DEVASTATING MORNING

[chevyguy86]

I bought a brown powder tang recently brought it home, and within 2 days noticed that it was diseased, it died 3 days later, but this morning both of my clowns where dead, all I have left is a algea blenney and a cleaner shrimp.....what happened, and how do I clean the tank now...the tang was covered in white spots before it died.

[Bubbles2112]

Wow. :( That is a crappy morning. I am sorry that your fish died. I am not a marine person but are the white spots ich? Someone will chime in with some help for you soon, I am sure.

[lookit]

I'm so sorry for your lousy morning and loss of fish. I, too, am not a marine hobbyist, but I wanted let you know that us freshies care too.

[greech]

Very sorry to hear about your fish. Your Tang either introduded ich into your system or it was already there and your clowns were hardy enough in the past to keep the parasite at bay. The only way to prevent something like this is to quarantine your fish before you add them to your display tank (DT). A lot of us are guilty of not quarantining and some argue that the quarantine process itself is highly stressful for our fish.

Going forward there are a few alternatives for treating your tank.

1. Remove your remaining fish and place it in a quarantine tank (QT). If the blenny is hsowing no signs of ich then you cold just observe it until your DT clears up but I think most would suggest treatment with copper medication as a preventative measure. This should also give you a clean start and piece of mind that the blenny is parasite free. DO NOT add copper meds to your main tank!!! You can leave you shrimp and corals in the tank as the parasite will not affect them. Leave your DT fishless for about 6-weeks (the amount of time most agree will ensure the parasite has died off since there are no fish present to host). The main challenge here is to keep your QT clean. You don't want your QT to contain anything other than a few pieces of PVC pipe to shelter the fish (no sand, rock, etc). Keep up on your water changes on both tanks and dose the copper meds to the DT accordingly. You may also want to research hyposalinity treatments and freshwater dips as an alternative or in addition to the copper meds. If its is showing no signs of ich then a FW dip and a QT may just do the trick.

2. If you don't want to go through the QT process then I would recommend that you do everything you can to promote a healthy environment in your DT. Use a garlic supplement (you can also use fresh garllic) to soak you food and feed you tank well. You want to avoid any stress on the fish which will make it more suseptible to infection. Keep an eye on your blenny and see if the parasite shows up. Even if you don't see any ich that doesn't men it isn't there but it can be kept at bay (or possibly dies off) if your fish are healythy enough to withstand any infection.

Some fish are more prone to ich and Tangs are up at the top of the list. Out of curiosity, what size tank was the tang in? They should not be in small tanks and need a lot of room (6 feet minimum IMO) to swim. They can become stressed and suseptible to ich when they are cramped. Clwons on the other hand are fairly resilient fish and I am suprised they died especially so soon. Sgain, sorry to hear of your loss. I hope this helps you get things figured out.

[fsn77]

How long between when the powder brown died and when your clowns died?
Did you notice an ammonia spike when the powder brown died?
Any other changes to the tank recently?
Any unusual swings in water parameters?

It does sound like the tang contracted what's commonly called marine ich, possibly from the stress of the move (tangs in general contract it quite easily compared to many other marine fish).

As for what happened to the clowns, more information about the tank and the timeline of everything is needed. They could have also suffered from marine ich, but clowns are usually more hardy, IME.

If the fish had marine ich, cleaning the tank can be done naturally just by removing all of the fish (putting them in QT) and leaving your tank to run fishless for a minimum of 6 weeks. If you have no corals or other invertebrates (and plan to not have any in the future), you could look into medicating the tank.