Wrong fish

[Sregnar35]

So my birthday is friday, and my girlfriend went out and got me 4 damsels(2 domino, 2 striped) to put in my nearly cycled tank. All 4 came from the same tank at my lfs, but 1 has ich. Now I explained to her that I can't keep these fish forever, and I shouldn't put anything into my tank ( Ammonia-0, Nitrites-1ppm, Nitrates-200ppm) but they're swimming. My question is this, when I do decide to take these tiny terrors out of my tank to stock it with the fish I really want, will the case of ich carry over to my new guests? I've heard marine ich lives in almost all aquariums and only affects fish that are overly stressed? What should I do?

[MonoSebaelover]

All parasites whether it be freshwater or saltwater are constantly in the water and the fish are constantly fighting them just like humans with the viruses in the air. As long as you add hardy fish first and wait 6 months before adding any kind of Tang or Angel or Butterfly you should be fine. BTW, why is your nitrAte so high? That is not good at all. Make sure your test kit is accurate or do some H2O changes, it should be close to or under 40ppm. Anyway, hope this helps and good luck.

[mogurnda]

After having been corrected on this very subject, and having re-read a bunch of stuff, I wanted to suggest an amendment to MSL's response. Both freshwater ich and marine cryptocaryon absolutely require a fish host to continue their life cycle and survive. If a tank is without fish (inverts can't carry the parasite) for 30d to 6 weeks, it will be free of cryoptocaryon.

Advanced Aquarist is running a series of articles on the subject here (http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2003/mini1.htm).

In practice, though, MSL's probably right. A fish may be able to slip through quanrantine with a few trophonts in its gills and appear ich-free. Then the beast is in the tank.

[Sregnar35]

I just caught the infected damsel and put him in a bucket with a piece of rock from my tank and a mini powerhead, I'm going to bring him back to the lfs tonight. The reason my nitrates are so high is because I haven't done 1 water change, my tank is still cycling and I didn't want to remove the nitrites in fear that I won't establish enough beneficial bacteria if they are removed along with the nitrates. I added 3 coctail shrimp on 11/7 and as of yesterday my ammonia has already gone way over 2ppm and is back to 0, but my nitrites are still around 1 ppm, and my nitrates are around 150-200 ppm. I was planning on holding off on fish/inverts till my nitrites went to 0, then do a water change to reduce my nitrates, then add livestock. But my girlfriend didn't know and got me those 4 damsels as an early birthday present. So I figure now, they aren't hurting anything(even though my water isn't too great for them), I guess I'll keep the 3 healthy ones through the end of my cycle, do a water change, let things stabilize and then bring them back to my lfs. I'll be able use them as a learning experience I guess, to get used to feeding and doing water changes without disturbing them too much.

[mogurnda]

There's a good chance that the "healthy" ones will be infected in the next few days.
In my opinion, the bacteria will do just fine with a water change, and the fish will be a lot less likely to stay sick if you reduce the NO2 and NO3.

[Sregnar35]

If I do a water change now, effectively reducing both my
nitr(a/i)te concentrations, and still count on having a sucessful cycle? Or by removing nitrites now, will my cycle stall due to the lack of nitrites? Like I said before, it's been cycling for about 33 days, the ammonia already spiked and came down after about day 13 it was back to 0, the nitrites have been sky high for about 2 weeks, and my nitrates have slowly climbed ever since I started.
I would rather remove all of the damsels if doing a water change will remove too many of my nitrites to establish a good amount of bacteria.

[TKOS]

It will lower your nititres but if they are detectable then there isn't enough bacteria to deal with them yet. Reducing them won't hurt unless you get rid of all of them (which would be relly hard to do). And don't forget that you now have an ammonia source in the tank with the damsels so those levels will build back up. Better to keep the fish happy and slow the cycle a bit IMO.

[Sregnar35]

That makes sense, I'll have to go home today and do a water change then. toI'm getting my CPR Bak Pak 2R tomorrow o, so that will help with the nitrates. I bought a jebo 180 protein skimmer, it's just like a seaclone 150, what a piece of junk.

[Gealcath]

With fish in there you want the nitrites and ammonia to be 0, so doing a water change will put less stress on the Damsels.

[Sregnar35]

UPDATE

Well the fish I thought had ich was brought back to my lfs, they said it wasn't ich but an infection called spyra-something, he didn't really know the name. Anyways, he gave me a yellow tail damsel, and I put it in Tuesday. I did a 13 gallon water change on Wednesday night, and added my cpr bak pak 2R on Thursday night. I've already gotten good foam, and some green water in the collection, maybe a total of 1 cup. Here's the thing, before the water change my water parameters were as follows

Ammonia - 0
Nitrites - around 1ppm
Nitrates - around 200ppm

Now, 2 days since the water change, and about 18 hours since the protein skimmer was added, my Ammonia is still 0, Nitrites are still around 1ppm, and my nitrates are off the chart(my chart reads up to 200ppm, in darkening shades of red, and my test water was purple!!) Here are some possible causes (I think)...

1. The protein skimmer was used, and I could only clean it so good, it did have some hardened green and brown crust inside it

2. My other 3 stripe damsel died overnight last night, and I just took him out, just after I tested my water. Might his decay bump up my reading, or was it not enough time?

3. I used tap water for my water change, and IO salt. Everyone in my area I have spoken to uses tap water, because my area has great tap water

I don't know what else it could be? Just normal readings for the end of a cycle? I'm just getting nervous I guess, I figured that my nitrites would be dropping soon because they have been over 1ppm for a while now, and my nitrates went up after my water change? Anyone with a tidbit of info that could explain any of this would help to ease my poor little brain!! Thanks!

