New tank, one dead

[Dennis10nis]

Hey everyone. Ok. So I set up a 90 gallon tank, mostly dry rock (one live), 40# of live sand and some not live sand. Cycled with Dr Tims (fish less) got good parameters after a couple weeks using ammonium chloride, and put in 2 ocellaris clowns, 4 green chromis, and a couple crabs. Then did a reefcleaners.org cleanup crew (with crabs), and added 2 fighting conchs and a cucumber. Added 2 more green chromis after good chemistry a week after initial stock. The problem was my good LFS only had 1 ocellaris clown. So I did something stupid. I went to petco. I hate even typing that. Worse I let about a half or 1 ounce of their water into my tank. So things were great. Everyone happy, chemistry good. Then the petco clown wouldn't leave the rocks, and then died in the night after a good 10 days of happiness. So I did more research, and lessons learned. Ok so the suspect clown had no ailments, looked good. Just was smaller. I have no reason to believe the guy died of anything other than being behind the 8 ball from the store. I now understand the importance of QT, and have set up a fish one and an invert one. In hindsight, I wasn't ready to put living things in. Too late. So anyway. No fish show any signs of ailments. Everything looks good. But as I move forward, I plan to get more delicate fish in the future. Do I assume I added ich from petco and remove and treat the 5 fish in QT and fallow the DT until sufficient time has passed to break the life cycle, or do I just QT and treat new members of my family and assume the ich isn't real? Reminder: Petco, so it's real I'm sure. Again no symptoms on any fish. Just thinking ahead. I probably already know the "right" answer.

 

[TomJon]

Hey everyone. Ok. So I set up a 90 gallon tank, mostly dry rock (one live), 40# of live sand and some not live sand. Cycled with Dr Tims (fish less) got good parameters after a couple weeks using ammonium chloride, and put in 2 ocellaris clowns, 4 green chromis, and a couple crabs. Then did a reefcleaners.org cleanup crew (with crabs), and added 2 fighting conchs and a cucumber. Added 2 more green chromis after good chemistry a week after initial stock. The problem was my good LFS only had 1 ocellaris clown. So I did something stupid. I went to petco. I hate even typing that. Worse I let about a half or 1 ounce of their water into my tank. So things were great. Everyone happy, chemistry good. Then the petco clown wouldn't leave the rocks, and then died in the night after a good 10 days of happiness. So I did more research, and lessons learned. Ok so the suspect clown had no ailments, looked good. Just was smaller. I have no reason to believe the guy died of anything other than being behind the 8 ball from the store. I now understand the importance of QT, and have set up a fish one and an invert one. In hindsight, I wasn't ready to put living things in. Too late. So anyway. No fish show any signs of ailments. Everything looks good. But as I move forward, I plan to get more delicate fish in the future. Do I assume I added ich from petco and remove and treat the 5 fish in QT and fallow the DT until sufficient time has passed to break the life cycle, or do I just QT and treat new members of my family and assume the ich isn't real? Reminder: Petco, so it's real I'm sure. Again no symptoms on any fish. Just thinking ahead. I probably already know the "right" answer.

There is no way to know for sure if it was ich or some other kind of disease or just a bad fish. Petco buys fish from harvesters that use cyanide to catch them. This clown could of died from that. The point is there is no way to know.

As for what to do. I have had many battles with ich and velvet in my early days as i didn't use a QT initially either. Lucky for you your lesson wasn't nearly as bad expensive as mine since i had to review that lesson a few times before i learned. I wouldn't jump to the idea of putting all fish in QT and going empty for 8 weeks+ just yet. Ich/velvet will show up if its in your tank. Its not going to hide for 4 months then just up and say hey! My advice would be wait to add anything else for 8 weeks. Watch your fish closely for all signs of anything. If things start to change then i would use the symptoms to diagnose what the disease is as each it treated differently. Putting them into a QT just to sit will cause a lot of stress on them for no reason. If you dont know what the clown died of or what was introduced putting them into a QT to just sit with no signs of anything is kinda silly imo. Wait it out and see what happens. Hope this helps.

 

[Brew12]

Petco buys fish from harvesters that use cyanide to catch them.

While Petco has plenty of issues, I'm not sure I would claim this as one of them. They own Live Aquaria and source their fish from the same wholesaler. Many other suppliers also use this wholesaler. Is it possible some fish are caught with cyanide? Sure. But that would also mean that most vendors sell fish caught with cyanide.

The problem with Petco is how they maintain their tanks at the store. Once a parasite like Ich or Velvet is in a system it is very difficult to remove without taking all of the fish out for 6 weeks or longer. That is not good for store profits. One nice thing about Petco is that you get a very good idea of the actual condition your fish is in. Many LFS's add low levels of copper to their fish only systems to mask symptoms of things like Ich and Velvet. At least with Petco you can easily see if they are sick.

