disease outbreak...help!

200 gallon marine reef. about 7 years old. soft corals only. very low fish load. recently introduced a new powder brown. normally I fresh water dip follwed by QT for 10 days with methaline blue and melafix or some other antibiotic. this time I skipped the fresh water dip because I wasn't sure how delicate they are. about 10 days after and once he was really eating well (having tug of wars with the yellow tang over seaweed) I noticed all the fish lining up in front of the cleaner wrasse. They usually pay him no mind for the most part. I noticed some increase in itching. They were all eating well. Then the powder brown who had eaten well in the morning was dead when I got home from work. the only signs of disease are their actions and some cloudyness on the coral beauties eye. If they are in just the right light angle I can maybe see a film on the skin but its very difficult to see. I did a 1/3 water change and lowered the salinity. the ph, ammonia, etc. all check out fine. thought I might have flukes so I dosed on Monday with prazipro and then again on Saturday and started up my diatom filter. no carbon. no skimmer. on Thursday did a 50% water change, started carbon and skimmer. diatom still running and recharged. its been a week since and they are still itching and asking cleaner wrasse for help. he's itching too. all are still eating but seem stressed and cranky. thinking of getting a uv sterilizer. Any ideas?

 

Powder brown tangs are sensitive to begin with and probably had something going on that showed no signs right away. I've also seen PBT die from stress in less than 24 hours and stress alone can cause a disease to rear it's head like ich. I prefer letting the sickness run its course while making sure there diet is of the upmost quality. 7 years is a very established aquarium so I'm sure your fish are very healthy to begin with and that's good. I'd stop intervening with the amount of changes you've done so far. To much too fast will prove disastrous and counter productive. I'd get your salinity back to normal range slowly and avoid adding anything else in the tank. It's hard not to panick when our pets are sick but I've seen some of my fish survive quite a bit of sickness over the years with Brooklynella being the worst. Anytime I intervened with meds or FW dips the fish ultimately died. Try and keep your fish as calm as they can be without any added stress to the tank from adding stuff or making changes. Hopefully in a few days they will start looking better. Focus on giving them a variety for there diet with good fresh foods and Nori to help there immune systems take over. Good luck.

 

Thanks. that's about where I am. just let it ride. I feed mysis shrimp, squid, plankton, marine cuisine, and seaweed from the sushi guy. occasionally ill throw in a leaf of fresh spinach. o rotate the meats every day and feed some seaweed almost every day. not sure what nori is though. I'll look in to it.

 

Nori is seaweed. Sounds like your on the right track and I think with the health of the fish prior will help a lot. That's a good feeding routine, lots of variety. I got tired of buying 5 different foods so now I just use LRS reef blend and now the fish are spoiled and won't eat anything else. Lol. Keep us updated on how your fish are doing.

 

I forgot to mention mussel and chopped up cocktail shrimp. should I be looking for a specific sea weed called nori at the fish store? what I'm using comes form the sushi store. the cook sells me big packages of it. they seem to be itching a bit less the last 2 days. I hope its not just wishful thinking. I would like a powder blue but this brown was so fat and healthy looking I went with it. I assume blues are just as delicate? of course no fish until the itching has stopped for a month at least but its hard to look at 200 gallons with 4 fish in it. thanks for the advise.

 

As long as the seaweed isn't dyed then your good. I'd avoid feeding anything cooked to the fish, not sure if the shrimp are raw. Mussels are good. Make sure you rinse any raw food you buy since there normally sprayed with preservatives. There's a lot of really good frozen foods out there like LRS, Dr. G's, ect.... In time you'll be able to add another fish. The powder tangs are not easy at all.

 

dsc is so smart! great advice as usual. I hope your fish pull through

 

oh yes. raw uncooked shrimp only. I peel them and chop them up myself. the mussel is the cubed frozen stuff from the fish store. I just like to give them a variety. the itching is still waning but still there. in fact I only see the cleaner and red chorus wrasses still itching. no deaths since I started the thread. I'm watching my coral beauty asking my cleaner wrasse for service right now. until this outbreak I didn't think any of my fish knew what he was there for. he's calming down. less frantic and erratic. obviously my regular quarantine routine let me down this time. how long to you suggest a person qt their new fish? any suggestions on powder tangs? this one was fat and healthy looking, he stayed in the back for 3 days as the yellow tang bullied him a bit then he came out and 2 days later was having tug of wars over the seaweed with him. if he hadn't gotten sick he would have fit right in.

 

I would think the bully yellow tang is what set it off from an over abundance of stress. If you want to try again try purchasing a small juvenile about half the size of your yellow tang. That sometimes worked for us when we had an adult sohal tang. Feeding a variety is a very good practice. I wouldn't add another fish for at least a month after all signs of sickness is gone. I've never quarantined a fish since I started reefing. IMO it just causes more stress. I do a drip acclimation for about 20- 30 minutes depending on how different the stores water parameters are from mine. It's debatable with quarantining but I choose not too.

 

I just saw something that lit my curiosity and I wonder If I might have caused this myself. At the same time I purchased the tang I also purchased a cool looking dry rock. I washed it off and put it in. I was reading someone talking about curing the rock? I've never done this before. I have about 100 lbs of live rock but the dealers out hear really rape you on the price so I opt for dry at times. I will be adding more rock as time goes on but I sure don't want to have this happen every time I do.