Tank Disaster

[Twosixpax]

Sorry to hear. Can’t tell much from the photos, the glassy eyes are a clue, but can be flukes or protozoans. Bacterial more commonly causes more white turbid eyes.

Jay

Thx Jay.

The progression for most of the fish seemed similar - beginning with swollen then cloudy eyes, damage to fins and/or tail and eventually blotches on the skin, listlessness and hiding, and eventual death, all within 5-7 days. As far as I'm aware, only the Foxface displayed the smaller white ich-like spots towards the end of that cycle, presumably as his immune system failed.

The Gem Tang has no obvious spots beyond her markings, but has had a couple of fin tears for a few days and now has some swelling of the eyes..

Glen

 

[Twosixpax]

Quick update. The Gem Tang (the sole survivor of the original 11 fish), thanks to the advice of this group, seems to have survived. She had a mild case of swollen/cloudy eyes but that appears to have passed and she is eating and swimming normally. I'm still treating her with Metroplex and Neoplex after the initial treatment of Kanaplex.
If she had died also I would have planned to leave the tank fallow for 3 months. Any advice on what to do now? Move her to a separate QT and leave the main tank fallow, or leave her in there alone for 3 months? Difficult to say without knowing the exact cause I realize, so any thoughts appreciated.
I did order Aquabiomics tankDNA and MicroBiome test kits so could wait for those results to see if they find anything - not sure how accurate they are and I guess they don't find all sources of disease/infection.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Yeah, not knowing the cause makes determine if and for how long the tanks needs to lay fallow. The range could be 45 to 75 days.
Having the tang still in the tank breaks down the idea of a fallow period.
I’d be inclined to have the tests run and then decide what to do.
Jay

 

[Twosixpax]

Update on status: The Gem Tang somehow survived and seems to be doing well (has a 220G tank to herself right now). One of the clams, a BTA, 2 shrimp and the snails were the other survivors. New coral is also doing well, anf those that did survive seem back on track.
MicroBiome test showed no fish or coral pathogens present (attached) and other than a distinct lack of diversity was pretty normal.

I guess the question is "what next?". I could either remove the tang and go fallow or add back a single fish and see how it does.. I suspect whatever was in there was knocked out by the range of meds. Any thoughts welcomed!

Thanks.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Update on status: The Gem Tang somehow survived and seems to be doing well (has a 220G tank to herself right now). One of the clams, a BTA, 2 shrimp and the snails were the other survivors. New coral is also doing well, anf those that did survive seem back on track.
MicroBiome test showed no fish or coral pathogens present (attached) and other than a distinct lack of diversity was pretty normal.

I guess the question is "what next?". I could either remove the tang and go fallow or add back a single fish and see how it does.. I suspect whatever was in there was knocked out by the range of meds. Any thoughts welcomed!

Thanks.

Ah, that clears up something for me - it seems that they only test for bacteria and Cyanobacteria. I didn’t see any listing for protozoans or metazoan. The vast majority of fish diseases are caused by those.
Jay

 

[Twosixpax]

Ah, that clears up something for me - it seems that they only test for bacteria and Cyanobacteria. I didn’t see any listing for protozoans or metazoan. The vast majority of fish diseases are caused by those.
Jay

Thanks Jay - sounds like a vote for removing the fish and leaving fallow for 75 days..

 

[brandon429]

this thread adds to the subtle yet repeating clues that seneye tanks don't experience ammonia control issues.

if this tank was tested on api and you reported .5 there would be 100% certainty that ammonia killed your tank and the focus on disease would be in question


ergo, where accurate ammonia testing happens, folks can focus on the right things. I agree with your final takeaway on the fallow mode. it's amazing the trending we're seeing in tanks that had no disease outbreak prior to a move, nothing new introduced, and then an outbreak. that too is starting to pattern.

your thread here is a counter example to how 99.9999999999999% of cycle challenge inquiries go, we were allowed peace solely by the machine you own.

it needs trimming by the way, reefs run in the thousandths ppm not the hundredths but that's not a big deal as the bottom line isn't a big deal, your machine still showed a very small and controlled rise/no real alert based on the known safe running condition and in that your thread direction is very rare indeed.

seneye is changing the game for disease management by stopping the intense hyperfocus on the loss of bacteria everyone endures with nh4 color tube kits.

