could have a problem...

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cherubael

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 7, 2008
67
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australia
I think i could have a bit of a problem with my tank, came in this morning to see it and the dwarf lion fish had died. I rang the LFS and talk to someone there and did all the water tests (they were normal), the guy said that considering the dwarf lion had been attacked before we got him it had probably picked something up (bacterial infection maybe) and that there wasnt anything we could have done about it.

Now im looking at my tank and my powder black tang has lost alot of his black colouring (gone pale basically) and is swimming around like crazy occasionally scratching itself on rocks. When i fed it this morning it took pellets and mysis shrimp and was also nibbling on some prawn that the eel didnt eat.
so what do you guys think?
thanks in advance
 
The scratching or 'flashing' is usually a symptom of parasites. It is possible that they could have both a bacterial infection and parasites. Did the lion flash also?
 
ok found out whats happened, after talking to my LFS on the phone and going and seeing them i seem to have parasites in the tank, i have started a copper treatment of the tank and in about 24hrs the tang should be back to normal. Now my GF (who sadly doesnt know anything about salt water parasites) said she thought the lion fishes eyes were cloudy last night (i didnt notice anything) so we now think the dwarf lion had parasites before we got him and he introduced them into our tank, and the tangs being scaless fish contracted them first. Either way we have one dead fish and hopefully a lot of very dead parasites due to the copper treatment.

Still losing your first fish so soon (and such a cool fish) sucks hard, very hard.
 
Sucks to hear... but why are you medicating your show tank with copper?
You should have removed the fish and started medication in a separate tank. Copper will kill off more than parasites, it will kill off beneficial bacteria as well. Hope you don't have any inverts in your tank. Inverts like snails are copper intolerant.
 
i dont have any inverts in the tank other than hitchhikers which i dont mind seeing gone, also i dont have another tank big enough to hold a: volitane lion, 2ft snowflake, wolf eel, black tang, marroon clown and a unicorn tang. so yeah and i need to kill anything that is living in the substrate as well.

i know its not perfect but its all i can do atm.
 
How long did you have the Lion Fish for?
Sounds like not for long but just wanted to make sure.

Do you usually do a quarantine trial period before introducing a new fish?
 
5 days...
i dont have a qt tank, i have a tank i could use but at the moment it has a mantis shrimp in it and some mollies im breeding as feeders so no luck there.
Around here the fish stores qt the fish before they sell them and they should have picked up on this sort of thing but i would assume that after the lion was attacked they sorta didnt care about it other than selling it to some poor bugger who happened to be me.
All i can say is that im not buying from them ever again, i think i will stick to the people i know and trust not to sell me bad live stock.

btw in terms of the copper damaging the good bacteria in the tank, should i be worried about amonia and ph spikes?
 
any time a fish makes a transfer from one tank to another, its important to do a QT period of at minimum 3 weeks. recommended time is 5 weeks. Get the fish feeding and do any treatments that you want before introduction to the show tank.

Only down side now, to using copper on the show tank is, you will more then likey not be able to keep many corals or inverts. Copper will leach from the tank constantly. There is a remedy to the issue. You will have to google it, cuz i dont remember anymore what the process is.
 
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