Purple Firefish in QT, now an ammonia spike (despite using a seeded filter!)

G'day,

I bought my first fish from my LFS yesterday (saturday @ 10am). He's a little purple firefish no more than 4cm long. I acclimated him slowly to my QT, over the course of an hour, and there were no problems. The little guy was happily chowing down on some freeze-dried cyclopeeze 2 hours afterwards. The QT is a 10 gallon tank with an Eheim Jager 50w heater, Hagen Elite Hush 10 sponge filter that I had seeding in my DT for a week and a half (the DT has been up and running smoothly for more than 3 months now - a 35 gallon with ~45lbs of LR.

Anyway, today (sunday @ 5pm) I came back home to test both the QT and DT, and noticed that the firefish was breathing rapidly and was clearly distressed. The water parameters for the QT are below, but the problem is obviously the ammonia spike to 0.5 in a little over a day.

pH:8.2
SG: 1.025
Ammonia: 0.5ppm
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0

I immediately did a 30% water change with water from the DT, and the firefish seems to be doing a little better. However, it looks pretty obvious that my sponge filter failed to seed with enough beneficial bacteria from my DT to work in QT. Needless to say, I'm pretty worried about this.

I haven't dosed any meds yet, as the firefish has been otherwise fat and healthy. He was at the LFS for at least 1 week before I bought him, and has readily accepted foods from me. The question is, do I try to push on with quarantine, or should I just abort it altogether and place him into the stable environment of my DT (and any bugs he may be carrying with him)

Any help/thoughts would be greatly appreciated. This guy is my first saltwater fish, and I had thought that I'd followed every step of setting up a proper QT to the letter.

 

if there are no other fish in the tank, the DT i mean just put him in there. if it is water quality related it will help, and if it disease it wont really matter if it dies in ur DT as most disease are fish related and need a host. ie if the fish dies the parasite will die soon after.

 

If your DT is fully cycled, then your sponge isn't probably not enough. If you have EXTRA liverocks, I will put some in QT tanke. These rocks need to be washed out well after you use them in QT, for reuse in DT.

This is how I setup for QT/Hospital tank (10gal):

I pull 5gal from DT tank and put my extra LR in the QT tank.
I add 5 gal of new water into my DT tank afterward.
Since my DT water parm are good, I don't check the parm in QT.
The next day, I pull out like 3 gal of water from QT to toss it away.
Then I pull out like 3 gal of water from DT into QT.
I replace the 3 gal of water in DT w/ new salt water.
So I just repeat this for daily, and yes a lot of work, but it worked for me.
If you have LR and sponge, that might let you keep the water for a while, but you need to keep checking. I didn't use any filter, just air stone.

And don't overfeed your fish. Just feed enough so your firefish finsh everything that you put in.

 

Well, thankyou both for the quick replies. I'm afraid I don't have any LR to spare on me, so that option is out. But thanks for the idea, Mudguard2005 - it might come in handy down the line.

Since it's the long weekend over here, there aren't any LFS's to try to pick up a pre-seeded sponge filter from, and the ammonia was rising too quickly to manage. My 30% water change knocked down the ammonia from ~0.5 to 0.3ppm, and those levels were already stressing out the little guy. With the lack of options available to me, all I could really do was move him out to the DT and just hope for the best.

A risky move, I know, but hopefully he'll bounce back quickly...

... and maybe, just maybe, everything will work out fine.

 

I have sucessfully used the Kordon product Amquel to bring down Amonia and Nitrite levels. One time I had to recycle a tank full of big fish and this product saved them all.

Just something that has worked for me...


Good Luck

 

This is clearly the best solution. You can also use Prime by Seachem or numerous other things that lock up Ammonia and Nitrite.

 

Update

Well, it's roughly 2 days since the ammonia spike in quarantine, but the damage has already been done.

The firefish has been breathing heavily ever since I found him, and his appetite is minimal. It's exactly what you'd expect with ammonia poisoning, but I'm not too sure whether there's any real chance for a full recovery. I have read that, at the very best, he'll have a reduced lifespan. But I also read somewhere (forget where, sorry) that in minor cases the fish can recover in 3-5 days. Does anyone have any experiences with this?

Oh, and I've nicknamed the purple firefish "Phoenix". If he pulls through, then it'll be quite a fitting name for the little guy.

 

I had an anemone die in my tank, wiping out other fish, the cycle, everything. I had a few fish that made it through, and my ammonia levels at that time were MUCH higher than .5,ppm. 3 of the fish were very near death, all three have made full recoveries.

 

Update #2

Well, it's now been 5 days since I pulled him out of quarantine. There's still some rapid breathing, albeit nothing like what it was, and I have yet to see my firefish eat anything I've fed him yet. I've tried freeze-dried cyclopeeze, NLS pellets and flakes, as well as vitamin enhanced brine shrimp and blood worms (both frozen variety, thawed and cleaned before feeding) and nothing seems to entice him any more. I'll be making a trip tomorrow to see if I can find some live feeder shrimp to try.

Does anyone know how long the loss of appetite associated with ammonia poisoning typically takes to pass? I expect it to be different from fish to fish, but it's getting very concerning at this point, and admittedly I'm now starting to lose hope.

Thanks again all for your responses. They've been very helpful.

 

Well I had a Flame Hawk breathing heavy for a week, out in QT for 8 weeks, then back to main. It took 4 - 7 days before getting back to normal breathing. But always was eating.

I dont think it will be good if it doesnt eat soon. I would try maybe some Brine Shrimp or something to intice.

Also, Did you add or have good O2 in the water ? surface movement and or air pump ?


\Cheers