More issues than I have seen in 20 years

Dolphins18

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Hello
About 2.5 weeks ago the dosing pump I purchased from Neptune failed miserably, resulting in the pump sending a liter of red sea alkalinity solution into my system. Scheduled dosage was 12ml per day.
I have had more issues in the last 2 weeks than I have had in 20 years of reefing.
The failure was apparently due to a mother board issue. Gonna be a pretty expensive failure for me. Lost the first fish last night from something I have never seen before. It started out like ich which is fine but then the fish was covered in bright red bumps, all clustered in singular areas. I thought it could be velvet, and maybe it could be, but each fish showing symptoms is getting "patches" of symptoms. Not all over the fish, but it starts out as a white dustiness like velvet, but with no bumps. In the blue tangs case (photo attached) the velvety dustiness never covered his whole body, and the spots he had looked bigger than velvet. I've dealt with ich a lot but I believe this to be something different.
The blue tang had a lot of bright red dots, like pimples, before dying, and after dying the red spots are gone, leaving behind only areas of what looks like flesh.
The fish aren't really showing signs of velvet either, I have never dealt with velvet however.
Params are (now) all where they should be. Alk popped to 15 or so and ph to like 8.8 from the failure.
Any help would be awesome, blue hippo went first. Scopas tang seems to getting the white discoloration in one or two spots, but it really doesn't look anything like the velvet photos i've seen. I do not have a photo of the scopas at this time.
Purple tang developed a few ich spots after the alkalinity and ph spike, but has fought them off as he has done in the past. I am not worried about ich, I have a feeling this is something else. Purple has not had any symptoms beyond that.
Other fish seem, I tried to count the breaths per minute and they seem to be around 1 per second, maybe a tiny bit more.
The photo attached is of the deceased blue tang. I have had fish die from ich a few times in the past (been a while), but their bodies never looked like this after passing. They also never had bright red clustered bumps. The areas where you see no skin is where the clusters of these red bumps where the worst.
I'd say the white cloudy patches he started out with after the dosing failure looked a bit more like brook than the photos I have seen of velvet. I do not have any clowns in the fish tank.
Most of the corals that were in the spike are dead, or have been moved. I don't think these issues are related, the corals likely died from the spike itself.
Inverts don't seem to affected by the swing,
1620946755999.png


I dont have a QT set up, i'd like to save the remaining fish if possible however.
One other thing to note is that bumps weren't clearly red unless looking very closely at the fish, but with a close examination they looked like bright red pimples.
 
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F i s h y

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How long have you had all of your fish? Any recent additions?
I am only guessing here but can an alk spike cause chemical burns? If the outside of the fish looks like that what do the gills look like?
 
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Dolphins18

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Looks like some sort of lesion. @Jay Hemdal #reefsquad can you assist?
Started out as nothing more than a tiny little flat white patch on the black area of the tang, stayed like this for a while. This actually seems to have gone away. It was replaced with what looked like ich at first, but rapid. During this time the fish never lost appetite, never started swimming into any powerheads. The last day the fish did not come out much, but I figure that is probably more due to the pain it was in than a want to be out of light.
 
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Dolphins18

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How long have you had all of your fish? Any recent additions?
I am only guessing here but can an alk spike cause chemical burns? If the outside of the fish looks like that what do the gills look like?
All additions are fairly recent, but previously were in copper for some time. Not at full therapeutic doses. My best guess is that the spike caused something to get the upper hand on a generally healthy fish.
I am worried about the others, the scopas is showing the same initial signs.
Also they didn't look like burns, the bumps started like ich and clustered rapidly around singular areas on the fish. Parts of the fish were not even affected as you can see from the photo. If you look at the bumps under the eye, that was what these clumped up areas looked like. The head area was the last area affected, and some of the bumps seem to remain though they have lost the red color they previously had.
Something that would really ease my mind if someone can look at that photo and say they know it isn't velvet. That would lighten my mood, I am not aware of anything else (disease wise) that can kill fish this quickly.
 
