235 Gallons and One Bullet In The Chamber
Category: Fish Disease & Quarantine, Reef Enthusiast, Reef Junkie, Tank Dabbler, Tank Profiles
Tagged as: dying fish, fish disease, fish quarantine, flowchart, marine velvet
Tagged as: dying fish, fish disease, fish quarantine, flowchart, marine velvet
The second update on my new 235g tank including how my Russian Roulette luck is holding out
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Hello Mark good to hear from you again. I just listened to your last article it literally scared the Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh out of me . I hope I never have that problem but it’s good to know what to look for if something strange happens in the tank to the fish. thanks for the tip. Okay number 2 did you ever put together the video that we did in LA I have not seen it I hope it’s coming soon it should be a good one. Have a great day Phil
Wow! Ground zero again after 2 months…. At least a couple of the fish survived. Bet you will run a quarantine tank after this though as it does give you a good buffer if you wait the 30+ days. Looking forward to the new setup (go for the trigger man, they have awesome personalities). I turned one of my old 14G nano’s into a quarantine tank and consider it a must have when ANYTHING comes home.
– You will love that new sump! Good luck!
Great advice Mark! I just had the same problem and had to buy a quarantine tank as well. I was lucky and only got ich. Only my sailfin and naso tang survived.
This hoppy just make you pay more of your money and time for not being patient and careful in every step.
I hope that you will end up with a beutiful reef tank and I’m there to listen to every advise from you. Good luck Nark.
awesome sump where did you order it from I cannot find it at aqua cave or brs even though there are listed as providers of this sump? how many gallons is the new sump and the specs?
That blows Mark. Your my hero. I did everything in my tank modled after what ive seen in your shows. Dry rock, Dr Tims, Kalk ….you name it. Guess these things can happen to anyone…….by the way how did you get coraline going so fast? My dry rock looks nothing like yours and ive been up for 5 months
Mark, really sorry to hear about your lost..I know what it is to have a kill off…my kill off I think I did all by myself…I can’t blame anything else…the tide will turn and you will be back to the great tank that you had before…
And I thought that Dinoflagellates are the worst thing that can happen to your tank :/
Good luck with your restarted tank Mark.
Keep posting your videos as thousands from around the world learn from them!
Did I mention Dinoflagellates?
How about a guide “How to fight Dinos”? That plague forced many do restart their tanks as well.
Good luck!
You’re Lucky!! You Tank was just 2 months old!!
Have you considered a marine betta? Mine has become very social during the day and it’s a fish that would take advantage of your caves and ledges.
Mark, i heard youve been looking a way to keep semi-reef friendly fish not on the edge. For the past while i have been working with my lfs to get no reef friendly fish, to become reef friendly, we achieved this task, but with great work and social declamation of the fish. We changed their diet for a period of 2-3 months , our species was a queen trigger, the diet consisted of sheet algae, algae discs, and rock hard algae powder, why because if it was rock hard, it would imitate the fish having a real coral to chomp on, for that period of 1 week we followed the diet with the disc algae and any hard green coral you can find for 3 weeks , and then slowly progress them to the sheet algae. Finally give them the test of multi color corals and invertabrets ( try nothing green for the test).
Mark I am sorry that this happen to you.This may help, somebody told me to do a mix with garlic(natural antibiotic),baby green spinach, (full of iron),broccoli,alga,and snow marine. It suppose to keep your tank free of problems,and my coral are doing great including the sponge. Cheeked out.
good luck my friend.
Mark, that stinks…
The fish were from you old tank right?
I have been begging to see your new tank but not his way, please keep us posted via video.
wondering what happened to your coral?
Okay, until 45 seconds in…. you scared the sh*t out of me!!
Eric, he buys the rock like that! I can’t remember what it’s called though :\
Mark, what happened to your corals especially the SPS ones that you bought from Vivid?
Sad to hear about the fish loss and not QTing is not a smart practice in reefkeeping. Really hoped/thought you knew better than that but if you feel like rolling the dice and wasting your money, that’s your decision! Hope you pick up a good QT regimen now and others have learnt that floating a bag like shown in an earlier episode is NOT a good practice.
