Huge die off

[crav]

I posted a few days ago about a tang that I lost. It was fine, and in 18 hours overnight it was dead. At night, perfect, in the morning, dark, hiding and breathing heavily.

This was 4 days ago. Last night, everything was ok as well. (9 hours ago, actually).

Now, I wake up, and see almost all my fish dead, and the rest are weird - they have lost color, almost like they lost color saturation. All hiding. My fish in the tank were:

-1 Yellow tang - dead
-3 Ocellaris - 1 dead, 2 alive (looking bad)
-1 Yellow Tail Damsel - dead
-1 Green Chromis - dead - found him almost being eaten by an actinic anemonae
- 1 Royal Gramma - alive and hiding all the time


In this picture you can see that the damsel has turned black, the ocellaris colors are washed out, YT doesn't have any mark indications, and the chromis is slim.

Now, these fish are still alive (notice the tail starting to become "washed out" in color)





Is this Brook? What can I do to save the remaining fish?

I have garlic guard, metro and sera tremazol (6ml only).

[crav]

They are still eating. I soaked the food in garlic guard with metro dissolved. They ate some, except the gramma, that tried the food and then spit it.

[ComforablyNumb]

Have you checked ammonia levels? Almost sounds like something disrupted the nitrogen cycle.

[crav]

My marine ammonia test is empty. I only have a freshwater one (I think it doesn't work). Shouldn't the corals show signs of ammonia poisoning as well in this case?

I suppose it could be possible, but nothing was done to the tank to cause a mini cycle (haven't touched substrate, no additives are dosed to this tank, not even a questionable water change, since my last one was 2 weeks ago).

From what I saw, some of the fish look a lot like pictures of Brooklynella infections. Ammonia usually makes gills turn red, from what I've seen.

[Pericyte]

Do you quarantine your fish? Have you added any fish recently?

[crav]

Originally Posted by Pericyte

Do you quarantine your fish? Have you added any fish recently?

No, I didn't quarantine. I was going to redo the whole tank (new substrate and rock), so I was going to do a full quarantine anyway between builds. Big mistake.

I had added a bahianus aprox. a month ago, that died on April 12th.

I put the two remaining ocellaris on a freshwater dip. Their fins are melting, and they have loose skin on their bodies. Along with the whitening of the fish, I'm almost sure now it is Brook indeed.

[Pericyte]

That's rough. If you can set up a quarantine tank, I would do that. I proactively treat all new fish with cupramine and prazipro for ~4-6 weeks. (Treating for the first 2 weeks or so, then seeing how they do.). It sounds like you may not have many fish left/ you are upgrading, so if I were you I would leave the display tank totally fish free for 6 weeks minimum.

Sorry for your loss, I had a similar experience about a year into my first tank, only my yellow tang survived. Now I quarantine everything. On the plus side, I have a regal blue and powder blue tang and I have never seen ich on either of them. I fully believe if proactive treatment is a key to long-term success.

[crav]

Yes, my plan now is to proactive treat all fish in quarantine before adding. One of the reasons for this upgrade is exactly starting over with a clean slate. I already have all new substrate and rock for the new build. This just happened 1 or 2 weeks before I started the qt for all my fish.

Right now, I'm left only with 2 ocellaris (1 may pull through, the other is very ill) and a royal gramma.

You use cupramine and prazi only? Would metronidazole be better? It's the easiest medicine for me to get acess to.

[Pericyte]

Originally Posted by crav

Yes, my plan now is to proactive treat all fish in quarantine before adding. One of the reasons for this upgrade is exactly starting over with a clean slate. I already have all new substrate and rock for the new build. This just happened 1 or 2 weeks before I started the qt for all my fish.

Right now, I'm left only with 2 ocellaris (1 may pull through, the other is very ill) and a royal gramma.

You use cupramine and prazi only? Would metronidazole be better? It's the easiest medicine for me to get acess to.

I assume by your time frame you are either looking at velvet or brooklynella disease. I am not an expert, so it may help for someone else to chime in, however, metronidazole will probably only help if there is a secondary bacterial infection. For brooklynella, there are mixed reviews about copper medications effectiveness, but it sounds like formalin is the most effective medication.

Not sure if you have done a quarantine tank before, but mine is a 36 gallon with only a heater, biowheel, basic light, powerhead and big pvc for fish hiding. No live rock, sand or carbon should be in the tank as it will absorb medication.

[scooter31707]

That looks like brook my friend. I would do Formalin baths/dips, but it may not work as the clown may be too far gone.

[crav]

Originally Posted by scooter31707

That looks like brook my friend. I would do Formalin baths/dips, but it may not work as the clown may be too far gone.

Unfortunately both are. The gramma is the only one left. It's a holiday where I live today, so there's nowhere to buy medication. Got to wait until tomorrow.

[crav]

A quick update, and a question.

UPDATE: ALL the fish died.

I will start out from scratch, as I already was planning to. I have new rock and substrate (dry). If I wanted to use my live rock that went through this die off (mainly to help with cycling the new tank), how do I go about eliminating diseases from it beforehand?

[VegasMike]

Don't, why risk it.

Be patient and do it the safe way.

[juanmanuelsanch]

it looks like it could be uronema marinum or even velvet.

You will need a QT producedure for ALL your new fishes and corals, its the only way to avoid this masacres.

Best of luck

[ThRoewer]

This sounds more like velvet than brook to me, but even a combination of both would be possible.

The best treatment against velvet is Chloroquine Phosphate (CP, available prescription free as NLS Ick-Shield Powder) followed by copper for those fish that are sensitive to CP. There are some copper resistant velvet strains, so unless you are treating Pipefish, Seahorses or certain wrasses it is best to go with the CP treatment.

Brooklynella is best treated with formalin, but freshwater baths supposedly work as well (never tried that myself). Copper does nothing against it and the effectiveness of CP is questionable at best.

Ideally you give every new fish a formalin bath before they go into the quarantine tank to make sure that Brooklynella and Uronema stay clear of your tanks.

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[ThRoewer]

Fallow for Amyloodinium (velvet) and Brooklynella is 6 weeks, thought I would go a bit longer.

The quarantine period for new fish should be at least 2 months. So by the time the next fish are through quarantine your system should be clean.

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