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Jay Hemdal

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Hello
About 2.5 weeks ago the dosing pump I purchased from Neptune failed miserably, resulting in the pump sending a liter of red sea alkalinity solution into my system. Scheduled dosage was 12ml per day.
I have had more issues in the last 2 weeks than I have had in 20 years of reefing.
The failure was apparently due to a mother board issue. Gonna be a pretty expensive failure for me. Lost the first fish last night from something I have never seen before. It started out like ich which is fine but then the fish was covered in bright red bumps, all clustered in singular areas. I thought it could be velvet, and maybe it could be, but each fish showing symptoms is getting "patches" of symptoms. Not all over the fish, but it starts out as a white dustiness like velvet, but with no bumps. In the blue tangs case (photo attached) the velvety dustiness never covered his whole body, and the spots he had looked bigger than velvet. I've dealt with ich a lot but I believe this to be something different.
The blue tang had a lot of bright red dots, like pimples, before dying, and after dying the red spots are gone, leaving behind only areas of what looks like flesh.
The fish aren't really showing signs of velvet either, I have never dealt with velvet however.
Params are (now) all where they should be. Alk popped to 15 or so and ph to like 8.8 from the failure.
Any help would be awesome, blue hippo went first. Scopas tang seems to getting the white discoloration in one or two spots, but it really doesn't look anything like the velvet photos i've seen. I do not have a photo of the scopas at this time.
Purple tang developed a few ich spots after the alkalinity and ph spike, but has fought them off as he has done in the past. I am not worried about ich, I have a feeling this is something else. Purple has not had any symptoms beyond that.
Other fish seem, I tried to count the breaths per minute and they seem to be around 1 per second, maybe a tiny bit more.
The photo attached is of the deceased blue tang. I have had fish die from ich a few times in the past (been a while), but their bodies never looked like this after passing. They also never had bright red clustered bumps. The areas where you see no skin is where the clusters of these red bumps where the worst.
I'd say the white cloudy patches he started out with after the dosing failure looked a bit more like brook than the photos I have seen of velvet. I do not have any clowns in the fish tank.
Most of the corals that were in the spike are dead, or have been moved. I don't think these issues are related, the corals likely died from the spike itself.
Inverts don't seem to affected by the swing,
1620946755999.png


I dont have a QT set up, i'd like to save the remaining fish if possible however.
One other thing to note is that bumps weren't clearly red unless looking very closely at the fish, but with a close examination they looked like bright red pimples.
Can you clarify the timeline here? Did the fish show symptoms before the malfunction? Sounds like your doser sent about 80x the normal dose of alkalinity solution into the tank. I can't tell you what affect that might have on fish, but I doubt it would be harmless. One thing though - if you have corals etc. in the tank and THEY are fine, I would be less inclined to think the alk solution played much of a part in this, other than perhaps a stressor.

What fish remain, and what symptoms do they show? 60 breaths per minute is pretty slow for these fish, I would have expected 80 for normal fish, but if accurate that completely rules out velvet.

jay
 
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Dolphins18

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Can you clarify the timeline here? Did the fish show symptoms before the malfunction? Sounds like your doser sent about 80x the normal dose of alkalinity solution into the tank. I can't tell you what affect that might have on fish, but I doubt it would be harmless. One thing though - if you have corals etc. in the tank and THEY are fine, I would be less inclined to think the alk solution played much of a part in this, other than perhaps a stressor.

What fish remain, and what symptoms do they show? 60 breaths per minute is pretty slow for these fish, I would have expected 80 for normal fish, but if accurate that completely rules out velvet.

jay
Skittish fish today. No signs on the scopas yesterday but two maybe three white patches of cloudiness today.
The tank contains 2 ignitus anthias, flameback angel, lamarcks angel, diamond goby, misc. damsel, purple tang, scopas tang.
I did not see any real symptoms on the fish prior, he looked very healthy but I did not look as closely the days prior to the failure as I did the day after, and that is when I noticed the white chalky patch on the black area. If you look at the photo you can actually see the discoloration on the black I was initially talking about, and this is initial signs the scopas is showing. This I thought could be velvet as I have no experience with the disease. The photos I saw online all show the cloudiness pretty much covering the fish. That never became the case, however the severity of symptoms escalated incredibly quickly once they started.
Also it is probably a little more than 60, their breathing seems maybe a tiny bit elevated compared to the norm, but I've seen fish breathing heavy before and this isn't really what is going on.
The Purple has one single spot looks to me like ich but it is very small, this spot has been there for about a week. He had another but shed them. The purple is a very healthy fish and I do not think he will have any issue fighting off the remaining ich.
(I know it will be in the "sand" all my tanks have had ich!)
 
