the intake is in the first chamber and the output releasing downstream from that.

Jay

 

[ctopherl]

So the intake and output are both in the sump? Definitely not the ideal situation. You mentioned the plumbing is in two different chambers, you probably have, but make sure the intake is in the first chamber and the output releasing downstream from that.

Jay

Yes the output is downstream. Not sure how people plumb UV's off their DT without drilling/plumbing for it from the start and without unsightly pump/tubing running everywhere

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Yes the output is downstream. Not sure how people plumb UV's off their DT without drilling/plumbing for it from the start and without unsightly pump/tubing running everywhere

Each system is different, I like to to try and splice them into with a valve to control flow to optimize the dwell time to match the units rating.
Jay

 

[ctopherl]

Each system is different, I like to to try and splice them into with a valve to control flow to optimize the dwell time to match the units rating.
Jay

Ya I would've happily put it inline with return pump, but this small of a UV suggests 233 gph for parasite sterilization which feels too slow for a return. This would work better if I was going for algae control I think.

 

[ctopherl]

Will add a FTS later today once lights come on.

Still trying to dial in calcium/alk/magnesium a bit. I did 2 water changes towards the beginning of the fallow period and haven't done one since, everything seems pretty happy still. The torches have really blossomed and split. Nitrates look good in the 5-8ppm range but I still am trying to raise phosphates a bit.

2 weeks until fish! I am going to order from Dr Reef (humblefish approved QT vendor). Planned order:

* Leopard wrasse
* Flasher wrasse
* Kole tang
* Midas blenny
* Royal gramma
* Ocellaris clown x2
* 10 nassarius snails
* Red linckia star
* Tuxedo urchin

Still debating if I should add all the fish at once or in two batches, but I am leaning towards all at once.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Will add a FTS later today once lights come on.

Still trying to dial in calcium/alk/magnesium a bit. I did 2 water changes towards the beginning of the fallow period and haven't done one since, everything seems pretty happy still. The torches have really blossomed and split. Nitrates look good in the 5-8ppm range but I still am trying to raise phosphates a bit.

2 weeks until fish! I am going to order from Dr Reef (humblefish approved QT vendor). Planned order:

* Leopard wrasse
* Flasher wrasse
* Kole tang
* Midas blenny
* Royal gramma
* Ocellaris clown x2
* 10 nassarius snails
* Red linckia star
* Tuxedo urchin

Still debating if I should add all the fish at once or in two batches, but I am leaning towards all at once.

Just my opinion - I'm not a big fan of leopard and flasher wrasses - too delicate for my tastes, I prefer less challenging fish for my home aquariums (grin). Red Fromia/Linckia stars also have a poor track record.

I've not used Dr. Reef, but any pre-quarantined fish are going to be better than ones that were recently imported. I even choose "captive conditioned" over regular fish. Still, I quarantine every new fish, even those coming from another public aquarium.

If your tank can handle the bioload, I'd go with one shipment of fish - two shipments really doubles the risk IMO.

Jay

 

[ctopherl]

FTS from this past week. Some of the corals are not looking too happy. I have been trying to raise Mg since it was reading around 1280ppm which is on the low side of healthy range. I got it up to about 1350ppm over ~4 days. This is the only change I've made so the only guess I have as to why they are not happy now.

My one acro bleached almost instantly so this may be a lost cause, hammers have been closed and acans have been closed. Softies, duncan, monti cap, blastos and torches still look good. Going to leave the Mg alone for a bit now and see if the corals adjust.

MG - 1350ppm
Alk - 8.5dkh
Ca - 425ppm
Nitrates - ~8ppm
Phosphates - 0ppb
pH - 8.2
Salinity - 1.025sg

Just over one week until fish.

 

[QuarantinedCorals]

I have seen a lot of people post that they need to go fallow, or that they did "a while back", but not much clarity on how to actually do it, the experience or how it went in the end. I am about to start this process and figured I'd document for others who may need to do so in the future to reference.

Background
My mixed reef has been up and running ~9 months. I have had a lot of fish deaths, usually in groups all dying in quick succession, but never wiping out all the fish at once. I have never seen any clear symptoms that point to a specific disease, so at this point I am just assuming some sort of parasite. The only symptoms I've noticed are inconclusive and "could be anything" - lethargy, stop eating, weirds/slow swim patterns, sometimes labored breathing.

Build
Red Sea Reefer 250 V3 (65g total water, 54g display + 11g sump), 2 AI Prime 16HD, ~60lb live rock, sand, 2 small cheap Tunze powerheads, Ice Cap protein skimmer, small ball of chaeto in one of the sump compartments. Nothing else worth mentioning.

