No idea what's going wrong

[nayanjyoti2012]

Hi All. I have a story to tell.
So I setup a new 33 gallon tank with live rock, sand, a HOB filter for mechanical, chemical filtration. I'm using carbon and zeolite as chemical filtration media. For mechanical I'm running a sponge filter. Two wavemakers for surface and mid water movement.

Fast forward to 3 weeks, I started adding fishes. Beginner's mistake, I couldn't resist buying fishes and added like 6 fishes by now. Sadly, one fish had ich/velvet after ine day of adding. I couldn't catch him and thought I can manage ich as the next day, the fish looked clear.

After a few days, many fishes started itching and a few days later, all fishes got white spots. It was too late as they started dying thereafter and I had no copper at the moment.

So I went ahead and bought copper, Seachem Cupramine as it was the only available copper.

I've dosed copper directly into my display tank as I didn't want to wait for fallow.
After that I added one damsel fish, but the fish didn't eat and was swimming towards upper water column so I removed him thereafter.


After a week or so, I've added another fish and it was eating fine and very healthy the first day, but the second day it started a bit twitching behavior and sadly died after a while. I'm very much confused as to what might be the issue

My parameters are all within safe range. Copper is below 0.5ppm and 0.125ppm to be exact. Yet my fish died. Please suggest

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

This is a bit out of my wheelhouse here, but first - what wavemakers are you using, and what fish have you tried keeping?

Second, to my understanding, Cupramine can be pretty harsh on fish and needs to be kept at 0.5 to be useful for treating parasites like ich.

Third, parasites like ich and velvet - if not treated properly - can survive in a tank without fish for several weeks, so any new fish you add to that tank will either need to be treated properly with the copper to kill any parasites, or they'll get sick with the parasite too.

At this point, I'd probably just wait 45 days with the tank at or above 81F (~27.2C) to make sure any parasites have died off, then (if possible) I'd start with a fish you know is eating at the store and give it a proper QT.

All of that said, let's see if we can't get a comment from some more experienced members to see if we can figure out why you new fish are struggling too.

 

[Matt Bravo]

I’m not sure what you’ve asked for here fully, but please stop buying new fishes and dropping them into your display

How many fishes do you still have? If any, how severe is the situation on it?

If you have no fish then you NEED to leave the tank fish-less for 76-80 days (I believe that the right number if not someone please correct me)

Now, if you are waiting for the fallow period to follow through you can not buy corals due to the copper introduced to the system, you also can’t buy any inverts for the same reason

If you’re asking why the fish died, it’s most possibly to ick, velvet or any other illness.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

76-80 days (I believe that the right number if not someone please correct me)

It's minimum of 45 days at 81F, 60-76 days is recommended to be safe though.

Edit: to add, if the temp drops below 81F, you need to go longer than the 45 minimum; 60 days is recommended in most cases.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

you tank has disease and you are adding fish too fast. Now the responsible thing to do is not have fish until the disease die's out. When you do start adding fish, do it slowly, 1 or 2 at a time, wait a month then add the next 1 or 2, and so on, go slowly....