Restocking Fish

[Treefer32]

As many in this community are aware I went through an early catastrophe in my 350g display. To summarize:

1. I was stocking fish weekly after a 2-3 month cycle period.

2. I started with 5 fish and waited two weeks, all parameters remained stable with no Ammonia or nitrites anymore.

3. I waited two weeks for those to get acclimated in their new home. (they did great, didn't lose a single one.)

4. Added 2 bigger fish after 2 weeks.

5. Added a few smaller fish weekly.

6. added a batch of anthias all together bringing my total fish count to 19 by mid April.

7. Started having 2 fish die every 2-3 days (at the same time though)

8. By the 12th fish death, I was panicking, testing everything I could. Nothing was wrong water wise, and corals were growing.

9. Discovered then that heater was culprit. Electrical shock was going through the water column in the display from the sump. - Removed both heaters, bought brand new ones.

10. Remaining 4 fish showed signs of getting better and started eating more. the yellow wrasse jumped out after I did some cleaning a couple weeks ago. So, down to 3 fish. But the remaining three are doing awesome. I've trained the foxface to eat from my hand and all 3 are doing great.


11. Some fish showed lumps under their skin all over (especially a powder blue I had), it looked like a lumpy fish. Probably at least a couple dozen small lumps on both sides of it. LIke it's skin was bubbling. Other fish had signs of bruising around their gills. Some fish had no signs at all of why they died.

12. The strange thing is that through the whole ordeal, I never saw a sign of Ich. I expected that to be the first issue...

All this to summarize.... Given that three fish survived it all and are healthy (as far as I can tell) now:

A. Am I safe to start adding more fish?

B. Anything I can do (antibiotics, something that encourages slime coat, or otherwise) to prep the display for new fish? My only concern is there's something nasty still in there that I can't get rid of. And new fish will be subjected to it. Or am I better off just getting 1-2 test new fish and see what happens in a month or so?

I could QT new fish and then put them in, but, they could be safe and healthy in the QT and die in 24 hours of something in the Display. The last of the algae from the fishpocalypse is dieing off and I'm hand pulling that last remnants of it this weekend and doing another water change. Nitrates are undetectable now. (Got as high as 1 before). And phosphates were testing at .12 according to Red Sea kit. Not sure how accurate that is because the algae I've pulled over the last 2 weeks in the display (piles of it) hasn't grown back at all.

So, thoughts? New fish? Or am I dooming any new fish and the three fish I have are immune to the bubonic plague and they should be extracted for research by the CDC for the cure to the next pandemic?

 

[Gareth elliott]

Sorry for the losses :(

How long have the 3 remaining fish been healthy for?

Any signs of distress during this time?

Have you run carbon through the system?

For nutrients that doesnt sound uncommon for the system to go a little out of whack after fish mortalities.

 

[BestMomEver]

Gosh... I’m so sorry you went through all that. I lost eight fish to velvet. All died in the space of three days. I have no way of taking the tank apart to catch the three remanding fish. I left them there. Hardy buggers! A month or two later, I added another small fish.... then another. I know the velvet is in there, but so far so good. Like you, I found that QT is pointless because of disease already in the tank. But, I also believe that as long as stress is kept to a minimum most fish can develop some sort of immunity. So far, a year later, I’ve had no disease deaths.... some jumpers but no disease (knock on wood!). Go really slow.... one fish at a time.

 

[Treefer32]

I just spent 2 hours extracting 2 handfulls of stringy hard algae. It was sitting on the sand bed, didn't realize how much there was. I vacumed some of the sand during a water change today and the water came out yellowish brown, but that could also be partially due to running an algae scrubber. I'm running a bag with Purigen and floating a bag of carbon in the sump.

The remaining fish have been healthy for 2 months now since the deaths. My foxface showed signs of distressed, stopped eating, lost a bunch of weight, and kept shaking his head at me when I fed. Like, heck no I don't feel like eating right now. Then, two weeks later, he fully recovered, started eating, and he's back to his fat self. His poop is ginormous, but looks normal (Not white or anything like that.)

No signs of any fish scratching or anything. My black tang would constantly swim in circles when the heater was bad. As soon as I turned it off, he swam back and forth across the whole tank. Now two months later, the tang and foxface are calmly searching rocks for algae and calmly swimming about the tank. The Dragon Wrasse likes sitting at the top by my return line. It generates a few bubbles and he likes swimming in the bubbles. When he's not doing that he's relocating my corals for me...

Everything has been peaceful now for around 2 months. They've becoming more and more aggressive eaters, but that may be because I'm feeding lighter too to control the algae outbreaks. I think it's at a turning point and the algae will be under control very soon if it isn't already. Scarped all the dead algae off the glass today. I suspect that was releasing a ton of nutrients too. (It was close to an inch long across the entire 6 foot by 31 inch back glass pane). Getting that out should reduce some of the leaching.

I'm letting things settle after the 15% water change today and tomorrow I'm going to glue some corals down to stop my pesky Wrasse in his tracks. I would like to start with a pair of clowns. But we'll see I guess.