Fishless Reef Tank...

madducks42

Resident Nihilist
BRS Member
So we are the killers of fish. All of the coral in our 90 gallon are doing great. The tank looks so good right now...except it doesn't have any fish in it, lol. A few months back we had yet another ick outbreak that killed some of our fish so we decided to catch all the fish and do the quarantine thing. We're coming up on 76 days next month so we're almost at the point were we can put the surviving fish back in the tank. There were three fish in QT, a clownfish pair and a yellow watchman goby. I did the TTM to take care of the ick problem and then it was just a matter of monitoring the fish and waiting for the 76 days to be up. Unfortunately last week I noticed a punch of spots on one of the clownfish that didn't look exactly like ick. A few people said it looked like velvet when I showed them pictures and suggested I start treating with copper. Treating with copper terrifies me, it's why I did TTM at the start of the QT process. And sure enough 5 days into the copper treatment the yellow watchman goby died. It wasn't showing any signs of being sick before the copper treatment so I'm pretty sure that's what killed it. I can't read the copper tests that well but I think I accidentally raised it to high, it's somewhere between .5 and 1. So now I'm doing a bunch of water changes to get the copper out of the tank and I'm just going to monitor the remaining clownfish for the remaining weeks until the 76 days are up and toss them back in the display tank. With the luck we've had with fish I would not be the least bit surprised if they died 2 days after we put them back in the tank. Sigh.
 
That’s the thing with TTM, it’s only good for ich. If there are other issues at play it will be useless. As far as copper tests, Hannah is or just has, released a new checker for copper which from some extensive testing on R2R is showing great results. May be worth a look if copper is your chosen method of treatment.
 
There are fishless reef tanks. I know some people like the look of it or does not want to deal with fish.



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That’s the thing with TTM, it’s only good for ich. If there are other issues at play it will be useless. As far as copper tests, Hannah is or just has, released a new checker for copper which from some extensive testing on R2R is showing great results. May be worth a look if copper is your chosen method of treatment.

Thanks for the info! I wasn't caught up on the latest info and thought it was still a no-go for salt water. Just placed an order for one on the Hanna website.
 
Save your money for a good UV sterilizer and then add a fish or two. You’ll change your mind after that. :)

We have a UV sterilizer. Didn't help us at all with the ich issue. Seemed to improve the overall water quality, we were having some algae issues, but it's hard to say if it was the UV sterilizer or something else we were doing. At any rate it's still running 24/7.
 
With the UV you are running, how old is the lamp, what kind of UV system, and what's the flow rate through it?

As Nick mentioned, for UV to be effective all of the above need to be right or it's basically useless, and a lot of hobby grade units are not rated correctly to be effective with fish disease in the first place. Just having a year old bulb could make the difference between being effective and useless.
 
Don’t use any uv and don’t qt fish. I buy fish mainly tangs with ick and it’s gone within weeks after feeding healthy for a couple weeks with LRS reef frenzy


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We're using the Jebao 36W and have the rate set pretty slow. It's less than six months old so the bulb should be fine. Seems like some people get lucky and don't QT or have a UV sterilizer and have zero problems. Whereas we've had problems with fish since the beginning. We've had the black/white clownfish for about 9 months but other than that most of our fish have died within 2 months of getting them. Hoping that leaving the tank fallow for 76 days helps but this current round of copper treatment isn't going so well.
 
Might be where your buying your fish. The store you get them from might get them from a supplier that collects using Cyanide. Which won’t kill the fish right away but months after you have it in your tank. There is a store in my area I won’t buy fish from because every fish I have ever got from them dies within two weeks but when I get fish online from live aquaria or divers den, and vivid I have great luck. And fish from fellow reefers that have been in there tanks for a bit


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UV has little effect on marine ich and this topic has been well debated and studied.
Ich does not float around the water column much during its life cycle, hence UV has little effect on it. Also it take a very powerful UV to kill those “eggs”.


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We have a UV sterilizer. Didn't help us at all with the ich issue. Seemed to improve the overall water quality, we were having some algae issues, but it's hard to say if it was the UV sterilizer or something else we were doing. At any rate it's still running 24/7.

Did you take the run to run it correctly for what you're trying to achieve? How much power? how much flow rate? Some people run it for the water clarity so they turn up the flow rate. Some run it to kill protozoa in the water column so you have to turn the flow through it down.
I never said it UV will cure all your fish problem. It will help if you take the time to set it up correctly. You also will not see result overnight.
 
We have a UV sterilizer. Didn't help us at all with the ich issue. Seemed to improve the overall water quality, we were having some algae issues, but it's hard to say if it was the UV sterilizer or something else we were doing. At any rate it's still running 24/7.

Did you take the run to run it correctly for what you're trying to achieve? How much power? how much flow rate? Some people run it for the water clarity so they turn up the flow rate. Some run it to kill protozoa in the water column so you have to turn the flow through it down.
I never said it UV will cure all your fish problem. It will help if you take the time to set it up correctly. You also will not see result overnight.

Eh. We set it up based on manufacturing instructions and using articles online for guidance, it was configured for the purpose of controlling ick. It was more a desperate attempt by my partner to do something to help our fish survive. It didn’t help but it wasn’t running for that long before we had another ick outbreak and I decided to take the quarantine/fallow tank approach. I’m pretty skeptical when it comes to UV sterilizers since I haven’t been able to find anything about them that comes from actual research. It all seems to be anecdotal evidence about how useful they are, especially when it comes to ick. Larger scale ones used at aquariums are probably a different story.

I’m going to try and continue the copper treatment on the surviving clownfish. Not sure what I’m going to do for future fish.


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