TXReefer89
New Member
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2017
- Messages
- 6
- Reaction score
- 3
First of all, thank-you in advance for any recommendations you're able to provide! I've been reef keeping for about 3.5 years and enjoy the challenges of it. I've made the rookie mistakes and tried to learn from all of them. I was able to hook up with an awesome LFS where I lived and they were the gold standard of how to run a LFS store. They qt'd all their fish for at minimum 1-2 weeks before listing them for sale and also warrantied them with water tests. We grew very close and I became very spoiled because there was a beautiful mutual trust. I spent around $10k in 3 years there, not only on myself but for my friend in another state that I would ship to.
I moved away a year ago and was finally able to get my 220 gallon dream aquarium up and running 2 months ago. I found the local LFS and immediately started visiting for anything I needed. Well I really let my guard down, I guess I was just used to how my old LFS does business. I had already introduced my DaVinci clown, orange banded prawn goby, a tiny silver fish with 3 blue stipes and blue eyes when I purchased a brown powder tang from them.
Here's the dumb part, brace yourselves: I introduced the tang with no QT, just drip acclimated him and boom he's swimming, eating, looking beautiful. Mysis, nori, you name it he's chomping it down.
A week goes by. He starts showing ich. I start treating the tank with "Parasite Remedy" by Imagitarium. Well you can imagitarium that snake oil didn't work. All of my fish start showing signs of ich(except goby). A few days later the brown powder tang dies, all other fish are getting progressively worse as well.
I brought the dead fish back to the store to show them and have them test my water just in case. While that was going on I actually took a closer look at their fish. Every freshwater fish had ich. The saltwater system is plumbed together on multiple tanks (where I picked my tang from.) After seeing this I realized exactly what happened. I should have interrogated them about their fish keeping practices but I didn't. It turns out they don't do any type of QT or medication to their fish before selling them. Not even hyposalinity. They receive the fish from their suppliers and acclimate them into their system and boom first come first serve. No fish warranty. They have a horrible fish death problem. I learned all of this after the fact. Stupid me.
I managed to catch the clown and silverfish but no goby and put them into a 29 gallon QT, cranked heat to 86, dosed ICH-x and ich removal blue stuff. Silver fish dies but my beloved DaVinci seems to be pulling through!! He's swimming around, not breathing heavily any more, and also eating! No more undesolved salt on her body either.
This brings me to now: what to do about the goby? I'm pretty sure he's infected but after researching online it seems they are pretty tough when it comes to parasites. I cannot break the aquarium down just to catch this goby, the rocks are epoxied together. Does anyone have any experience in this area? Will I just be playing the ich management game if I introduce fish back into the 220 aquarium?
Obligatory "my water parameters are perfect!"...but seriously 1.025, 0 amm, 0 nit/ate, 0 phos..the aquarium isn't old enough nor had enough fish for long enough for the parameters to be out of whack yet. Yes, I cycled my tank. Yes, I'm aware fish to better in established aquariums, especially surgeonfish. I'm sure the stress of the move and relatively new aquarium didn't help the powder brown tang at all but this was CLEARLY a parasite problem.
Is my best course of action to purchase a fish trap and catch this fool so I can fallow the tank for 76 days? Again, thank-you for your response.
I moved away a year ago and was finally able to get my 220 gallon dream aquarium up and running 2 months ago. I found the local LFS and immediately started visiting for anything I needed. Well I really let my guard down, I guess I was just used to how my old LFS does business. I had already introduced my DaVinci clown, orange banded prawn goby, a tiny silver fish with 3 blue stipes and blue eyes when I purchased a brown powder tang from them.
Here's the dumb part, brace yourselves: I introduced the tang with no QT, just drip acclimated him and boom he's swimming, eating, looking beautiful. Mysis, nori, you name it he's chomping it down.
A week goes by. He starts showing ich. I start treating the tank with "Parasite Remedy" by Imagitarium. Well you can imagitarium that snake oil didn't work. All of my fish start showing signs of ich(except goby). A few days later the brown powder tang dies, all other fish are getting progressively worse as well.
I brought the dead fish back to the store to show them and have them test my water just in case. While that was going on I actually took a closer look at their fish. Every freshwater fish had ich. The saltwater system is plumbed together on multiple tanks (where I picked my tang from.) After seeing this I realized exactly what happened. I should have interrogated them about their fish keeping practices but I didn't. It turns out they don't do any type of QT or medication to their fish before selling them. Not even hyposalinity. They receive the fish from their suppliers and acclimate them into their system and boom first come first serve. No fish warranty. They have a horrible fish death problem. I learned all of this after the fact. Stupid me.
I managed to catch the clown and silverfish but no goby and put them into a 29 gallon QT, cranked heat to 86, dosed ICH-x and ich removal blue stuff. Silver fish dies but my beloved DaVinci seems to be pulling through!! He's swimming around, not breathing heavily any more, and also eating! No more undesolved salt on her body either.
This brings me to now: what to do about the goby? I'm pretty sure he's infected but after researching online it seems they are pretty tough when it comes to parasites. I cannot break the aquarium down just to catch this goby, the rocks are epoxied together. Does anyone have any experience in this area? Will I just be playing the ich management game if I introduce fish back into the 220 aquarium?
Obligatory "my water parameters are perfect!"...but seriously 1.025, 0 amm, 0 nit/ate, 0 phos..the aquarium isn't old enough nor had enough fish for long enough for the parameters to be out of whack yet. Yes, I cycled my tank. Yes, I'm aware fish to better in established aquariums, especially surgeonfish. I'm sure the stress of the move and relatively new aquarium didn't help the powder brown tang at all but this was CLEARLY a parasite problem.
Is my best course of action to purchase a fish trap and catch this fool so I can fallow the tank for 76 days? Again, thank-you for your response.