For others interested in QT methods I’d recommend a strict regimen. Mine includes tank transfer method, three rounds of prazipro, 2-4 weeks of cupramine in .4-.5 range, and then closely observe fish for a week before moving to your system. Much safer than throwing a diseased fish in “hoping” that things go well.
Hey, Mark Hope you make a video on quarantine fish, and give us a better understanding, because I did it and had no luck in doing it.
Thats sucks!!! But thanks for updating us on the situation. Love the frezh water joke
man that sucks , i had my very first velvet out break which i nicknamed The Apocalypse a few months back all my fish died and i had no clue why, very mad because i had just gotten a beautiful tiger goby, i hope i never have to go threw something like that again,
Dam this is worst than AEFW!! Good luck!
Mark I feel your pain. I lost my 2 clownfish, yellow eye kole tang and my beloved cowfish. I had a very bad case of brooklynella and the only ones that survived were my bengaii cardinal fish. I was devastated by this and considered tearing my tank down. What I do not understand though is how it got in my tank. For about 3 months I did not add any type of fish and the only thing I added were some corals but I did not dump the water in the tank. I also added a bunch of calerpa(sp?) to my refugium but I dont know if it can attach to it. The disease just popped up out of no where and my fish started dying left and right.
When do you think I can add fish again. My two bengaiis are doing great and I have not added anything for about two months now do you think I can start adding fish or should I wait more. I am dying to add something new cause my bengaiis are so boring to watch
Wow… This is hitting a little close to home for me. I’m doing the same thing right now. But I’ve decided to upgrade, To hell with lemonade.
Mark, I would of let your tank run its course. Kept every thing in the tank and the fish that didn’t get sick are letting you know its not that bad. The other fish just couldn’t fight it off. Wouldn’t add anything and would just QT the new fish for a month. After that just add one fish and wait 7 days. If the new fish doesn’t get sick or die you no longer have a diease that killed that fish. I have went through this and did it both ways. The Tank that did not break down worked better than a total break down. Let fish be your meter to determine how some can fight it and some can’t. My Potter Angle and Barlet die. But second time I added new potter that was Qt still got it when introduced in the tank that was totally broken down. But was treated again in QT tank. And later introduced back in tank at 5 weeks. He is stronger and it’s been 7 months with no out break. It’s how strong the fish immune system is by QT and eating good in Qt tank before introduced than back. Fish will always get some kind of diease and will fight it off on their own. Just like a cold for us.
Just let you know after two months is the marking time when tank changes and bacteria grows and this is when dieases will pop up in New systems. Which is normal and better run its course in time and will balance out. No such thing of cleaning everything that will only develope again. Tank will develope all kinds of bacteria that we don’t understand yet. How that causes the diease that will work its self out in time.
Hello Marc
I saw the video.How nasty things happen if the shops you get livestock dont QT the fish.You pay a lot of money for those fish they should QT always the livestock for at least one week before they sell.This is one of my geatest fears to stock my tank as I buy livestock online and never know what i get until I see the parchel.I though that only we who live in Europe had problems since USA is like A+++ grade in the hobby and you get all the good stuff.A friend and very good Reef hobbist got Oodinium with one of the fish he bought.He turned the tank down and sold everything.Have a nice day Mr.Saltwater
Mark, I’m wondering why you didn’t just remove the surviving livestock and simply drain the tank, and fill it up with freshwater and bleach? Why remove the sand/rocks bleach them—then just use vinegar to the DT? Is there some piece of equipment you have you feel would have been damaged by exposure to bleach water?
