Poison Water, Rock or Other Stuff?

[liugongqx]

Hi Everyone,

Long story, For the past couple days, I lost a dottyback, a bicolor, a damsel, a firefish. Six strip, hawk, a clown fish and another big damsel are also on the way.

Background: Well established 40 gl tank for 1 years and all fish seem healthy. Then I moved. I saw all white worms in the filter(I barely change water) and I clean them up. Also removed 90% of water due to moving.

0. It started from clown fish. The white dust/dot gradually cover his body. However, since it's pretty tough. I didn't see issues.
1. At similar time I found dottyback's dead body under the rock and could be dead for 3-4 days. I highly suspect he ate too much since it's the smartest and could always find the food in corners.
2. Later all lower level fish got a hit, bicolor first then hawk. None of them eat and then bicolor is gone(white color covered eyes and body). Hawk is big and strong with cloudy eyes.
3. I start use melafix which fixed bicolor's fungi fin effectively before, no luck.
4. Then one or two days the smaller damsel stop eating and finally gone.
5. I changed around 3/4 of the water, No luck (PH, NH3, NO2, NH2 all looks good)
6. firefish is gone without any symptom of cloudy eye. Seems starving.
7. I started using Hikari Prazi Pro Parasite and I can not tell whether it will help since fish got sick faster.
8. six strip stops swimming and lay on the rock

Here is only thing what I see help.
1. Put fish in a separate tank with hangup filter with same water. The cloudy eye and body seems recover slowly. This may due to Hikari as this is the second day of treatment. However, even without Hikari, fish still got recovered slowly.

Other stuff seems fine. Coral, helmet crabs, snail.

Thanks a lot for everyone's help. It seems that the water or other stuff in that tank kill all fishes slowly. Another possibility is the oxygen since the secondary tank is small with a large hang up filter kept pushing air to the water

 

[Jekyl]

Due to lack of maintenance you had a build up in the sand bed and on the rocks. When you moved it stirred everything up and caused a spike. From there it stressed the fish out which caused illness to take over. At least that's my general thought on what happened. Usually when tanks are moved the sand and rocks are cleaned thoroughly or sand is outright replaced.

 

[liugongqx]

Due to lack of maintenance you had a build up in the sand bed and on the rocks. When you moved it stirred everything up and caused a spike. From there it stressed the fish out which caused illness to take over. At least that's my general thought on what happened. Usually when tanks are moved the sand and rocks are cleaned thoroughly or sand is outright replaced.

Thanks! Great suggestion! The sand bed is a mess with fish waste but they seems to reach balance before. However, afterwater change, the NO2 and other metrics seem fine. Maybe I should sample the water near the sand bed or maybe some metrics I missed?

 

[Jekyl]

Any move will cause stress on the fish. Best you can do now is blow off the rocks and vacuum the bed. 2 or 3 30% water changes over the next week and a half. For the fish if there are issues, take some white light pics and a short video and post to the disease forum.

 

[MnFish1]

I agree with Jekyll - the most likely thing is 1) ammonia increase since cleaning your filter or 2) an issue with the sand - which is common - many people recommend using new sand rather than transferring the old sand.

Having said that - it sounds like (without pictures its hard to say) - that you had either velvet or another parasite (cryptocaryon). The stress of the move can cause 'latent' parasites to take hold.

Other possibilities - 1. Low oxygen due to a bacterial bloom - though doubt that - due to no 'cloudy water. 2. Poorly mixed salt/parameter change.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Sounds like ammonia spike amongst other things.
Melafix is rather useless in the tank as it is merely Teak tree oil regarded as a tonic and if it happened, should Not have mixed with Prazi.
With the prazi, it will reduce both oxygen and appetite and if an ammonia spike occurred, you further reduced oxygen hence the result you saw. Also with Prazi, did you dose according to useable gallons and not tank volume ( example, 40 gallon tank with rocks and decor has about 32 useable gallons
Filter was likely inadequate to keep up with load and provide proper water movement and oxygen in turn, the events that occurred.

 

[liugongqx]

Sounds like ammonia spike amongst other things.
Melafix is rather useless in the tank as it is merely Teak tree oil regarded as a tonic and if it happened, should Not have mixed with Prazi.
With the prazi, it will reduce both oxygen and appetite and if an ammonia spike occurred, you further reduced oxygen hence the result you saw. Also with Prazi, did you dose according to useable gallons and not tank volume ( example, 40 gallon tank with rocks and decor has about 32 useable gallons
Filter was likely inadequate to keep up with load and provide proper water movement and oxygen in turn, the events that occurred.

