Fish or No Fish????

dreamreef

AC Members
Mar 7, 2008
11
0
0
Panama City, Florida
OK, I have a 75gal sw tank and a few months ago I ran into some problems with my skimmer causing too much air in my tank (or at least that is what I think started it) and my fish got stressed and some signs of ich appeared. I had had the same fish for quite a while, with no problems, when this happened, so that is why I am thinking it must have been stressed induced.

Anyways, to make a long story short, and after some really bad advice from the ONLY lfs and a lot of stress on my part, I lost most of my fish. (A very discourging set back I may add). The only thing in my tank now are 3 chromis, a diamond goby and my corals and inverts.

I have had no signs of ich in about 8 weeks now and I went ahead and treated my tank with a cycle of Ruby Reef Kick-Ich about 2 weeks ago. My question is, when will my tank be safe to add fish again? I guess you could say I am pretty gun shy now and until I found Aquaria Central, the only fish and tank advice I was getting was from the lfs that prove to be no help to me.
 
How many fish did you lose? Did you check your water parameters at the time of the stress-out? I'm skeptical about the "too much air" hypothesis. What led you to that conclusion? I would make sure to find out what the "real" problem was before I proceeded. Seems to me that the likelyhood of an Ich break-out is increased with water-quality problems. How old is your tank? You currently have disease-free fish in the tank. . . I would be more worried about what other factors led to the Ich breakout.
 
OK, I have a 75gal sw tank and a few months ago I ran into some problems with my skimmer causing too much air in my tank (or at least that is what I think started it) and my fish got stressed and some signs of ich appeared. I had had the same fish for quite a while, with no problems, when this happened, so that is why I am thinking it must have been stressed induced.

Anyways, to make a long story short, and after some really bad advice from the ONLY lfs and a lot of stress on my part, I lost most of my fish. (A very discourging set back I may add). The only thing in my tank now are 3 chromis, a diamond goby and my corals and inverts.

I have had no signs of ich in about 8 weeks now and I went ahead and treated my tank with a cycle of Ruby Reef Kick-Ich about 2 weeks ago. My question is, when will my tank be safe to add fish again? I guess you could say I am pretty gun shy now and until I found Aquaria Central, the only fish and tank advice I was getting was from the lfs that prove to be no help to me.


On the whole, i would usually recomend allowing the tank to go fallow (no fish) for about 6 -8 weeks to ensure that all the ich parsite has died away due to lack of hosts.....

I suppose its going to be a game of "play with devil and see if you get burnt" kinda thing....Taking all the above into account, i would wait at least another couple of weeks and very closly monitor the fish in there, to see if any spots return....Be aware, that they could return....
 
I would recommend going fallow as well. I am right now. I rushed a QT on a Coral Beauty and let Ick in. I must admit there is a positive side in my case...I played on my wife's sympathy and pointed out how unhappy the fish looked in the Rubbermaid container, now we also have a 29 gallon that may eventually end up a reef tank.
I would also dig deeper into what could have caused it.
As for advise, I feel I get great advise from the crowd here. LFS...not so much.
 
BTW bubbles are NOT poison. I don't believe it had anything to do with your crash. I churn my tanks to the point of only seeing about 3 inches in, randomly, from 1 to 15 minutes, 16hrs a day. The fish don't care. Unless you can provide additional cause like they stopped my powerheads or(?) I wouldn't worry about bubbles. I bet it was just a coincidence.
 
The reason I related it to the skimmer and bubbles was because the bubbles happened and the ich the next day (while the bubbles were still coming). At first I thought my fish had air bubbles on them, but once I got the bubbles stopped, it was evident that it wasn't air bubbles.
So I treated my fish with some natural stuff (fed garlic and vit C, added vitamins, purchased another cleaner shrimp) all of which was at the advice of my lsf, who told me that all tanks have some ich and that the issue with ich is keeping the immune system of the fish up so the fish can fight ich off.
After a few days of doing what I was advised, all the spots cleared up. No sign of a spot on any fish. Then, a few weeks later, the skimmer tripped out again, the tank filled with air bubbles, and the spots reappeared over night. I did the same treatment as before, but this time the spots kept coming until all the fish died (with the exception of the 3 chromis and the goby). In all I lost a tang, a bannerfish, a damsel and a coral beauty.

I checked my water at both out breaks and everything was perfect. At the first out break I had just done a 25% water change the week before. The saddest part is is that I went to get a tank to put my fish in so that I could treat them and th lsf talked me out of it with their idea that "all tanks have ich".

It has been about 10 weeks now since the last sign of ick, or since the last fish died. The fish in there now have never shown any signs if ich. And I no longer use that piece of junk skimmer.
 
Sorry to hear. I generally concur with your LFS info. It's all about keeping the fish happy and unstressed. I believe the stress includes mental stress not just chemical stress.

If your tank was too crowded or chronically overfed or ? or ? and the fish were perhaps mildly chemically stressed sort of like a time bomb and then the bubbles caused a little additional mental stress perhaps that pushed them over the edge.
 
heres my tank......:silly: lol jk jk

buts its a pic i refer to when i get some microbubbles in my tank. puts me at ease!!

through research, you will find that microbubbles or air...doesnt kill fish or most corals.

Hope it doesnt happen again, i hate it when things go wrong for no reason.

HK01226_big.jpg
 
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