Multiple losses in established tank. Trying to save remaining livestock.

Obi Uno

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120 Gallon with a few corals (monti, zoas, mushrooms)
Aquarium has been established for 2 years, with livestock and LR moved over from a tank that had been running for 5+ years.

Parameters:
Temperature: 79.9
pH: 7.97
Salinity / specific gravity: 35 ppm
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10 ppm
Phosphorus: 0.09 ppm

Livestock:
Purple Tang
2x Ocellaris Clowns
Blue Sided Fairy Wrasse
Melanurus Wrasse
Kole Tang (deceased)
Mandarin goby (deceased)
Royal Gramma (deceased)

Current meds available:
MetroPlex
PraziPro
Cupramine
Selecon (not a med, but helpful, I assume)
Focus (for food binding)
LFS is easily accessible for more meds

Background:
We left for a 6 day vacation and returned 5 days ago to find an overflowing skimmer and a missing mandarin goby (perhaps the cause of the overflowing skimmer). The house-sitter, unfortunately, was not aware that the skimmer was overflowing.

While we were gone, the house-sitter struggled with the thermostat and turned the heat on. I saw temp excursions up to 82 degrees in the tank. Likely not a root cause, but worth noting.

Immediate actions:
Performed back to back 25% water changes (30 gallon brute) and brought an old UV sterilizer online.

Mandarin has been missing, with no sign of a body to remove.

The Kole Tang looked very bad - very pale skin and quite skinny. The next day, he was placed into QT with copper and prazi-pro (what was on-hand), but by this point he was swimming vertically and there was obviously next to no chance. He hung on in QT for 2 more days before passing. I did not snap a photograph (was quite upset), but he was exceedingly skinny, with a bulging gut and multiple brown lesions/sloughing skin.

The other fish looked normal at that time.

Current Situation:


Royal Gramma died yesterday with no obvious signs of stress. He had been eating nicely and looked fat and healthy. This was definitely a "5 alarm" emergency with three losses in a matter of days.

Ocellaris clowns look healthy, but appear to be breathing heavily (could be my imagination, but obviously there is a major infection going on)

Purple Tang has some receding fins, a spots that appear to be velvet, and a cloudy left eye appeared today.

Blue Sided Fairy Wrasse has some splotchiness, and under white light appears to have a bacterial infection (skin tainted red).

Next Steps:

I've kept SW for 10+ years and have been fortunate to never have gone through something like this. That said, I'm at a loss. I'm assuming I've had ich/velvet in this tank for years (again - I re-used existing rock that I've had for close to 7 years), and the stress of the skimmer dumping its contents set chain reaction into motion with extreme stress on the livestock.

I have a small 10 gallon QT, and will be heading out to purchase another larger QT and necessary meds. I'd like to get all fish out of the tank and into the QT tanks asap. That - or find someone locally who can re-home them.

Any advise for diagnosis, treatment, and QT management? I'm close to saving the fish that I can and tearing everything down to start over.






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Jay Hemdal

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120 Gallon with a few corals (monti, zoas, mushrooms)
Aquarium has been established for 2 years, with livestock and LR moved over from a tank that had been running for 5+ years.

Parameters:
Temperature: 79.9
pH: 7.97
Salinity / specific gravity: 35 ppm
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10 ppm
Phosphorus: 0.09 ppm

Livestock:
Purple Tang
2x Ocellaris Clowns
Blue Sided Fairy Wrasse
Melanurus Wrasse
Kole Tang (deceased)
Mandarin goby (deceased)
Royal Gramma (deceased)

Current meds available:
MetroPlex
PraziPro
Cupramine
Selecon (not a med, but helpful, I assume)
Focus (for food binding)
LFS is easily accessible for more meds

Background:
We left for a 6 day vacation and returned 5 days ago to find an overflowing skimmer and a missing mandarin goby (perhaps the cause of the overflowing skimmer). The house-sitter, unfortunately, was not aware that the skimmer was overflowing.