Have you treated the surviving fish to help eliminate the possibility that they are carrying any sub-clinical amounts of pathogens? I’m very sorry to hear of your loss btw. If there is a silver lining I guess we get to see how you run your QT system/procedures. Have you given any thought to treating your livestock prophylatically with antibiotics/anti-parasite medication/anti-fungals? . Will you use a copper based medication and or hypo-salinity and or the water change/tank change method to remove ich? Yes, most medications will cause the fish some stress—but they are best able to withstand that stress when they are otherwise healthy. Probably give them some time between treatments to fully recover. It seems to me to be more effective you need to set up a fish QT tank and a separate invert QT tank that could double as a coral frag grow out tank. Maybe a 40 breeder for the fish with a small powerhead driven sponge filter and the sexy tank for the inverts/newly acquired coral frags. I realize it is good practice to dip corals, but if you add them straight to the DT tank after a dip, will ich and other fish pathogens survive the dip meant to kill off the coral pests? If you order up a new bottle of pods or a CUC and just dump them in your DT—as you can’t treat for pest inverts and not harm your desired inverts—it seems the only safe way is to dump them in an invert only tank, no fish, and add nothing, no new inverts, only RO/DI water, SW, and processed food for a 2 month period to clear out the obligate fish parasites. So then every 2 months you could scoop up the pods/CUC/slightly grown out corals and add to the DT, before dumping new pods/CUC coral frags into the invert QT tank. You should also have dedicated nets, brushes, algae scrappers, siphons/pythons and buckets for each system to avoid cross contamination. From what I’ve read UV is very effective against viruses, as they are more likely to be suspended in the water column, and not predominately attached to the bio-film like most bacteria. If you ran UV you would have to take care not to zap your pods by adding a fine sponge filter to its intake I suppose. I’m not saying that by taking those thorough measures described above that it would be impossible to have a disease organism enter your DT—but it would sure swing the odds in your favor. I always get a bit peeved when I read people saying that pathogens (usually in reference to ich) are always present in captive systems. I think they are present in the vast majority of systems (I read a stat somewhere that only 5% of hobbyists QT their livestock), and I believe it takes very diligent effort to obtain a pathogen/pest free DT—but it is not impossible. The biological theory of spontaneous generation of pests was thrown out in 1859 by Pasteur’s work leading to germ theory. I’m looking forward to the QT series of videos I hope some of my comments may provide you some food for thought.
hey mark, That sucks what happened! but the scape looks much better imo! id go with the ”fish on the fringe” at the end of the day its a fish tank so why not get some awesome fish to go alongside the awesome corals! surely there must be some species of crabs etc that these fish wont bother at all and others they will? hey relatively new to saltwater but that’s what i’m thinking 🙂 thanks for all the vids its helped me alot!
I hope you said to the place where you got the fish they have a problem?
I like not to see other getting this from that place.
Hey Mark,
Thank you for the information. Something to watch out for and I glad you have things setup again. Nice sump BTW.
Hey, i guess the ich out break was due to the tank not cycled properly. i believe that even after adding bottled bacteria, there should be 1 month of fishless cycle using ammonia chloride and 1 month of fish cycle adding only chromis. never ever hurry adding fishes. i dont mind being patient and watching an empty tank for a month rather then dead fishes….. the test kits dont detect nitrites and ammo that acurately….
Veeral… It wasn’t Ich… The tank was cycled and tested using arguably the best kits on the market… Have another watch of the vid and you’ll see what actually happened… 🙂
The one and only Mark used worked a treat… The tank was in a fully cycled state… Marine Velvet is a complete bugger and makes Ich look like a walk in the park in comparison!
Not trying to be funny about it but always check what you’re writing is correct as there are newbies to the game that read these posts and it can be very confusing for them! 😉
But would a QT really have been that beneficial here? If you were QT’ing all your fish in one or two tanks you still could have lost them if you weren’t preventativly medicating as well as QT’ing. Since your tank was empty, I can totally understand your thoughts behind just putting fish in the DT. I know it would have saved a lot of work with draining, bleaching, and vinegaring, but I can totally see why you wouldn’t QT in your situation.
Mark,
Sorry to hear about your Velvet outbreak and all the trouble you have had. However, it is reassuring to see that even “experts” such as yourself have issues they must overcome if they are going to enjoy the hobby. I’ll remember this the next time I have a problem to overcome and realize that despite our best efforts its a challenging hobby and we just have to keep working if we want to enjoy it.
Bryan…part of my job is to let everyone know I’m human which means showing my screw-ups. I don’t have all the answers (and never will) and will be learning along the way as everyone should.
Mark how contagious is this ich/velvet, did you loose everything or did some fish survive?
Arent there any antibiotics on the market to cure them or is is just luck that one survives and others don’t?
Hi Mark,
Is this disease something that has been developed by captive breeding or does it occur in the ocean? I live in a tropical climate and collect my own fish/rock/and coral. I am curious if this is something I may naturally avoid?
