Girl Power Rainbow Tank- Newbie's in love w/our aqua babies

[martine&maribeth]

Hi there,

We've had our 75gal reef tank only since Mar 2011 but are dedicated to it's care and cultivation. We're at our LFS at least 2x per week with questions, buying our water and drooling over corals. We've learned a lot and can never learn enough.

We had great luck so far, knock on wood, but have sadly had two deaths- one of a beloved Foxface (ich= the LFS thought it was fungal and it ended up being ich). The second was of our pride and joy Elegance coral. It fell to a case of brown jelly disease (per our LFS). We had a beautiful white anenome but she ran wild through the tank constantly and was very close to slaying a good lot of corals. She went back to the LFS

This lesbian couple wants to create a girl-power rainbow tank. We have a clam (who can guess why?), come corals/leathers, clowns, chromy, black kol, yellow tang and a fire fish. We've learned to keep a hospital tank (ich crisis) but would love any words of wisdom.

Thanks, all!

Martine & Maribeth

 

[Turbosnail]

:w to the BRS! Feel free to ask as many questions as you would like there are a lot of experienced reefers here who can answer them for you. Tell us about your system and we like to see pics here.

 

[CrazyCorals]

welcome

 

[gweston]

I started here about a year and a half+ ago from scratch. I knew zilch about salt water tanks at first. Tons of helpful people here that will bend over backwards with all sorts of assistance. So feel free to start up a thread on most anything. Sometimes you may get varying opinions, but that is how it goes. Everyone has different tanks, livestock, and experiences. My best piece of advice is to ask lots of q's, visit/tour tanks that others have, soak up as much info/opinions as possible, and make your own informed decisions from there.

Most important of all.. its all about having fun and enjoying our little part of the ocean!

 

[s_kelley]

Welcome aboard!

 

[JohnK]

Welcome M&M

Don't be shy about asking questions here, you may get some conflicting input but that's what this hobby is all about

 

[martine&maribeth]

thank you all for being so welcoming! we do have a question / concern at the moment. we have recently had an outbreak of ich in our tank (we lost our foxface due to ich) we have been treating with herbtana 15ml/day since monday. the black kol tang seemed to be doing well but had one white sploch on him near his tail (thought maybe because the yellow tang had been bullying him) but now he has what looks like white sprinkles on him that are all over him. our question is, do you think this is possibly ich? we still have 4 days of treatment to go, is there a better product we should be using? its hard because we have a live reef tank. im afraid if we quarrentine him like we did the foxface he will die. i was thinking maybe we should leave him in the tank because we have been treating the tank for a week already. any hellp would be greatly apprecieated. thank you in advance

p.s. water paramaters are perfect and so is the temp, never fluctuates

 

[JohnK]

No "reef safe" ick treatment really works. Eradicate via Copper or Hypo, OR live with it and use "managment" techniques.

 

[martine&maribeth]

thank you very much, do you think we should put him in the quarrentine tank and treat that way? I thought we couldn't use copper in the reef tank. do you think the hospital tank would be good for just this fish and use something powerful w/copper or will he just get it again when he's reintroduced to the tank? or what are the management techniques? thank you so much- we love this fish!

 

[JohnK]

Copper cannot be used in the display/reef tank.
If you want to treat and go for "eradication" of ick, then all the fish need to be removed from the display and treated while the display goes "fallow" (fishless) for at least 4-6 weeks.

Otherwise you are "managing" the ick, and living with it (which is an option).

I would strongly suggest researching as much as you can about these terms and fish disease in general before trying to do anything. IME the biggest cause of fish deaths in treating parisites is the human over reacting and killing the fish while trying to help them.

 

[RadReefer]

I agree with John, sometimes management is the best route.

 

[pallobi]

WELCOME to BRS ladies! you have found a great forum and even better club! most are very experienced and always willing to lend advice or a helping hand

and i completely agree with the following statement by our friend johnK...

No "reef safe" ick treatment really works. Eradicate via Copper or Hypo, OR live with it and use "managment" techniques.

 

[stingythingy45]

IMO,it takes 2 tanks set up to be successful in this hobby.
One for qt/treatment and one that is the display tank.
Although management is an option,I would always try to irradicate the parasite.
And don't believe the nonsense that all tanks have cryptocayon,it's simply not the truth.

 

[martine&maribeth]

Thank you very much! I think our freaking out about trying to catch the yellow tang who was butt-checking the kol tang probably caused a lot more stress. Thank you again!! I appreciate it very much.

 

[stingythingy45]

Here is a very good website discussion of the parasite.
Good luck

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.php

 

[APISTOBORELLI]

Welcome to the madness ladies!

 

[martine&maribeth]

Thank you all so much! Your suggestions have helped a great deal and the site was very informative. Overnight, the cleaner shrimp (and maybe a miracle?) helped diminish the spots on the kol down to nothing but a couple on the top fin. We're setting up a hosp tank. We have a 10gal already that we used just for one fish but if we need to plop all of the fish (7) in there for a month, thinking we should use our empty 55gal (or is that too much?) We aren't going to put in anything other than pvc pipes for hiding, a heater, sponge filter, power head, and biowheel (no lights, no sand). It's own set of equipment (nets, etc) and only use hot water for cleaning (anything else?)

If the kol starts getting the spots again or acting funny, we think we'll try the 'hypo' approach w/all fish in the hosp tank. For two weeks, get the salt down to 1.009-1.010 at 79 degrees. When the 2wks are over, slowly bring the salt back to bau (at .001-2/day) w/checking via a hydrometer daily. Using tank water to set up. Keeping them in there for 5 wks to help ensure the ich died off in the display tank.

Still not sure from what I've read if we need to do a 30% water change daily.

Thank you again very much!

 

[pallobi]

very clean looking i love it gals!

 

[JohnK]

Just to clarify, here are some tidbits of info about treating ick, this will be a bummer but better to hear it now than later;

-For Hypo treatment the fish need to be kept at 1.009 for at least 4-6 weeks, this allows the ick to cycle through it's life span and die out. Just getting down to 1.009 doesn't do anything, as ick can survive low SG EXCEPT during it's free swimming stage, so it has to be kept that low long enough to let the ick fully cycle through and die out.

-If the fish are being removed and treated via hypo or copper the display system will still need to be completely fallow (fishless) for at least 6 weeks with more like 8-12 weeks being ideal. Again, basically the same issue, the ick must be allowed to fully cycle through it's life cycle with no potential host, and then it will die out.

-Copper will treat the fish in 2-3 weeks, but the display will still need that same (8-12 week) fallow time. Most people consider copper to be harder on the fish, though both treatments can be risky.

-you cannot treat with copper and hypo at the same time, that would very likely kill all of them.

-And the biggest bummer of the day, the disappearing spots is %100 normal and predictable as part of the ick life cycle. Mark your calender, they can be expected to return in force in about 7-10 days.



Again, my best advice for the moment is to not panic or do anything in a hurry to try to help the fish. Feed them well and keep stress as low as possible. That will be taking a managment approach, and most likely the fish will be fine until you have a chance to really research the options and make a final decision. Ick rarely kills fish fast, and more reefkeepers rely on managment than actually eradicating the parisite.

In the end, personally I prefer to go with eradication, but it's a lot of work and involves risk. If you do eradicate and want to keep the system clean you will need to QT (and IMO treat) all new fish before adding them. That's a lot of work, figure a 10-12 week process for every fish you ever bring home.