G&B Tank II: Waterbox Custom

[G&B Reefing]

Fish!

 

[G&B Reefing]

Been a bit over a month since the last post.

Added the dracula goby from dr reef. Doing well after a rough start!

Starting the ugly phase. Algae is growing on everything. I had a small snail population i added early on, have some losses with two turbos and a handful of astreas remaining. Order coming in from saltwateraquarium.com to beef this count up significantly (5 turbos, 10 astreas, sand conch, 10 trocus, and 10 nerites) to knock back the algae.

I places a few sps frags into the tank and they turned south after a week. Moved them back to my established tank to recover.

 

[G&B Reefing]

Well Happy New Year?

First tank hiccup. I hate the word crash… but it has been a tough week.

Everything has been quarantined that went into the tank. I suspect the Dracula goby brought something with it even though it went trough a qt, but cannot prove it.

Fish were flashing, then started heavy breathing. Then stopped eating and became lethargic. I suspected gill flukes and dosed prazipro per the instructions. Tank water became cloudy. I added an airstone to the tank. Waited 3 days, did a 25% water change and dosed again as fish were not improving. Dracula goby died on day 2 of the first dose. Water got really gross after the second dose of prazipro. Brown/yellow and a terrible smell. Lost the powder blue hybrid. Immediately pulled all the fish out (removed all rock to do it) and into qt tanks with copper and airstones.

All surviving fish now acting normal. Plan is to let the tank go fallow for 6 weeks. Currently have the lights out and trying to clear out this water. Did a 35% WC after I removed the fish, replaced the carbon, and running the skimmer heavy. Still cloudy and smelly but getting better.

This is a tough one, think I know what I am doing and then this happens. Real kick in the bio balls… I hate that I lost that tang.

All I can do is learn and try to make the most of it, do better for the fish that remain and will come. My fist check was “water quality”. Ammonia was 0, nitrate 0.25, phosphates was 0.03. All hanna test kits. My thought was I didnt have enough nutrients to fuel much of a bloom.

If I could go back a few days… things I would do differently. Pull all fish out and into separate qt tanks. Prazipro into clean isolated tanks where i could monitor water cleanliness.

Also did a FW dip on the dead dracula goby and did not find any flukes. Not sure that is a false negative or not as they were in prazipro for over 24-48 hrs before it died.

Not sure on my opinion for buying previously QT’d fish. There is a lot of trust placed in that purchase. This experience makes me want to personally QT anything myself no matter where it comes from, even services that sell QT fish. Then at that point if something gets past it’s on me. To be clear these are my opinions and I have not definitive proof on where a disease got through, but the thought lingers in my head.

Thought about not posting this as it is a low point but reality is there is more to learn from the lows than the highs. Good thing with a low… it’s up hill from here.

 

[Euphyllia098]

Well Happy New Year?

First tank hiccup. I hate the word crash… but it has been a tough week.

Everything has been quarantined that went into the tank. I suspect the Dracula goby brought something with it even though it went trough a qt, but cannot prove it.

Fish were flashing, then started heavy breathing. Then stopped eating and became lethargic. I suspected gill flukes and dosed prazipro per the instructions. Tank water became cloudy. I added an airstone to the tank. Waited 3 days, did a 25% water change and dosed again as fish were not improving. Dracula goby died on day 2 of the first dose. Water got really gross after the second dose of prazipro. Brown/yellow and a terrible smell. Lost the powder blue hybrid. Immediately pulled all the fish out (removed all rock to do it) and into qt tanks with copper and airstones.

All surviving fish now acting normal. Plan is to let the tank go fallow for 6 weeks. Currently have the lights out and trying to clear out this water. Did a 35% WC after I removed the fish, replaced the carbon, and running the skimmer heavy. Still cloudy and smelly but getting better.

This is a tough one, think I know what I am doing and then this happens. Real kick in the bio balls… I hate that I lost that tang.

All I can do is learn and try to make the most of it, do better for the fish that remain and will come. My fist check was “water quality”. Ammonia was 0, nitrate 0.25, phosphates was 0.03. All hanna test kits. My thought was I didnt have enough nutrients to fuel much of a bloom.

If I could go back a few days… things I would do differently. Pull all fish out and into separate qt tanks. Prazipro into clean isolated tanks where i could monitor water cleanliness.

Also did a FW dip on the dead dracula goby and did not find any flukes. Not sure that is a false negative or not as they were in prazipro for over 24-48 hrs before it died.

Not sure on my opinion for buying previously QT’d fish. There is a lot of trust placed in that purchase. This experience makes me want to personally QT anything myself no matter where it comes from, even services that sell QT fish. Then at that point if something gets past it’s on me. To be clear these are my opinions and I have not definitive proof on where a disease got through, but the thought lingers in my head.