[OrionGirl]

The nitrite-consuming bacteria are slower growing than those that eat ammonia. Seems likely that the introduction of the fish caused a boost in ammonia that the bacteria wuickly caught up with, and the nitrite consumers are just lagging a bit behind.

If your test kit only reads to 200, anything above that is guess work. Could have been 250, could have been 500. Which means that doing water changes until it drops into the readable levels is the only way to know how much is in there. Since it seemed to rise after the water change, I would test the source water. Even if everyone says their water is perfect, I'm paranoid and would still test it myself to be certain.

[Sregnar35]

Alright cool, I'll test my tap water when I get home. Should I do another water change, or should I give my nitrites a chance to settle down, as well as let my skimmer try to lower levels? I've been testing every 3 days, so should I wait til monday, test, and if my nitrates are still high do another change?

[OrionGirl]

Skimmers won't really reduce nitrates much. Do the water changes.

[Gealcath]

Aye skimmers are supposed to help prevent nitrates from forming all together, they dont remove it once its already there.

[Sregnar35]

I tested my tap water, and the nitrates are a lot less than 10ppm, pretty much undetectable. I haven't been on the webboard since friday so I didn't know if I should do a water change til now, but I will do a change tonight. My yellow tail damsel now has a white film over one of his eyes, and the smaller of my 2 dominos' looks like it has a line of white along his body, and his color has slightly faded greyish around the area of the whilte line. My lfs said my first dead 3 stripe domino has an infection, not ich, and he said the others should be ok. Well now 1 more is dead and 2 of the other 3 look sick.It's probably due to my poor water quality. Hopefully a water change will help with my water quality, I'll test after it's done and post again tomorrow am.

[Sregnar35]

How many gallons should my water change be? 75g FOWLR, 130lbs sand, approx 50-60 # rock

[OrionGirl]

Normally, or for now, during the cycle? Normally, I would go with about 15-20 gallons. To help the fish deal with the spike, do as large a change as is needed to get those values down. This may involve doing a change of 20%, testing, and doing another change of 20%. Keep in mind--water changes are nothing but good, so even large ones are okay. I would probably start with a change of 50%, and then do smaller ones if needed.

[Sregnar35]

Alright, so I'll go home and start stirring! The first water change i did was about 10-12 gallons, I'll up the ante this time, my nitrates were so high! I'll give you an update tomorrow morning, thanks for all the help oriongirl!!

[OrionGirl]

YW--hope the fish pull through!

[Sregnar35]

Well I did a 25 gallon water change last night, waited an hour and re-tested afterwards. I dropped my salinity from 1.023 to 1.021, ammonia is still 0, nitrites are around .25 I think and nitrates are around 200 or so? My test kit is terrible, you have to look through the test tube and pick which color it most closely represents, but the colors on the test card are shades of red and my test tube looks purple-ish? So it's either you measure by color intensity, in which case the reading I gave here are the best fit, or the purple means it's that far off the scale?? I don't know, I might call my lfs and have them test my water? But I think they use the same kit they sold me? At any rate my yelow tail damsel had a real foggy eye with a white chunk of something on it, now it's just foggy and he's eating a bit more. I recently noticed some red threads coming out of my sand, look smaller than human hair. Also noticed what looks like a mini feather duster popping in and out of a white tube on a piece of my lr. And finally noticed some brownish hairy algae starting to cover my powerheads, lr and base rock, as well as some more reddish spots in my live sand.

[Sregnar35]

Should I do another water change, or am I wasting my time until I can confirm my test kit is accurate, I've done 2 water chages since last week, and my tests keep coming up high? Also, any ideas on the names of critters I mentioned in my previous posts?

[OrionGirl]

I would keep doing the water changes, simply because of the potential harm from the high levels. However, since you are starting to see micro-inverts, the levels probably are not that high, as these inverts are typically very sensitive. One thing to check is the expiration date on the kit--they do have a limited shelf life and are known to be highly inaccurate much past the expiration date. Unfortunately, very few places check their kits and replace them when they are too old.

As for identifying critters--the hair like worms are probably young bristleworms. Excellent detrivores, and a healthy part of your clean up crew. The small feather dusters are just that--a member of the same family as thier larger cousins. Harmless filter feeders that build a stony tube to live in.

If you really want a shock, use a red filtered light to scope out your tank after the tank has been in the dark for half an hour or so! You will be shocked! :D

[Sregnar35]

Since I'm seeing healthy micro inverts, and I'm having an outbreak of brown algae and bubble algae, could I safely get some snails and hermits?:confused: My test kit does not have an expiration date, I will try and get a different one tonight.

[OrionGirl]

Most likely. I would get only a few, and be sure to acclimate them slowly. Stores tend to keep their salinities very different from most home tanks, and inverts react poorly to sudden changes. If they do well, adding a few more should be safe, with the same caution to acclimate them.

[Sregnar35]

Well Iwent out last night and got 3 turbo's and 3 blue legged hermits, acclimated them for 1 hour and 15 minutes. They are still cleaning this morning, they all moved pretty far over night. One of the snails is about half out of the water on the glass, but I think that's ok because they are like that in the lfs all the time. My lfs is going to test my water sometime this week, I just have to drive back out there. Thanks again Oriongirl, things seem to be going good now!

[OrionGirl]

Good to hear! Kudos to you for sticking it out and being patient!

[Sregnar35]

Couldn't have done it without everyone's help here! I'm hoping to scoop out my damsels sometime this week and get some different fish, some "keepers" for my setup.

[Gealcath]

Snails can store water in their shells so they dont die at low tide, so dont worry if they are out of the water for a little bit.

[Sregnar35]

That's cool, I didn't know that, thanks Gealcath.