My whole tank wiped out. How to start over?

Hello Everyone,

I think my tank has Ich or some kind of parasite in it. My Angle fish two lions and trigger have all died
Very sad to look at my tank empty. They all came down with white spots all over and my lions ended up with real cloudy eyes. I have been dealing with it for about 3 weeks.

I tried Ich treatment, did alot of water changes, and tried to soak the food in garlic, but nothing seemed to work.

My tank was a 180 gallon FOWLR with 75 gallon sump.

I am just wondering what the process is to start over?
Do I just leave the tank with the same water in it for several months before I add new fish?

Do I do any water changes?

Should I treat my tank with anything?

After 3 months or so, will I have to re-cycle my tank again or just slowly add fish?

Also, I have noticed that there are some aiptasia starting to come back. Will these die off with no fish or food being added to the tank over the next few months?

Thanks for your help or advise you can give. I just want to make sure I do not go through this again.

 

For the ich... leave it sit fishless for 12 weeks. After that point, the ich will have completed its life cycle and without its obligate host, will have died. You should practice QT to help prevent it from coming back. Aiptasia should do alright without food so you'll have to do other measures to take care of that.

 

I would leave the tank fishless for at least 12 weeks. You will need to continue ghost feeding the tank small ammounts of food to keep the bacteria alive or you will have to recycle the tank. I would take the opportunity to remove the aptasia either by topical treatments or removing the affected rock/rocks and supergluing the aptasia.

Heres some good links to prevent it reappearing.
http://www.3reef.com/forums/general-reef-topics/minimum-tank-sizes-selection-animals-137158.html
http://www.3reef.com/forums/new-hob...general-rules-successful-aquarium-126326.html

 

Sorry to hear about your loss! Like they said, don't add fish until the parasite is able to run it's life cycle. Most ICH treatments contain copper, I hope you aren't planning on ever having inverts/snails in this tank.

 

None of the "reef safe" ich treatments do from what I know. They are also ineffective, again as far as I know.

Regardless, with triggers, I doubt you could keep snails or many inverts anyways!

 

There are good treatments for cypto that don't contain copper. Right now, the top of our list is quinine sulfate (hobbyist trade name: Crypto Pro). Folks have also had good results with chloroquine phosphate (used for malaria). However, since your tank is empty, leave it fallow as mentioned.

Did the crypto show up after a new addition and, if so, did you QT? You didn't mention whether this was the case or not.

Finally, I'm not sure which angelfish and tiggerfish you kept, but non-planktonic-feeding triggerfish and large species angels generally don't do well with lionfishes, as they tend to harass them by nipping at them. If there was aggression in the tank, that alone can cause a crypto outbreak as stressed fish get sick easily.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Why would I never be able to add inverts or snails to my tank?

So I sounds like the plan will be:
I will let it set over the summer without fish, no water changes, just keep the tank topped off.

How often do you ghost feed, what kind of food, and how much do you recommend?

I will use the rest of my aiptasia x to try and get rid of the aiptasia.
I do have some aiptasia in the bottom of my overflows (reef ready tank) any idea how to get rid of them, since I can not reach down there?

No, I do not have a QT tank. I definately need to look into seting one up soon.

I had a niger trigger, and the emperor angel (who was added last). They did nip at each other once in awhile. I now know to never put them together again.

 

Thanks for the links. I will read them tonight when I get home!

 

The Emperor really needs a much bigger tank than 180 gallons. It will out grow that size of tank and then you will have problems re-homing the fish to someone with a large tank.

Moved to ------ General Reef Topics.

 

Here are a couple more articles for you to check out:

Quarantine! It's a Life Sentence, not a Death Sentence

Understanding & Treating Cryptocaryon irritans a.k.a. Ich

The ich article has some really cool pix in it.