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Sorry to hear about this. Can you test the pH of your water? It could be related to this.
 
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Dolphins18

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Sorry to hear about this. Can you test the pH of your water? It could be related to this.
It's 7.9-8.1 (night-day fluctuation)
I was able to normalize things after a couple days, and alk is now back to 10.
The PH actually dropped so rapidly I added a co2 scrubber, once it spiked to 8.8 or whatever it was, it began dropping rapidly, very rapidly. Like .1 per hour.
I must say, the ease of controlling ones tank wirelessly has seemed to make the hobby way more difficult for me. It's quite discouraging after so long in the hobby, I've had many issues along with this since going modern lol.
 
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One other thing to add

The discoloration that be can seen toward the tail on the black part was the very first noticeable sign, and the same signs the scopas is now showing. Very curious if people who have dealt with velvet have seen this.
I fully expect the scopas to have a lot more of whatever it is in the coming days, though that patch never seemed to spread all over the blue tang, instead attacking specific areas.
If anyone has any idea what this could be i'd take any insight.
Metro has been binded with food and the tang was eating tons of it, but the acceleration of the symptoms despite tells me that the metro was doing next to nothing, not sure if that would rule anything out. The tang also was willing to eat even on his death bed essentially. I pumped him full of healthy foods soaked in seachem vitality. I have used the same bottle of vitality on two other tanks so I think that can be ruled out as any issue. The scopas also eats like a pig, but nutrition doesn't seem to stand a chance against whatever this is.
 
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I must say, the ease of controlling ones tank wirelessly has seemed to make the hobby way more difficult for me. It's quite discouraging after so long in the hobby, I've had many issues along with this since going modern lol.

First off, I am soooo sorry to read this post. Dunno if the Alk dump caused the death of your fish, but I agree with what was said above - at the very least, it might have triggered this as a stressor to a pre-existing condition.

Actually, ATO/Doser/Controller failures such as yours are not as uncommon as many might think; and it's why I started an opensource project 4+ years ago to develop and build a Distributed High Availability Controller specifically to survive and fail safely from even hardware failures of the controller itself. In otherwords, if the controller were to glitch out while an ATO, Dosing, or Water Change operation were underway, a standby secondary controller jumps in and takes over, in very much the same way the Flight System computers on the Space Shuttle or CrewDragon would also handle such a failure. I also have 20 years experience designing and building such high availability architectures for international mobile telecommunications (aka GSM carriers) companies.

It's also based around RaspberryPi's, so it's quite affordable, flexible and scalable (from 1 to 20 aquariums and more) in ways mainstream consumer aquarium controllers aren't.

It does however, still requires some DIY and assembling the pieces and software yourself, but I hope to bring some Turn Key kits on offer later this year, for those who aren't technical, or don't want to assemble it themselves, and would rather just buy, plugin and go.

 

Jay Hemdal

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Skittish fish today. No signs on the scopas yesterday but two maybe three white patches of cloudiness today.
The tank contains 2 ignitus anthias, flameback angel, lamarcks angel, diamond goby, misc. damsel, purple tang, scopas tang.
I did not see any real symptoms on the fish prior, he looked very healthy but I did not look as closely the days prior to the failure as I did the day after, and that is when I noticed the white chalky patch on the black area. If you look at the photo you can actually see the discoloration on the black I was initially talking about, and this is initial signs the scopas is showing. This I thought could be velvet as I have no experience with the disease. The photos I saw online all show the cloudiness pretty much covering the fish. That never became the case, however the severity of symptoms escalated incredibly quickly once they started.
Also it is probably a little more than 60, their breathing seems maybe a tiny bit elevated compared to the norm, but I've seen fish breathing heavy before and this isn't really what is going on.
The Purple has one single spot looks to me like ich but it is very small, this spot has been there for about a week. He had another but shed them. The purple is a very healthy fish and I do not think he will have any issue fighting off the remaining ich.
(I know it will be in the "sand" all my tanks have had ich!)
The lesions on the blue tang aren’t velvet, and the lack of breathing at 120+ bpm means it isn’t velvet. Possibly a secondary bacterial issue from the water quality issue?

Jay
 
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Dolphins18

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The lesions on the blue tang aren’t velvet, and the lack of breathing at 120+ bpm means it isn’t velvet. Possibly a secondary bacterial issue from the water quality issue?