Thought about not posting this as it is a low point but reality is there is more to learn from the lows than the highs. Good thing with a low… it’s up hill from here.

Unfortunately unless you get the fish directly from the vendor the Qt is suspect because the minute that fish goes into another tank the the Qt is suspect because you have no idea what's in the track it's going into. Manny people didn't realize that disease can come into a tank on rock, inverts, coral (anything with an exposed hard skeleton). Essentially anything that was wet needs QT to be bio secure. Any rock, inverts, and coral need a minimum of 6 weeks in a fishless tank kept at 81 F minimum.

 

[higher99]

Well Happy New Year?

First tank hiccup. I hate the word crash… but it has been a tough week.

Everything has been quarantined that went into the tank. I suspect the Dracula goby brought something with it even though it went trough a qt, but cannot prove it.

Fish were flashing, then started heavy breathing. Then stopped eating and became lethargic. I suspected gill flukes and dosed prazipro per the instructions. Tank water became cloudy. I added an airstone to the tank. Waited 3 days, did a 25% water change and dosed again as fish were not improving. Dracula goby died on day 2 of the first dose. Water got really gross after the second dose of prazipro. Brown/yellow and a terrible smell. Lost the powder blue hybrid. Immediately pulled all the fish out (removed all rock to do it) and into qt tanks with copper and airstones.

All surviving fish now acting normal. Plan is to let the tank go fallow for 6 weeks. Currently have the lights out and trying to clear out this water. Did a 35% WC after I removed the fish, replaced the carbon, and running the skimmer heavy. Still cloudy and smelly but getting better.

This is a tough one, think I know what I am doing and then this happens. Real kick in the bio balls… I hate that I lost that tang.

All I can do is learn and try to make the most of it, do better for the fish that remain and will come. My fist check was “water quality”. Ammonia was 0, nitrate 0.25, phosphates was 0.03. All hanna test kits. My thought was I didnt have enough nutrients to fuel much of a bloom.

If I could go back a few days… things I would do differently. Pull all fish out and into separate qt tanks. Prazipro into clean isolated tanks where i could monitor water cleanliness.

Also did a FW dip on the dead dracula goby and did not find any flukes. Not sure that is a false negative or not as they were in prazipro for over 24-48 hrs before it died.

Not sure on my opinion for buying previously QT’d fish. There is a lot of trust placed in that purchase. This experience makes me want to personally QT anything myself no matter where it comes from, even services that sell QT fish. Then at that point if something gets past it’s on me. To be clear these are my opinions and I have not definitive proof on where a disease got through, but the thought lingers in my head.

Thought about not posting this as it is a low point but reality is there is more to learn from the lows than the highs. Good thing with a low… it’s up hill from here.

Oh no! Did the pistol shrimps make it!

 

[G&B Reefing]

Oh no! Did the pistol shrimps make it!

The pistol shrimps made it. They disappeared when we put them in but you can hear their popping sounds during the evenings. During this whole ordeal I was able to confirm visually that they made it!

 

[G&B Reefing]

Update. The tank has run fallow for 20 days so far. All fish are doing well in the qt setups. Did 2 weeks copper. Just added the second prazipro dose. Fish are looking healthy, breathing normal, and looking happy overall. No flashing!

My thoughts on my fallow period for flukes. Everything says 4 weeks online. After reading about their life cycle and the fact that I pulled all fish out of the tank within 24 hrs of a prazipro dose should imply the display tank has been fluke free since day 8. Fish are finishing their qt and will be going back in on Wednesday.

I have ordered an additional pump, nero3. Ive had one before and it is ok… i learned with the first one that it doesn’t like sand, so going to keep it in the middle water column. Watching the flow, the gyres create some lower flow spots which this is going to eliminate… hopefully.

Also, ordered some sticks from fraghouse, delivery in Feb. ive got corraline growing all over the rocks so giving these sps a shot. Additional snails coming in next week as well, from a vendor that runs their invert tanks fishless.

Adding the qt tanks to the routine makes for a bunch more work. I am excited to get these fish back in!

 

[G&B Reefing]

Some dusky margin wrasse behavior I have noticed.

1. Chasing its tail. I don’t know if this is boredom, stress, or just a fish doing what fish do.
2. It uses a simple tool when eating!!! This is the coolest fish thing I have ever seen! I fed some lrs nano reef mix and the bite was to big for the wrasse. He held the food in its mouth and swiped it multiple times against the rocks!!!

Its good having fish back in the tank :)