Corals
One hammer, two torches, 4 palys, 3 zoas, 1 xenia, 1 encrusting monti, 1 branching monti, 1 acro, 2 acans, 1 duncan, 1 blasto. Only one of the acans is a "colony"-the rest are frags, but growing. They all seem healthy now except the branching monti-it has lost some color recently.

Inverts
2 cleaner shrimp, 1 brittle star, 3 nassarius snails, 3 astrea snails, 2 turbo snails

Feeding
When I had fish in the tank, I was feeding a few small pinches of Hikari marine S pellets in the morning and some frozen mysis+brine in the evening. I occasionally give the cleaner shrimp and brittle star some tiny chunks of dried krill.

I was dosing Red Sea AB+ 8ml/week and target feeding corals BRS Reef Chili once per week, but have since started dosing AB+ daily. I am almost out of the Red Sea and have some Brightwell CoralAmino to continue once that runs out.

Params
1.025-1.026sg salinity (bounces back and forth), 77-78 temp, phosphates ~5 ppb, nitrates 2-3ppm, alk ~7.8

Plan
I have one fish left in the tank that I am trying to get out but he is being difficult. I am going to surrender him to a LFS when I manage to catch him. Then I will run the tank fishless for 8 weeks. I will post a "starting picture" when I eventually catch him and the tank is truly fishless.

I will put a couple pinches of the Hikari marine S pellets once daily to keep some semblance of nitrifying bacteria running and stop nitrates/phosphates from bottoming out. I will manually feed the cleaners and brittle star some krill chunks 2x per week. I will keep dosing the AB+ daily until I run out, at which point I will switch to the CoralAmino.

I have already been toying with the idea of taking my skimmer offline as it has not generated a single cup of skimmate since I've had it-my theory is that my relentless changing of filter floss catches anything that the skimmer normally would. I change the floss 2x per week and will continue with this pattern but expect them to get dirty much less quickly now, at which point I will reduce frequency.

I currently change 10g of water weekly but I am going to skip 1-2 weeks and keep an eye on the nutrients and corals. My phosphates have been undetectable until this week when I started daily dosing the AB+ and I want to spur on some chaeto growth as it has been lacking-we'll see how it goes.

I'll post weekly pictures, observations (especially of corals), parameter changes and any adjustments I make over time. Hopefully in the end when I'm ready to add fish again others can look back on this thread and learn. If this sounds like a dumb idea that no one will find useful, or anyone thinks of a way to make it more useful, let me know, but I feel like I see a lot of "going fallow, what do I do with corals/inverts?" posts without much follow up.

I had the same issues as yourself, after multiple live stock additions that would be okay for a week and suddenly all die within a 4 day span of time I got tired of losing fish. I fallowed for 90 days, quarantined all of my fish, any corals or snails I add also go fallow for 80+ days. You can check out my Instagram if you want to see what my display looks like, nothing crazy but you can see what my tank looks like with strict qt and timelines of new additions. my Instagram is "sakosreef" should you be interested. Its well worth the wait for qt, killing fish is not fun. I have a $1300 fish order with drreefs quarantined fish thats pending, I will add those fish to my dt as they should be quarantined. I have purchased from reefprostore as well and the fish I got was disease free and healthy, I also have heard great things about TSMAquatics, which I hope to order from them as well. Goodluck!

 

[ctopherl]

I had the same issues as yourself, after multiple live stock additions that would be okay for a week and suddenly all die within a 4 day span of time I got tired of losing fish. I fallowed for 90 days, quarantined all of my fish, any corals or snails I add also go fallow for 80+ days. You can check out my Instagram if you want to see what my display looks like, nothing crazy but you can see what my tank looks like with strict qt and timelines of new additions. my Instagram is "sakosreef" should you be interested. Its well worth the wait for qt, killing fish is not fun. I have a $1300 fish order with drreefs quarantined fish thats pending, I will add those fish to my dt as they should be quarantined. I have purchased from reefprostore as well and the fish I got was disease free and healthy, I also have heard great things about TSMAquatics, which I hope to order from them as well. Goodluck!

Thanks for sharing! I'm sure there is still some risk involved adding the preQT fish directly but I just don't have anywhere to put a QT tank right now. Did you have uronema in your tank or something else? I'd be less worried if I had something other than uronema since it survives indefinitely.

 

[TheDragonsReef]

I did about 80 days fallow after a velvet outbreak. Left inverts in, all fish came out. It was successful and when the fish went back in there were no issues.

 

[ctopherl]

I did about 80 days fallow after a velvet outbreak. Left inverts in, all fish came out. It was successful and when the fish went back in there were no issues.

Glad it worked out for you! I am dealing with a different beast in uronema unfortunately. I've put a few methods in place to try and control it and am going to stick to species not prone to infection so we will see how that goes. I am unfortunately in "disease management mode" permanently, though.