Jay
The fuge light caught fire which caused no lighting down there for a few days. (back now)
I will continue feeding binded metro in the mean time. I dug through nearly every internet resource I could find and could not find anything like this. Its like the skin initially just fades to a different color.
I also added a fairly large UV sterilizer yesterday, I know it can't eradicate many things but I am not sure what I am up against at the moment. All fish are behaving very normal at this time.
I will update the thread with pictures and observations as this goes on.
 
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Dolphins18

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Scopas tang has more of the spots of discoloration. The fish is not eating anymore.

The big issue here is that the tank is in the home I am moving into in one month (lease ending) and all of my live stock here was set to go into there. Unfortunately that does not look like it is going to work out, as the tank can not house fish or corals.
I can not set up another tank in the new home and could consider extending my lease here but it will be pricey.
New reefing methods have been a disaster for me.
I am unsure what to do. I am considering selling the fish and corals in the 2 healthy tanks and leaving the hobby altogether unfortunately.
 
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Jay Hemdal

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Scopas tang has more of the spots of discoloration. The fish is not eating anymore.

The big issue here is that the tank is in the home I am moving into in one month (lease ending) and all of my live stock here was set to go into there. Unfortunately that does not look like it is going to work out, as the tank can not house fish or corals.
I can not set up another tank in the new home and could consider extending my lease here but it will be pricey.
New reefing methods have been a disaster for me.
I am unsure what to do. I am considering selling the fish and corals in the 2 healthy tanks and leaving the hobby altogether unfortunately.
Sorry, sometimes there just isn’t a good resolution to aquarium problems. The refugium light fire, did any soot get into the tank? I’ve had that happen twice where soot got into the water and both times I lost fish.
Jay
 
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Dolphins18

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Sorry, sometimes there just isn’t a good resolution to aquarium problems. The refugium light fire, did any soot get into the tank? I’ve had that happen twice where soot got into the water and both times I lost fish.
Jay
I do not think so. The light was sitting on clear acrylic instead of hanging over the water.
I was considering treating the fish in a QT, but without really knowing what I am treating for I do not want to take that step yet.
I will continue to monitor, though I imagine the purple will start showing signs next.
The angels do not seem bothered at all, neither does Foxface.
To be honest the shading looks like the late stages of HLLE to an extent, but no lateral line or anything resembling a lateral line. I also use quality carbon (chemi and red sea) and rinse it very well, plus there has been no fin deterioration.
I fear it is velvet, but feel the other fish would be showing symptoms by now, from what i've read velvet wipes things out pretty quickly?
If I can rule out velvet that leaves me thinking it almost must be an internal infection of sorts.
I believe prazi is reef safe, do you think that could help in addition to the metro?
 

Jay Hemdal

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Velvet ALWAYS causes rapid breathing. Look it up by its scientific name, Amyloodinium, as the common name velvet gets confused with freshwater velvet, caused by a different organism.
Skin lesions due to marine velvet are secondary and may not always show.
A fish with velvet will have a respiration rate >120, often as high as 200. The fish will head into water currents and may have glassy eyes. Skin lesions, if seen, will be mild, like really tiny dust like spots.
There are a bunch of pictures here that are labeled velvet, but aren’t. I need to fix that when I get a chance.
Jay
 
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Dolphins18

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All fish are still alive. Scopas looks terrible but is eating a lot again. Purple appears to possibly have velvet. Surprised all are still alive. I reinforced under my screened in porch and picked up 2 40 breeders. one as a QT and one as a tank for some of my other inhabitants. I now have read that marine velvet can travel through the air up to 10ft. This is crazy, I can't set the second tank up anywhere else so I think it will have to go about 2 feet away right next to the other. I plan to fill QT tonight and get it moving along.
Would you have expected velvet to have a more profound effect by now? I usually read it goes thru the tank very quickly. The purple has small white dots, way too small for ich and they nearly impossible see, but theres a good number of them. No chance a picture would be able to catch them.
Scopas is just completely discolored all over its body. Foxface has slime coming off of its spines. What a mess.
I imagine ill need to remove all 300 pounds of rock to get these fish out.
Surprisingly the two ignitus anthias show no signs of any distress or symptoms. I am worried about treating these two in copper, never had luck with anthias. I do not like copper but don't think ill be able to get ahold of CP. I haven't used copper in over 15 years, so I am a bit nervous.
 

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