Please help!! Need advice...

[jck3120]

Hi, I am having a problem with my newly added fish getting ick and not surviving. I recently set up a 168 gallon tank, and transferred the contents from my 55 reef into it. The fish that were established in my 55 before transferring them all survived, however I recently purchased a pair of blue throat triggers and they seemed to be doing great for the first few days, however I could not get them to eat. After about a week they both had quite a bad case of ick and both did not survive. I also purchased a butterfly and a yellow tang a while back that were in my 55 and they did the exact same thing. Never could get them to eat, got ick pretty bad, and they slowly perished. Now I have had an angel also who got a case of ick shortly after I purchased him, and he continued to eat very well and pulled through just fine. I just wish I knew what I was doing wrong both for the sake of the fish and because I feel like I'm just throwing money down the drain. Now I have only had they 168 set up about a month now, and I know I shouldnt have purchased new fish for it so soon, but I was excited and couldnt resist. My mistake, I know. But I since I transferred all the live rock and sand from my old tank I was told that there would be no cycling process to go through. May my tank be going through a mini-cycle and could that be the reason for my problems? My water parameters all check out fine, and my corals and anemones are growing like weeds so I don't think water quality is the issue. So that leads me to believe that it is an acclimation issue or something that I am doing wrong. I do not have a quarantine tank set up so therefore I do not quarantine the fish like I know I should. However, I do use the drip method over about an hour to acclimate them before realeasing them into the display tank. I've heard of people talking about just dropping them in the tank immediately and am wondering about trying that next time because obviously whatever I am doing isn't working. I think if I could have gotten these fish to eat they would have been fine. I've tried flakes/pellets, frozen krill, mysis, brine, live ghost shrimp, formula one, just about everything and nothing seems to entice them. I really would appreciate any help with this!! Feel free to criticize! This is just really starting to frustrate me. Thanks!

Oh yea, here is a pic of my tank if you were curious.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c89/jck3120/100_4763.jpg

[Max]

Hello and welcome to ac. I'm sorry for your losses but, you need to tell us a bit more. What are your params ? How much live rock do you have in there? If it's only the rock from your 55 you pretty much have a 55 with more water. Please, help us help you and you'll get much better answers.
Max

[Sonicblast12]

I would suggest soaking the food in garlic. Garlic can entice fish to eat, and also can help prevent diseases. I don't know how it works, but it has worked for me.

I transferred everything from my 29 to a 75, and I had a mini cycle despite all of the rock and sand being moved over. I am still getting nitrite readings which is stressing me out, but I'm the only one. All of the fish and inverts seem to be fine.

Nice pictures!

[jck3120]

Thanks everyone for the input. I only have about 90lbs of LR in the tank as I dont want to take up too much surface area for my banded cat shark. I think my problem might be that I purchase the fish the same day the LFS gets a shipment in. I do this because otherwise all the good ones are picked over within a day or so. I should see if I can put a deposit down and wait a week or two to take them home. I usually make sure they eat in the store before purchasing them, however this last batch I did not, altho the LFS claimed that they did. I think I am going to try Preuss's in Lansing for my next attempt. I've heard lots of good things about them. But I will wait at least a month before adding anything new. Hopefully by then I will have my RO/DI filter too, I'm getting sick of GHA!

[Tommy Gun]

Let me prefice all of what I am going to say with stating that I am also pretty new to the SW side of this hobby but I am pretty experienced with FW and like to think that I have done an above average amount of research into both types of water.

From what I have learned, Ich is something that is introduced into a tank and is not always present like at least I was told when I first started out in the hobby. I think this myth may be supported by stores that want us to buy new fish even if we do not have a good way to quarenteen them. In my experience and opinion, even a small 10 gallon q-tank is so much worth the cost and can at least slow down how fast you are throwing money down the drain.

That being said, I think that during the acclimation process, SW fish get pretty stressed out and become good hosts for Ich because of this. That is especially true when the fish you are buying have just been on a long journey from the distributors to your LFS and then right away plucked from a tank and taken to your house. So, you need to find a way to slow down the Ich in your tank and from everything I have read about them, UV sterilizers may be the way to go in your situation. I know that when I wanted to bring a Regal Tang (Dori) home, I was actually turned down twice by very good LFS who told me to get a UV first since they are so good at getting Ich. My puffer was the same way and somehow I never had an issue, but I was ready to do a FW dip at all times.

I hope this helps or at least gains some more attention from others who have more experience with this sort of thing. I also think that RO/DI water will benifit your tank quite a bit with water quality and your control over the trace element present in your tank.