 

[Jonify]

Ah, that clears up something for me - it seems that they only test for bacteria and Cyanobacteria. I didn’t see any listing for protozoans or metazoan. The vast majority of fish diseases are caused by those.
Jay

Thanks Jay - sounds like a vote for removing the fish and leaving fallow for 75 days..

Just a quick note--the microbiome test won't check for the usual things that cause fish diseases; you'd need the eDNA test for that (2nd product on this page: https://aquabiomics.com/products-and-services).

 

[LisaMarie]

Thanks. All good questions. I probably don't know at least as much as I know, but here's the order of events:

Began upgrading from a 200G tank that was having glass issues to a Red Sea S1000 (so new tank, sump, but existing hardware).

Used a local aquarium service to do the transfer. He set up a very makeshift temp holding tank with it's own sump and put in all rock, corals and 11 fish.

He did forget to put in the heater, but I discovered that within a few hours.

The fish seemed to survive well in the temp tank setup, although some of the more sensitive corals were already showing signs of tissue loss (lighting change?)..

Day 1: it took him about a week to come back and move in the new tank, fill it with the rock and water from the temp tank, and he also rinsed the sand in clean saltwater and reused some of it (I was not a big fan of this but he assured me it would be ok. He also added new Arag-alive sand).

He had broken the skimmer and left about 40 biomedia cubes in a dry bucket (I know, it gets worse) so part of my bio filter was gone (I've since replaced the skimmer) - Nitrates peaked at 39.5 and phosphate at 0.35 before they started coming down.

I have a separate QT - in a moment of weakness a week or two before I had bought a mimic tang at my LFS which died within a couple of days so the tank had been empty for over a week.

while setting up new tanks, he ran out of newly mixed saltwater to top up the new larger tank and unfortunately took 5G of the old water from the QT and put it into the new tank (told you it got worse).

He then put the fish and corals into the new tank.

Day 3: A couple of days after the new tank was up and running one of the pyramid butterflies started hiding and getting listless - developed what looked like popeye in one eye. Thought it may be wound-related following the tank transfer.

Day 6: First Pyramid butterfly died.

Day 15 : Second pyramid began showing signs of cloudy eyes (both eyes)

Day 16: Began dosing KanaPlex in DT after Copperband also began showing slight cloudiness in eyes.

Day 17: Second Pyramid died. Copperband showing signs of infection on flanks.

Day 18: Copperband died. Second dose of KanaPlex. Watanabe Angel died over night - difficult to see what the cause was as a large Sallylightfoot crab was making a meal of her. Interestingly, the Sallylightfoot also died a couple of days later.

Day 19: Both Swallowtail Angelfish and both Clownfish died (pictures posted above)

Day 20: Foxface and Gem Tang remain, Foxface stopped eating for a day but ate an hour ago. Gem Tang seems fine so far. Final KanaPlex dose due tonight.

The corals I believe may have died from the stress of the tank transfers - it seemed to be the Acros and Montis and a large Stylo and Favia that got hit, the Duncans and GSP survived - go figure..

Other than the spike in nitrates other parameters have stayed pretty stable - pH, temp, salinity. Alkalinty did drop a little in the temp tank but is now back around 9.

I'm just so sorry that you are going through this. I can't even imagine such an extraordinary loss.

 

[seabear]

seneye tanks don't experience ammonia control issues

I believe the monitor reported NH3 levels as high as 0.02ppm. That's about 0.34ppm of total ammonia at a pH of 8.1.

if this tank was tested on api and you reported .5 there would be 100% certainty that ammonia killed your tank and the focus on disease would be in question

Yeah, API should report that somewhere between 0.25ppm (safe) and 0.5ppm (maybe you should look into the cause). But the cause is pretty apparent here, so not much to look into. Obviously ammonia wasn't the cause of the deaths, but a result of the deaths.


But wow, I can't imagine losing all of those fish. Sorry for your loss.

 

[brandon429]

I think the unit is out of trim, compared to seneye posts like this one that show thousandths ppm running rate when benchmarked on running reefs, and they’re blast loading ammonia too. These posts on seneye show shock absorber ability I think most folks didn’t know was possible among out rock stacks. It’s still useful to indicate degree of shift away from safe zone even if not trimmed down to thousandths accuracy.

Does anyone dose ammonia and/or how would one try?

It's been stated on here by @Randy Holmes-Farley that ammonia changes back and forth to ammonium very quickly in our reef tanks. This means that it doesn't matter if we dose ammonia or ammonium, it will change into one or the other, as determined be other factors. I don't remember what the...

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