Not really. They shipped with basically no water in their bags, just soaked paper towels. So we let them acclimate to temp for an hour in fresh tank water (separate container floating in the tank so water didn’t cross) and then picked each out by hand and added to tanks.
Yeah. My bad. Yes. Saltwater from our trash can container of mixed Rodi and salt.
I ordered a CUC crew for my new reef from reef cleaners a month ago and had no problems with them. I have been in contact with the owner (John) several times, and he has been nothing but helpful and I honestly believe he has the highest quality inverts on the market. Hitch hiking parasites would not kill your fish so suddenly. I would diagnose the problem before making such baseless accusations.
Perhaps for invert safety. But the inverts are alive and healthy so far. Just the fish loss, and we haven’t had any fish added to any of these tanks in 3 weeks or so. And the new arrivals were quarantined before being added to these systems.
That’s how I acclimate Reef Cleaners animals, I use fresh seawater and pull any DOAs that I see. I suggested that they change their info sheet to include this rinsing step, but they didn’t.
Hence the question mark and request for ideas of what it could be. I’m just stating the only thing that has changed in these systems was the addition of the CUC, yesterday. Otherwise nothing has changed. If you have alternate theories please share them. I’m all ears to figure out what happened and prevent it in the future.
John says his tanks are fishless, and there is no way velvet can get started that fast….it kills quickly, but the infection still takes days/weeks to reach acute disease levels, then it goes into exponential growth and the fish die fast.
