Marine Velvet on Neon Gobey

OK, I am new at salt water and I fell victim to not quarantining in early December of 08. I'll spare you the details, but in a nutshell, I had a 12 gallon Nano tank with perfect parameters (all values zero), temp 80, Sg 1.024 and I had a Ocellaris clown and a bicolor Blenny in it when we decided to get 2 Neon Gobeys. All was fine- eveyone was eating and getting along just fine when 2 days into it we saw what we thought might be ich or possibly velvet. Within a day or 2 the Blenny and the Clown started going nuts, throwing themselves against the rocks and tearing themselves up-- very itchy.
Now after an extremely difficult task of catching all of them, we moved them into a 5 gallon hospital tank. Being unsure of using Copper on the Blenny and the Gobey (scaleless species), I went with the Malachite Green/ Formalin combo. Within a week everyone was dead except for 1 neon gobey. So, since he still looked bad and everyone was dead, we said- fine let's treat him with Copper (Cupramine) and see how it goes. We were very careful about the levels-orignally 0.25 for 3-4 days, but then once he seemed OK, we went up to 0.5 for at least a week.
Then I went to my LFS and spoke to the owner who had a fit about the Copper treatment and suggested a 50 minute dip with Formalin 3 and then keeping him in a hyposaline state for a while. We did this (1.015 SG) and he was ok, but not great- hiding and sort of eating. (We dipped him 2x in Formalin a week apart). We started to worry and put him back to SG 1.024 which perked him right up. Now, my question is this-- he acts normal now- eating like a pig for the last 2 weeks, but when you look at him, his skin doesn't look quite uniform. There are no protruding bumps, but it's almost like there's a haze on him.
I'm not sure whether we should just assume this is scar tissue or is this resistant disease? We have let the tank go fish fallow for the last 2 months and we'd really like to put him in and start with fish again, but boy are we nervous about this. We certainly learned our lesson about quarantine and really don't ever want to see this again!
Any thoughts, suggestions, would be great.
thanks, Laura

 

so I have a better understanding (I am slowwww today :} )

the goby is not in the main display now but in a QT tank? Your 12g nano has been fishless for 2 months? Did you dose copper in the display tank?

If the fish tank has been fishless for 2 months, I would say it is ok to go ahead and return him. I would do a couple gallon water change first and then go ahead and put hiim back in (make sure you drip him). 6-8 weeks should eradicate ick in a fishless system

If copper was not added to the display tank, I would maybe consider a small cleaner shrimp to put in the tank. Remember though, shrimps do not tolerate hyposalinity at all, so keep it at 1.024-27

I have found that ick treatments deplete the oxygen levels in the tank pretty fast. I treated my FOWLR tank once with Lifeguard and I had placed extra oumps and airstones in the tank...and the fish literally went to the airstones and stayed there with gills and mouths gasping..was horrilbe. It cured the ick but killed the fish from the oxygen removal

Keep your goby and shrimp in the tank without adding anything else for several weeks. Then I would not add no more then 1 fish at a time and remember that a 12g will not hold too many fish..dont overstock Adding new fish and overstocking are sure fire ways to cause stress and ick

Many people have different attitudes about ick...freshwater ick can wipe out a tank in a matter of days (or at least it could when I had FW many moons ago) Saltwater the rush to treat is not as dire! If the fish are eating then they should be ok...treating them is much more risky then not. I use garlic supplements to encourage new fish or sick fish to eat.

But your first outbreak might have been just simply from stress on the fish! After adding new fish, your old ones got overly stressed and that caused the ick! So, long story short I think you are good to go to add the goby back in...get a cleaner shrimp..helps eat ick off and/or just make them feel better!

 

Yes, I moved the Gobey and all the others to a QT tank. And heck no, I didn't treat the main tank with anything. Too many inverts. Oh, and since then we upgraded to a 20g tank- felt the 12 gallon was just too limiting, but we have limited space so we couldn't get a big old tank. Someday when we move, ahhhhh.... Anyway, our plan this week was to start doing water changes from the main tank into the QT tank and acclimate him that way. All the saltwater is made exactly the same way and we consistantly come up with a SG of 1.024. So, this little guy will be all by himself. A cleaner shrimp is a good idea. We'll get one this weekend. Our eventual goal is the Neon Gobey, a Royal gramma, a Jawfish and maybe 1 more fish. So, that would be 3-4 fish in a 20 gallon tank with LPS corals and polyps (frogspawn, candy cane, button polyps, mixed zoanthids a Pagoda, the clean-up crew, and 4 feather dusters). Oh, we have t5 lighting- 96Watts total and we stay religiously at 80-81 degrees. Sound OK? And yes I know the Candy cane and Frogspawn will get huge. Our LFS already told us we can frag them and they'll buy them as necessary.
thanks for the help Laura

 

sounds good! Good luck