I would recommend going to your local Petco a few times over the next week or 2. If all of the fish in their systems look healthy you might not have anything to worry about. If you see fish getting sick, odds are you introduced an illness into your tank. Just keep a close eye on your fish and watch for symptoms like rubbing against rocks or swimming into the flow from pumps or powerheads.

 

[TomJon]

While Petco has plenty of issues, I'm not sure I would claim this as one of them. They own Live Aquaria and source their fish from the same wholesaler. Many other suppliers also use this wholesaler. Is it possible some fish are caught with cyanide? Sure. But that would also mean that most vendors sell fish caught with cyanide.

The problem with Petco is how they maintain their tanks at the store. Once a parasite like Ich or Velvet is in a system it is very difficult to remove without taking all of the fish out for 6 weeks or longer. That is not good for store profits. One nice thing about Petco is that you get a very good idea of the actual condition your fish is in. Many LFS's add low levels of copper to their fish only systems to mask symptoms of things like Ich and Velvet. At least with Petco you can easily see if they are sick.

I would recommend going to your local Petco a few times over the next week or 2. If all of the fish in their systems look healthy you might not have anything to worry about. If you see fish getting sick, odds are you introduced an illness into your tank. Just keep a close eye on your fish and watch for symptoms like rubbing against rocks or swimming into the flow from pumps or powerheads.

Maybe my hatred to my local petco showed through some. Even though I don't have evidence that that do that there is plenty of discussion of it across many forms with people getting fish from them show signs of it. That being said maybe that wasn't a "fair" rock to throw at them. Never the less I stand by the rest i said

 

[Brew12]

Maybe my hatred to my local petco showed through some. Even though I don't have evidence that that do that there is plenty of discussion of it across many forms with people getting fish from them show signs of it. That being said maybe that wasn't a "fair" rock to throw at them. Never the less I stand by the rest i said

It's all good and I agree with much of what you said. I actually went to Petco after making my post to get some dog food. Always makes me sad to look at their fish. A few fish in my tank are from Petco, but I do a full QT with medicated treatment so I don't worry about what issues they may have. My worst experience was from my favorite LFS. Great store, knowledgeable owner, clean tanks, and healthy looking fish. Those are the positives. The negatives? They run their systems salinity between 1.016 and 1.018. They also run copper in their systems below a therapeutic level.
The salinity matters because the fish will likely suffer problems acclimating to a new system even if you drip acclimate. Going from 1.018 to 1.025 should be done over days, not hours, to prevent osmotic shock. The copper was a bigger problem for me. Knowing I needed to do a long drip acclimation on the first group of fish I bought from them, I added Prime to the water for ammonia control. Prime makes copper much more toxic and the fish were all dead in under 3 hours.

I bring this up to show that every supplier will have its pro's and con's. The most important thing is for a hobbyist to understand exactly what they are getting and how to deal with whatever issues they may come across.

 

[JaimeAdams]

Glad someone beat me to it Brew.

I really doubt that the majority of fish from Petco are caught with poison. It's just not accurate.

Personally I don't buy fish from Petco. If I did buy fish from Petco I would without question QT and just treat with everything in the book. That being said I was talking to my buddy a couple weeks back and honestly if you are going to QT and treat everything anyways sometimes Petco has good buys. The problem is that 99+% of people buy a fish and toss it into their tank without treatment. I'm a HUGE supporter of LFS, even less than stellar ones. I prefer to pay more and help keep my good LFS in business so when I have some disaster I have a place that I can go for help and not talking to the 16yr old at Petco or waiting 2 days for my Amazon Prime order to arrive.

 

[Dennis10nis]

Across the board I'm the person who will support a local place first in any circumstance/business, it seems magnified in this hobby. I don't have any reason to believe the Petco here is contaminated other than scary stories. My (now dead) fish was in a tank itself (granted I don't have a way to know if it was hours or days or weeks), and could have died from other causes. My real question was do I just assume and medicate and cleanse the display tank (fallow method, fish in QT for "the works") preemptively now, or chance it, and potentially run into problems later with more delicate fish?

 

[leahfiish]

By delicate fish, what do you mean? That might affect the decision.

 

[Brew12]

Across the board I'm the person who will support a local place first in any circumstance/business, it seems magnified in this hobby. I don't have any reason to believe the Petco here is contaminated other than scary stories. My (now dead) fish was in a tank itself (granted I don't have a way to know if it was hours or days or weeks), and could have died from other causes. My real question was do I just assume and medicate and cleanse the display tank (fallow method, fish in QT for "the works") preemptively now, or chance it, and potentially run into problems later with more delicate fish?

If it were my system, I would make sure I had all the meds and equipment I would need to set up a QT/HT quickly but I would only monitor the fish at this point.