While we were gone, the house-sitter struggled with the thermostat and turned the heat on. I saw temp excursions up to 82 degrees in the tank. Likely not a root cause, but worth noting.

Immediate actions:
Performed back to back 25% water changes (30 gallon brute) and brought an old UV sterilizer online.

Mandarin has been missing, with no sign of a body to remove.

The Kole Tang looked very bad - very pale skin and quite skinny. The next day, he was placed into QT with copper and prazi-pro (what was on-hand), but by this point he was swimming vertically and there was obviously next to no chance. He hung on in QT for 2 more days before passing. I did not snap a photograph (was quite upset), but he was exceedingly skinny, with a bulging gut and multiple brown lesions/sloughing skin.

The other fish looked normal at that time.

Current Situation:


Royal Gramma died yesterday with no obvious signs of stress. He had been eating nicely and looked fat and healthy. This was definitely a "5 alarm" emergency with three losses in a matter of days.

Ocellaris clowns look healthy, but appear to be breathing heavily (could be my imagination, but obviously there is a major infection going on)

Purple Tang has some receding fins, a spots that appear to be velvet, and a cloudy left eye appeared today.

Blue Sided Fairy Wrasse has some splotchiness, and under white light appears to have a bacterial infection (skin tainted red).

Next Steps:

I've kept SW for 10+ years and have been fortunate to never have gone through something like this. That said, I'm at a loss.

I have a small 10 gallon QT, and will be heading out to purchase another larger QT and necessary meds. I'd like to get all fish out of the tank and into the QT tanks asap. That - or find someone locally who can re-home them.

Any advise for diagnosis, treatment, and QT management? I'm close to saving the fish that I can and tearing everything down to start over.






IMG_3253.jpg
IMG_3259.jpg

IMG_3244.jpg
IMG_3266.jpg
IMG_3267.jpg
IMG_3265 (1).jpg
This is a tough one, thanks for the clear background info.
Can you post a short video of the clowns? I want to try and see their respiration rate.
My first thoughts ran to some life support / water quality issue while you were gone, but the general thought is - fish dying but corals doing well generally points away from that and more to a disease issue.
When did you last add a new fish or invertebrate?
Jay
 
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Obi Uno

Obi Uno

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This is a tough one, thanks for the clear background info.
Can you post a short video of the clowns? I want to try and see their respiration rate.
My first thoughts ran to some life support / water quality issue while you were gone, but the general thought is - fish dying but corals doing well generally points away from that and more to a disease issue.
When did you last add a new fish or invertebrate?
Jay
Here is a quick video. Please let me know if there is more detail that could help.



I added a large cleanup crew from Reefcleaners at the start of August. These were NOT quarantined (I’ve never QT’d inverts, but perhaps that is an issue). I have had several snail losses which have likely contributed to nitrate spikes

No other additions in the past 6 months.

I would not say the corals are doing "well." The Monti has been having issues for the past few months after growing rapidly for a year, and I've been battling GHA in the same time frame. I dosed vibrant for the first time about 6 months ago, and have not been able to get my chaeto reactor to grow anything but nuisance algae since stopping vibrant (chaeto was removed while dosing, of course).

I suspect the Monti's issues may have been with my old "Turbo Twist" UV sterilizer's reflector rusting and leeching metals into the tank. This was taken offline several weeks ago, but the sterilizer going offline may have let latent ich/velvet run amuck

That said, all the corals appear unchanged since returning. But with a tank full of mostly mushrooms, zoas and GSP - that isn't saying much!
 
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Obi Uno

Obi Uno

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Update:

I moved the Purple tang into a quarantine with cupramine and prazipro. Also performed a FW dip, but did not notice anything.

Will continue to observe her - she is obviously quite stressed after catching/transferring/dipping. That said, it appears that her eye has already cleared up.
 

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