New Longnose Hawkfish not eating in QT

[lolmatt]

Fish is still alive. Seems to be improving every day now. On his third round of metro, he's back to perching on the heater like he was the first few days (in between, he mostly stayed on the bottom).

Still have not seen him go after food, but it looks to me like he stopped losing weight and maybe gained some back, hard to tell. Still planning on adding him to DT this weekend, which gives me a few more days of observation for ich or something similar.

 

[lolmatt]

Well dangit. I saw him rubbing (scratching) on the sand for the second time today. I know this is a symptom of ich, but also see that it could be other things (gill flukes, general irritation, stress?). I'll FW dip him today to check for flukes again. If I don't see anything after 5 minutes in fw, is it safe to assume ich?

 

[lolmatt]

No sign of flukes 3 weeks of cupramine are surely going to kill this guy...

Edit - running carbon to remove the last of the metro, will do a water change and add half dose of cupramine tonight. Maybe he had ich the whole time...if so I feel bad for putting him through all these other meds, guess we'll never know.

 

[lolmatt]

Well he finally passed this morning :/

Tried everything I could think of but he never did eat that I could tell and the copper must have been too much to handle.

Thanks to everyone for trying to help.

 

[JustSomeGuy]

Sorry to hear. Always sucks when you lose after trying so hard.

 

[Humblefish]

 

[lolmatt]

Bleached and dried all the QT equipment, had to get a new HOB for it because my old one died. Got longnose #2, saw him eat at LFS (owner gave me a few bucks off since the last one didn't make it). Got him to eat a few live pods from my display sump (sucked up with a target feeder tube). Wish me luck this go around. I've got the tank dosed with prazi from the start this time per lionking's recommendation in here on page 1.

 

[lolmatt]

Longnose #2 was not looking awesome today, breathing heavy. Was eating (pods only) as of last night. Just found him belly-up...so this one didn't even make it 72-hours. Going to take a break for a few weeks...feeling pretty down, don't know what's wrong.

 

[Humblefish]

Are you getting these from the same source? Might have velvet in their system, since a sudden unexpected death lines up with that disease.

 

[lolmatt]

In this case I did get them from the same place...also got both my clowns from them and they've been around in the area for a long time.

I know that doesn't mean they don't have velvet, but IME they're a pretty reliable LFS. That being said, I certainly won't be getting another fish from them for quite a while. I'm on first name basis with the guy that orders their fish, so I'll definitely let them know that this one didn't make it past the 72-hour mark. Luckily there are a couple other LFS nearby with good quality fish, one in particular that quarantines his own stuff for at least a week before putting it out for sale so I think next I'll wait for them to get one and maybe put it on hold to make sure it's doing well.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Sorry for your losses... velvet has been running rampant lately.

 

[Humblefish]

Sorry for your losses... velvet has been running rampant lately.

+1 Almost all LFS have ich, velvet, flukes, etc. in their systems. It is nobody's fault per se; its just that when you deal in so many fish, inevitably you are going to get a sick one and that disease will spread in the water.

Now, some LFS excel at keeping pathogen populations down (e.g. UV sterilizer) while simultaneously boosting the fishes’ immune systems via nutrition, herbal remedies, etc. It takes skill to accomplish this and some fish even acquire immunity during the process, while others die within days of being removed from their disease managed aquarium (or whatever you want to call it.)

Of course, a few LFS do QT their fish with varying degrees of success. To really do it right you have to QT all fish in batches, as they arrive. Move them from QT system(s) to retail after treatments are complete, avoid cross contamination, have separate hospital tanks for problem fish, etc. etc. It's a dedicated process that I've been able to teach to very few in a retail setting. There's no half-assing it, it has to be done right.

 

[swensos]

Sorry to hear about your losses. I had at least seven fish die on me before I kept one alive. But I'm very good at spotting symptoms now.

It's a good thing you didn't introduce the first hawkfish to your display. Things like internal parasites and ich can sometimes not show themselves for weeks, which could lure you into putting them in your display and infecting all your fish.

Since you sterilized everything, could an ammonia spike have killed your second?

 

[lion king]

Sorry to hear about your losses. To me it doesn't seem like #1 and #2 deaths are in common. I see you bleached and redid your qt between fish. How did you neutralize the bleach and did you re-establish a biofilter. Many people think you can just grab a sponge or something from another tank and it's done. This never worked for me; so ammonia could be a culprit in #2, or even poisoning from the bleaching. Did you match the sg from the lfs to the qt, if raising more than .002 in sg quickly I've seen unexplained deaths 1 or 2 days afterwards. Just some thoughts as to not get discouraged.

 

[lolmatt]

The tank was very well rinsed and nearly dry after being bleached, filled with dt tank water and a little seachem prime in case of any leftover Cl. I added prazipro about 12 hours later but my understanding was this is ok to mix. I tested ammonia the day it died and it was at 0.2 on my red sea kit, at 75° water well below toxic levels. I did have some filter floss media from the dt in the hob filter used in this qt tank, but I also scooped some of my matrix media from my sump and put that in there too...for a tank with 1 fish I'd expect that to be enough media to somewhat handle the ammonia load, at least enough to limit water changes to every few days rather than every/every other. Did not check lfs salinity nor match so that's certainly an option.

In the past few days I've lost 2 of these longnose in qt, and in the dt a fromia starfish that was dripacclimated for 4 hours (wanted to try it, failed, I'll leave those in the ocean where they belong imo), and most of a small setosa frag from probably alk burn (@9.5 dkh with LNS, but seeing no PE on a bunch of sps for a few weeks...following another thread for this issue). Needless to say it's been a rough week. With the holiday season quickly approaching, going to keep up good husbandry with the fish and corals I've already got and try again with a hawkfish in the new year. Thanks to everyone for all the support, this is a great reefing community.