 

[QuarantinedCorals]

Thanks for sharing! I'm sure there is still some risk involved adding the preQT fish directly but I just don't have anywhere to put a QT tank right now. Did you have uronema in your tank or something else? I'd be less worried if I had something other than uronema since it survives indefinitely.

You can order quarantined fish online from trusted vendors but as far coral or inverts go, you can try ordering from sites that do fishless coral systems and fallow their corals as well as inverts. I don't have uronema in my tank, none of my fish had it but I had an incident with my orange shoulder tang where he had this white bacteria looking thing grow on his fin and it ate away at it until he had half a fin left, he fought it off and the fin grew back and I haven't had issues since then, I rather have slight bacterial problems here and there rather than ich or velvet that's for sure!

 

[ctopherl]

Fish should hopefully be coming in today from Dr Reef!

In case uronema rears its ugly head, my plan as of right now is to:

* Remove fish
* Run through formalin bath
* Put in sterile QT
* Dose metro for 14 days to both water column and food with focus in QT
* Completely restart my DT, either by bleaching and re-cycling or just emptying it, letting it dry out for a few days and getting new rock and sand. Hoping I can get all this done by the time the metro dosing is finished.

Only things I'm unsure of are (maybe @Jay Hemdal can help answer):

* Should all fish get a formalin bath if one fish shows symptoms?
* Can all fish go in same QT even if only one shows symptoms?
* My only option for biological filtration may be some live rock from my existing DT-is there a way to do this and then safely get the fish back into my DT later without re-introducing uronema? The other option is no biological filtration and just go heavy on the water changes. I don't like that option with 8 fish in a QT together.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Fish should hopefully be coming in today from Dr Reef!

In case uronema rears its ugly head, my plan as of right now is to:

* Remove fish
* Run through formalin bath
* Put in sterile QT
* Dose metro for 14 days to both water column and food with focus in QT
* Completely restart my DT, either by bleaching and re-cycling or just emptying it, letting it dry out for a few days and getting new rock and sand. Hoping I can get all this done by the time the metro dosing is finished.

Only things I'm unsure of are (maybe @Jay Hemdal can help answer):

* Should all fish get a formalin bath if one fish shows symptoms?
* Can all fish go in same QT even if only one shows symptoms?
* My only option for biological filtration may be some live rock from my existing DT-is there a way to do this and then safely get the fish back into my DT later without re-introducing uronema? The other option is no biological filtration and just go heavy on the water changes. I don't like that option with 8 fish in a QT together.

Be really careful giving fish a formalin bath if they have been shipped within 72 hours of the dip - I've lost a lot of fish doing that. Always aerate formalin dips well, and I usually target 150 ppm for 45 minutes.

My basic premise is that since water is such a good transmitter of disease - any fish in water that contains a fish with an identified disease, needs to be prophylactically treated for that disease even if symptom free.

What is your species list? Do you have fish coming in known to have issues with Uronema?

Jay

 

[ctopherl]

Be really careful giving fish a formalin bath if they have been shipped within 72 hours of the dip - I've lost a lot of fish doing that. Always aerate formalin dips well, and I usually target 150 ppm for 45 minutes.

My basic premise is that since water is such a good transmitter of disease - any fish in water that contains a fish with an identified disease, needs to be prophylactically treated for that disease even if symptom free.

What is your species list? Do you have fish coming in known to have issues with Uronema?

Jay

Thanks for the reply! Good to know, I will handle the same way in that case.

I do not have fish coming in known to have issues with uronema, intentionally.

* Ocellaris clowns
* Royal gramma basslet
* Banggai cardinal
* Royal flasher wrasse
* Lost the leopard wrasse in shipping, planning on a melanarus wrasse instead as of right now
* Midas blenny
* Kole tang

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Thanks for the reply! Good to know, I will handle the same way in that case.

I do not have fish coming in known to have issues with uronema, intentionally.

* Ocellaris clowns
* Royal gramma basslet
* Banggai cardinal
* Royal flasher wrasse
* Lost the leopard wrasse in shipping, planning on a melanarus wrasse instead as of right now
* Midas blenny
* Kole tang

Of that group, only the flasher wrasse will have a tendency towards Uronema, but not nearly as common as yellow wrasse.

Jay

 

[ctopherl]

Update - no signs of uronema, although there have been a couple of fish losses. One ocellaris and the flasher wrasse are nowhere to be found. Given the CUC I have in the tank, I'm guessing any bodies have been disposed of. Both fish seemed healthy and happy for the first few days until they disappeared.

Everyone else is happy and healthy, and eating! The kole tang was looking really bad at first, but this turned out to just be stress and he bounced back nicely within ~6 hours of adding to the tank.

So far so good-no signs of disease. Dr Reef was helpful in dealing with the initial leopard wrasse and tang issues, for what it's worth.