ich and red slime over the weekend!!!

K

kittyhazelton

Gambusia
MFK Member
Jan 25, 2007
693
0
16
Upper Valley VT/NH
Ok, my tank has been running FINE since I had the 110gallon setup last year, to converting everything over to the 125 a few months ago.
Over this weekend though, I've had an outbreak of red slime and ich.
The only recent fault to the tank, was that a fish had been sucked into the intake of a powerhead and I didn't notice it until the powerhead stopped working (that was sooo gross cleaning out)
Anyhoo, it's a FO setup. The only inverts in it are a spiney lobster, and a hermit crab.
inhabitants are 2 convict gobies (used to be 3) 1 snowflake morray, 1 harlequin tusk, 1 lyretail wrass, and 1 volitan lionfish.
Tank is a 125.
Params are:
NA: about 35
NI: 0
PH: 8.2
None of these seem off of what is the norm for my tank.
I do not want to lose any fish to this! What is the quickest and safest way to treat them? I know that a lot of ich treatments are harmful to invertabrates, but I would rather save the fish than the crabs if it meant that. I don't ever plan on adding any corals to the tank either.
I'll also add, that the nitrates and phosphates from my tap water have always been really high, but this hasn't normally been a problem, and from what I can tell it hasn't gotten any worse lately really.
 
K

kittyhazelton

Gambusia
MFK Member
Jan 25, 2007
693
0
16
Upper Valley VT/NH
The gobies are the ones that show the most infection. My guess is they had it first, but I couldn't tell because they hide a lot (and the goby puree probably didn't help to keep it isolated to just them)
The lyretail shows a little bit on his body, and the HT is not happy looking at all, he's got some on his fins and body. Lionfish and moray seem unnaffected so far (don't know if eels can get it or not though.)

What is the best way to treat this?
 
S

sweeTang21

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 10, 2007
2,009
0
0
Wisconsin
i would say hypo treatment should work. Im not sure if the lobster or urchin can handle the lower salinity levels however. Doing this slowly over a period of a week, should go from whatever your at now to about 1.009 at the lowest. This makes it very difficult for the parasite to live.

This gives you an idea of what to shoot for and how exactly it works. Good luck and keep us posted.

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/hyposalinity.html


as for the cyano, the high nitrate and phosphate is probably the cause. Usually going to a more perified water will do the trick in removing these sediments. Not my method usually but you can try Nitrazorb and phos-zorb. As in the title, they absorb the nutrients right away.

Do you have a sump on the tank?? if so try adding a refugium. These work great in reducing the amount of nitrate and phosphate in the tank. just a thought
 
L

lizardfishman

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Aug 15, 2005
1,150
2
38
Oregon
same thing happened to my tank. im just lettin it run w/o fish for at least 6-8 weeks to make sure the parasites are gone and i put in some phosphate absorbing stuff. idk y the tank got the cyano. i use the same water and wat not on my other tank and that ones never had it. o well it sucks but w/e. would hypo kill off the LR? i might try it if it isnt too risky for the LR. i dont have much coraline algae anyways but the bacteria is wat im worried about.
 
S

sweeTang21

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 10, 2007
2,009
0
0
Wisconsin
if it were me i would remove the fish and put them in a decent sized QT for a month or so and let the tank sit empty as you said. I dont believe it will hurt the LR but i could be wrong. I have never had any illness in my DT, ive always treated it in the QT, so never had to worry bout hurting LR or anything.
 
K

kittyhazelton

Gambusia
MFK Member
Jan 25, 2007
693
0
16
Upper Valley VT/NH
Well, it started to look like everything was starting to turn around. The red slime was starting to go away, the ich was starting to dissapear from my fish.
I did a water change, like I normally do. Keeping up with the ich and red slime treatment which appeared to be working. I don't know if they recently treated our water (town water) or what happened, but overnight the red slime came back 3 fold. and my Harlequin tusk, lionfish, and remaining gobies all perished.
I'm really upset about this. I stripped the tank down, moved the last 2 fish (snowflake moray eel, and lyretail wrasse) to my empty 75gal, since it's a smaller tank and easier to treat. They seem to be recovering.
I'm just trying to figure out what went wrong. I had even added more circulation and filtration recently to keep up with the bioload. The PH is a little off, but nothing really far beyond what has been "normal" for this tank.
We recently have had a lot of snowmelt and such in this area, including all the salt and gunk on the road getting washed into the waterways, so I'm wondering if that may have had anything to do with it. Like particulates and chemicals that we don't normally test for being in the water.
 
Reefscape

Reefscape

All Gr8KarmaSF's fault....
MFK Member
Apr 2, 2007
1,800
4
36
50
Staffordshire UK
lizardfishman;1572330; said:
same thing happened to my tank. im just lettin it run w/o fish for at least 6-8 weeks to make sure the parasites are gone and i put in some phosphate absorbing stuff. idk y the tank got the cyano. i use the same water and wat not on my other tank and that ones never had it. o well it sucks but w/e. would hypo kill off the LR? i might try it if it isnt too risky for the LR. i dont have much coraline algae anyways but the bacteria is wat im worried about.
Click to expand...
Live rock can survive a treatment of hypo salinity, the only inhabitants which should not put through this is coral and invert...they are far too sensative...

sweeTang21;1573064; said:
if it were me i would remove the fish and put them in a decent sized QT for a month or so and let the tank sit empty as you said. I dont believe it will hurt the LR but i could be wrong. I have never had any illness in my DT, ive always treated it in the QT, so never had to worry bout hurting LR or anything.
Click to expand...
Thats the right course of action to adopt...the live rock will be fine..

kittyhazelton;1604733; said:
Well, it started to look like everything was starting to turn around. The red slime was starting to go away, the ich was starting to dissapear from my fish.
I did a water change, like I normally do. Keeping up with the ich and red slime treatment which appeared to be working. I don't know if they recently treated our water (town water) or what happened, but overnight the red slime came back 3 fold. and my Harlequin tusk, lionfish, and remaining gobies all perished.
I'm really upset about this. I stripped the tank down, moved the last 2 fish (snowflake moray eel, and lyretail wrasse) to my empty 75gal, since it's a smaller tank and easier to treat. They seem to be recovering.
I'm just trying to figure out what went wrong. I had even added more circulation and filtration recently to keep up with the bioload. The PH is a little off, but nothing really far beyond what has been "normal" for this tank.
We recently have had a lot of snowmelt and such in this area, including all the salt and gunk on the road getting washed into the waterways, so I'm wondering if that may have had anything to do with it. Like particulates and chemicals that we don't normally test for being in the water.
Click to expand...

Sorry you've lost some of the inhabitants....shame...the info has been given above on how to treat the remaining fish etc and allow the display tank to go fallow...

If you use a natural water supply, then it could easily be something in a change to that which caused the cyano outbreak..Out of interest, what reading was the phosphate showing as???
 
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