Yes. The six strip and big damsel are both strong. After I dose Prazi, I could see both stay on the bottom of the tank and could not float. Seems general behavior of lack of oxygen. Puzzle solved.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hi Everyone,

Long story, For the past couple days, I lost a dottyback, a bicolor, a damsel, a firefish. Six strip, hawk, a clown fish and another big damsel are also on the way.

Background: Well established 40 gl tank for 1 years and all fish seem healthy. Then I moved. I saw all white worms in the filter(I barely change water) and I clean them up. Also removed 90% of water due to moving.

0. It started from clown fish. The white dust/dot gradually cover his body. However, since it's pretty tough. I didn't see issues.
1. At similar time I found dottyback's dead body under the rock and could be dead for 3-4 days. I highly suspect he ate too much since it's the smartest and could always find the food in corners.
2. Later all lower level fish got a hit, bicolor first then hawk. None of them eat and then bicolor is gone(white color covered eyes and body). Hawk is big and strong with cloudy eyes.
3. I start use melafix which fixed bicolor's fungi fin effectively before, no luck.
4. Then one or two days the smaller damsel stop eating and finally gone.
5. I changed around 3/4 of the water, No luck (PH, NH3, NO2, NH2 all looks good)
6. firefish is gone without any symptom of cloudy eye. Seems starving.
7. I started using Hikari Prazi Pro Parasite and I can not tell whether it will help since fish got sick faster.
8. six strip stops swimming and lay on the rock

Here is only thing what I see help.
1. Put fish in a separate tank with hangup filter with same water. The cloudy eye and body seems recover slowly. This may due to Hikari as this is the second day of treatment. However, even without Hikari, fish still got recovered slowly.

Other stuff seems fine. Coral, helmet crabs, snail.

Thanks a lot for everyone's help. It seems that the water or other stuff in that tank kill all fishes slowly. Another possibility is the oxygen since the secondary tank is small with a large hang up filter kept pushing air to the water

I doubt this was a water quality issue - not with the invertebrates being fine. Rarely, low dissolved oxygen can kill fish before the invertebrates show any stress, but when all the fish die and the inverts are fine, I always begin by exploring disease issues.

Did you see rapid breathing?
Cloudy eyes can indicate flukes, but can also be from late stage ich.
It wasn't clear to me though - some fish survived?

Jay

 

[liugongqx]

I doubt this was a water quality issue - not with the invertebrates being fine. Rarely, low dissolved oxygen can kill fish before the invertebrates show any stress, but when all the fish die and the inverts are fine, I always begin by exploring disease issues.

Did you see rapid breathing?
I doubt this was a water quality issue - not with the invertebrates being fine. Rarely, low dissolved oxygen can kill fish before the invertebrates show any stress, but when all the fish die and the inverts are fine, I always begin by exploring disease issues

well, saidly, they passed out in different ways. For damsel, I observed short breath, same for clown fish. For clownfish, it also try to float to top for oxygen. Although for clownfish, after I put it in separate tank with large filter, it seems better. For six strip and fire fish, they seems extremely slim when close to dying. I did not observe short breath for them. Now 5 fish are still live in separate tank with same water and larger filter. Although I am pretty sure I will lost the six strip soon. Two clown fish, one big damsel, a hawk and a cardinal are the last survival now.

 

[liugongqx]

Thanks a lot for every one's reply. Some update. Unfortunately it seems that after total water change/wipe out sand/polish rock a little bit/clean up tank. Nothing helped. There is only one fish left. Here is the what I observed.

1. Each fish behave slightly differently. But at the end, most fish shows short of oxygen which they need to float and grab new air.
2. The last one is a six strip. It's behavior is totally changed compare to when he is healthy. He start wandering around at the bottom however previously he usually swim in middle layer. The one that passed out today is the blue damsel, couple days before, it start running around tank aimlessly.
3. The water quality improvement definitely benefit the corals. They looks much healthier.
4. When six stipe stay still for longer time, there is some weird net which is similar to spider net slowly cover him. Meanwhile, I can observe cloudy eye as well.
5. I don't have too much ideas. Maybe the tap water is high lead? Maybe there is some poison coral? If this is due to parasite, it seems takes really long time, for example, this six strip stop eating for more than 3 weeks and same as the last damsel, it seems starving to death.

Thanks a lot again for everyone's input.