Sorry for your loss.
It looks to me like the new fish were carrying 'something'. You don't mention any form of quarantine for these new 'infected' fish. It looks pretty obvious what's happened from where i'm sitting.
Moving forward there may be a couple of things you can take from this. Think about quarantining new fish, and i'd look at your water change schedule too. 50% every fortnight is a little wimpy, your nitrate levels are proof of that.
I wish you luck in re-setting up.
Thx man. I didn't quarantine them. I never have in the past and have never had any problems. Clearly I realize now that I've experienced something like this how vital it can be moving forward. ****ty lesson. My next project will be a quarantine tank for the garage. My garage is fully enclosed and airconditioned. I have some questions about the quarantine tank but I guess those can wait for another thread. Well... My question is simply how you would keep it cycled with nothing in it if it's only being used for quarantining, and if the answer is keeping something minor in there aren't you then potentially threatening said stock whenever you use it for new fish quarantining?
So the WC... The only options were every week, every 2 weeks etc. Normally I do do weekly, but occasionally I'm so busy I skip a week and didn't want to say I do it every week when technically sometimes I miss a week so I put every other. However I normally do do weekly. Which is why I'm confused as to how tf my nitrates were so high even after a wc 3 days prior. Honestly I thought I had everything under control and don't feel like a noob at what I'm doing but maybe felt like I knew more than I did and need some help with the whole setup. I feel like my w/d isn't even set up optimally. I'm going to take this opportunity to re-due the entire system like correctly plumbing the overflow pipe stand and such. I'll definitely be leaning on the people here for all that.
Didn’t get the notification. Sorry for the late reply. Its velvet like
BIG-G
said. Don’t want to beat a dead horse but as the others of said about quarantining and good water quality. Hang in there fellow Floridian!
Ya... I'm gonna be setting up a quarantine tank in the garage. Nothing is being added to my existing setups without quarantining after this. I'm gonna have to read up on proper quarantining times/procedures etc. I mean I thought my water quality was pretty good till I tested it. Like I mentioned before I almost always do weekly, sometimes miss a week. I'm unsure why my nitrates were so high. I feel like something is going on w/ the w/d sump and how I have it set.
Thanks man. I will say after reading up more on velvet fish disease, I feel like I did the right thing euthanizing Iago. That **** is nasty from what I've read, and I don't think he would have ever been at 100% even if he survived threw that.
mine has a bacteria bloom i hope its ok
Hope that all works out for you.
Marine velvet disease, gotta treat with cupramine (copper based) without carbon and lights off for 14-15 days. A lot deadlier and faster acting than ich and mostly confused. Basically if you can count the spots it’s ich and if you can’t it’s velvet. Gotta QT in a small tank, even if it’s with other fish you already have, treating a main display tank is too inefficient. The fish could’ve been “healthy” when first shipped but the stress brings out the disease that may have otherwise stayed dormant.
Cupramine is in the mail. Will be here tomorrow. That counting thing makes sense. I've never even had experience with ICH cause I've never really had any issues like this in past tanks. See, it's funny you say that because my initial thought was "I can't take a sick fish and bring it to another tank and just spread whatever this is to a whole nother system." Yes, the seller claimed the rest were fine and this probably happened in shipping like you suggest. My issue with that is I payed this seller for overnight and he says it sat in limbo being shipped for 2 days and that was probably the cause. Which at the point I pay you for the method of shipping you say needs to be used, your responsible for the shipping imo. If something happens, I feel like you're responsible for that in that scenario. But I guess that really doesn't matter at this point.
Sorry you lost your fish especially that oscar man. It sucks, I'm sure most of us have bought new fish and not quarantined properly, most of the time you'll be OK but that one time your not you learn the hard way.
I agree this looks more like velvet than ich to me, (freshwater variety of course, not marine which are two different species of similar parasite).
As for next moves,
Potato Patatto
is correct I would black the tank out (velvet feeds partially on light) remove carbon from filter and dose the tank with a coppersafe etc. And would give it a few weeks to make sure your cat is fully healed before trying to restock.
Ya, learned the hard way indeed... I will forever QT after this, I assure you of that. So the fact that light makes this thing so much worse? Man I have a pretty strong light in the main display, and a fricken grow light on the sump on as well. So I'm sure that was making this that much worse.... I thought the idea of live plants in the sump sounded cool and the people I talked to made it sound so easy "just throw these in there they will grow on the surface." So I have water sprite, duckweed, and a few moss balls in there. The sprite is growing on the surface but it still turns brownish yet has lots of new roots, the duckweed is well... duck weed, and the moss balls just sit on the bottom sorta brownish. The idea was "I'll help with nitrates even more hell ya," but I feel like maybe these plants are adding to the bioload and in fact not helping w/ nitrates? maybe creating waste? Goes without saying all the lights are out now. I have that Cupramine in the mail. Should I just ditch the grow light and throw these plants away you think?
"
Treatment
If the bottle has a dropper cap, use 20 drops (1 mL) per 40 L (10.5 US gallons) the first day, wait 48 hours, then repeat. On non-dropper caps, each inner ring is 1 mL. In freshwater use half dose. Final copper concentration is 0.5 mg/L (0.25 mg/L in freshwater). Leave at this concentration for 14 days. Do not redose without testing (
MultiTest™: Copper). If tank has ever been treated with an ionic copper (e.g. copper chloride, sulfate or citrate), test copper level after initial dosing. Although most fish tolerate Cupramine™ to 0.8 mg/L, it is not advisable to exceed 0.6 mg/L copper."
So each cap has 5 threads if it's like a prime cap right? So if I'm reading this right, 1 thread per 20 gallons on freshwater (since half dose on fresh) so a cap with 5 threads would treat 100 gallons, so I'll be using 3 caps to treat 300 (incorporating sump volume and rounding up), does that sound right?....
