Dear all,
id like to ask the you for some advice. Ive already learnt a lot from this forum, and im very grateful for that. This is information that is very hard to come by in germen speaking forums. I will try to promote QTing here in Austria/Germany aswell, it seems to be done very rarely, and even most LFSs around have very limited knowledge in treating and fish desease.
To start my story, we are running a 1200l (320g) mixed reef tank. Fish went in there without any QTing, due to a lack of awareness. I had some cryptocarion every now end then, but nothing really deadly. This changed after i introduced a pait of X. auromarginatus in the beginning of april. Within one week many fish showed symptoms like swimming into powerheads, some skin leasures and shortness of breath. We tried treating with a reef-safe medication (based on some dyes...) that required us to turn off the UV-C. This made things much worse. After having lost several fish we decided to get all the rock out, and to start two QTs.
Identification of the desease was not 100% sure (even though microscopic examinations were performed), but i would suspect a mix infection of oodinium and cryptocarion.
One QT was dosed with copper (containing tangs, scarus wrasse, gobi, banggais, anthias) and anotherone with CP containing dartfish, mandarins and other small fish.
Everything was going very well in the CP QT. After about 3 weeks i had some algae growth, so i redosed CP. Everone in this tank seems to be very happy. CP not redosed with WC after 4 weeks.
In the Cu-QT it was sort of a different story: Sadly 3 zebrasoma tangs died because of the copper :-( I wish i would have found this forum earlier. Im blaiming myself for raising copper levels to quickly, in the literature i had on hand (Bassleer et al) there was no information about the time span to raise the copper value. This is an error that will never happen again. I was treating with ionic copper (copper sulfate) and was testing values daily with a photometer, keeping them between 0.15 and 0.20 ppm. In the future i will use cupramine which i could meanwhile acquire.
After about 2 weeks the remaining yellow tang developed severe HLLE that got worse on a daily basis. At the 21 day mark into therapeutic copper i decided to remove the copper, to give the fish some rest and hopefully stop HLLE. I tried to syphon everything from the tank, and gave all PVC tubes a dip in boiling water to minimize the chance of some surviving cryptocarion cysts. Sadly, within a few days our paracanthurus hepatus developed a very heavy infestation of cryptocarion. Seemingly the 21 days of copper were not enough. So all the fish of this QT went through TTM for 12 days (changing every 71-72 hrs), and since then there is no more cryptocarion visible.
What still concerns me is my yellow tang. He still shows the HLLE (which i think needs a lot of time to heal), but is breathing very heavily. Ammonia is low, although i had a hard time keeping it supressed after finished TTM, so there have been a few days where the seachem badge was green-blueish despite heavy water changing. I think that during TTM there were some conflicts between the YT and the scarus wrasse, so i separated the two afterwards to remove stress. Still the YT is breathing heavy and seems a bit lethargic. We suspected flukes, and dosed 2 mg/l praziquantel followed by a 50% water change after 24 hours, but this didnt influence the breathing rate (although it seems to have supressed apettite in the fish). The tang is eating, although not very good. In addition metronidazole was added to food for 7 days, to eliminate possible internal parasites. - Still breathing rate is high.
We are now approaching the end of the 76 days fallow period end of june, and im very uncertain what to do with the YT and with the other fish that swim in the same QT. Is it possible that velvet sneaked through 21 days of copper and TTM? Since the condition is rather stable since the end of TTM (~12 days) and the other fish in the tank dont seem very affected, i personally dont think there is still velvet involved. Would you keep all the fish in QT longer? Would you move them back to DT, maybe, if its stress related, his condition would improve there? Could the heavy breathing still be a symptom of HLLE or maybe of elevated ammonia during TTM and the period afterwards?
Thanks for your input!
All the best,
Christoph
id like to ask the you for some advice. Ive already learnt a lot from this forum, and im very grateful for that. This is information that is very hard to come by in germen speaking forums. I will try to promote QTing here in Austria/Germany aswell, it seems to be done very rarely, and even most LFSs around have very limited knowledge in treating and fish desease.
To start my story, we are running a 1200l (320g) mixed reef tank. Fish went in there without any QTing, due to a lack of awareness. I had some cryptocarion every now end then, but nothing really deadly. This changed after i introduced a pait of X. auromarginatus in the beginning of april. Within one week many fish showed symptoms like swimming into powerheads, some skin leasures and shortness of breath. We tried treating with a reef-safe medication (based on some dyes...) that required us to turn off the UV-C. This made things much worse. After having lost several fish we decided to get all the rock out, and to start two QTs.
Identification of the desease was not 100% sure (even though microscopic examinations were performed), but i would suspect a mix infection of oodinium and cryptocarion.
One QT was dosed with copper (containing tangs, scarus wrasse, gobi, banggais, anthias) and anotherone with CP containing dartfish, mandarins and other small fish.
Everything was going very well in the CP QT. After about 3 weeks i had some algae growth, so i redosed CP. Everone in this tank seems to be very happy. CP not redosed with WC after 4 weeks.
In the Cu-QT it was sort of a different story: Sadly 3 zebrasoma tangs died because of the copper :-( I wish i would have found this forum earlier. Im blaiming myself for raising copper levels to quickly, in the literature i had on hand (Bassleer et al) there was no information about the time span to raise the copper value. This is an error that will never happen again. I was treating with ionic copper (copper sulfate) and was testing values daily with a photometer, keeping them between 0.15 and 0.20 ppm. In the future i will use cupramine which i could meanwhile acquire.
After about 2 weeks the remaining yellow tang developed severe HLLE that got worse on a daily basis. At the 21 day mark into therapeutic copper i decided to remove the copper, to give the fish some rest and hopefully stop HLLE. I tried to syphon everything from the tank, and gave all PVC tubes a dip in boiling water to minimize the chance of some surviving cryptocarion cysts. Sadly, within a few days our paracanthurus hepatus developed a very heavy infestation of cryptocarion. Seemingly the 21 days of copper were not enough. So all the fish of this QT went through TTM for 12 days (changing every 71-72 hrs), and since then there is no more cryptocarion visible.
What still concerns me is my yellow tang. He still shows the HLLE (which i think needs a lot of time to heal), but is breathing very heavily. Ammonia is low, although i had a hard time keeping it supressed after finished TTM, so there have been a few days where the seachem badge was green-blueish despite heavy water changing. I think that during TTM there were some conflicts between the YT and the scarus wrasse, so i separated the two afterwards to remove stress. Still the YT is breathing heavy and seems a bit lethargic. We suspected flukes, and dosed 2 mg/l praziquantel followed by a 50% water change after 24 hours, but this didnt influence the breathing rate (although it seems to have supressed apettite in the fish). The tang is eating, although not very good. In addition metronidazole was added to food for 7 days, to eliminate possible internal parasites. - Still breathing rate is high.
We are now approaching the end of the 76 days fallow period end of june, and im very uncertain what to do with the YT and with the other fish that swim in the same QT. Is it possible that velvet sneaked through 21 days of copper and TTM? Since the condition is rather stable since the end of TTM (~12 days) and the other fish in the tank dont seem very affected, i personally dont think there is still velvet involved. Would you keep all the fish in QT longer? Would you move them back to DT, maybe, if its stress related, his condition would improve there? Could the heavy breathing still be a symptom of HLLE or maybe of elevated ammonia during TTM and the period afterwards?
Thanks for your input!
All the best,
Christoph