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark, very sorry to hear what happened. I too, like yourself, have never quarantined any of my fish. And, like you up to this point, have never had an issue. I’ve been very lucky, till now, believing that my extensive dipping and acclimation regimen, would be enough to “shield the bullet”, so to speak. But now i see, sadly through your misfortune, that the chamber is never empty, and no one knows when that shot will be fired. Russian Roulette is not a game I want to play with my reef tank or the health of its inhabitants. Fortunately for lots of us, this is the perfect wake up call. And to that, i have to say that this was probably one of the best and most informative vids you’ve done. Everyone can take something from this. People like myself, who follow good practices and run healthy tanks, will stop saying “what’re the chances…”, realize that 1 out of 100 are still not great odds, and stop making excuses on adding the QT. Newbies will see that ANYone, at ANY level can fall victim! And understand that even something as catastrophic as tearing down an entire tank is not enough reason to exit this wonderful hobby. Also , the “haters” out there will see that Mark Callahan, not MrSaltWaterTank, is a real person who does care about our tanks and wants to educate us by showing us EVERYTHING, including his own setbacks. Lastly, to Pasquale, I just wanted to say that you are not wrong in saying that the tank could have “run its course” without the tear down, but why not have the peace of mind knowing you left no stone unturned? And to say, “Let fish be your meter to determine how some can fight it and some can’t”, is just not in the best interests of our little friends and a bit irresponsible. Not to mention, i don’t think that’s Mark’s style or the style he wants to portray to all the fish lovers out there. Thanks again for sharing everything with us Mark and sorry about your fish, especially the ones that made the journey from your 90 gallon. I’ll assume that your Purple Tang, who i loved to watch in your old tank vids, has perished? If so, that’s too bad. We’ll miss him.
Hi Mark,
I love your website and your videos. However, based on your obvious knowledge in other areas of the hobby, I though you would be far beyond making the mistake of not quarantining. Also, I’ve been in the marine hobby for over 30 years and I totally, yet respectfully, disagree with you that it is impossible to have a totally disease-free system. It is indeed very possible, and has been accomplished by many aquarists. Many “giants” in the hobby also agree with this position as well. However, I will concede that there are definitely two “camps” of hobbyist viewpoints on this issue though. But, the camp that believes that a disease-free system is impossible (such as yourself) are really just rationalizing. They convince themselves of “rationale lies” (yes, pun intended) in order to avoid the required up-front research, work, time, patience, and money involved in properly quarantining. Spending a “dime” of research, work, time, patience, and money up front will save you a “million dollars” in frustration in the long run. Also, the bigger the system involved, the more this principle gets magnified. You have an awesome potential system in the works there with that 235. I highly encourage you to quarantine everything. My experience has brought me to use the hypo-transfer method for fish, which is a variation of the pure transfer method from the late 80’s (written about by Terry Bartelme). for everything non-fish it’s a fallow period in a separate tank for a couple of months minimum. Also, these parasites “cannot” survive indefinitely with out a host……they cannot stay dormant for extended periods of time as you propose…….the host stage is part of the lifecycle. When you break this host stage with the fallow period for a 2 month minimum you will defeat these parasites. Just my two cents to a fellow hobbyist that I have learned from as well. 🙂
Tom Duck
Hi Tom… Whilst I agree with some of the comments you’ve made I am of the mind that fact and evidence go hand in hand… 🙂 I have not heard of a disease free system nor have I come across anyone making the claim before… Would you mind sharing some more information on the matter, perhaps on Marks Facebook page if you use it?
what type of rock is that? very cool coloring.
is that one of the sumps on the site or did you design it? i didnt see one that looked quite like it.
sorry for the loss.
G’day Mark what a bugger sorry for your loss,
I think you have chosen the right way to fix your tank of the disease and start over for a fish for your new setup and I agree with John May 17, 2012 at 7:10 pm
they can become very social during the day and it’s a fish that would take advantage of your caves and ledges and they look good as well, I will be getting one soon for my big tank as well
G’day Mark what a bugger sorry for your loss,
I think you have chosen the right way to fix your tank of the disease and start over for a fish for your new setup and I agree with John May 17, 2012 at 7:10 pm the Calloplesiops Altivelis / Marine Betta
they can become very social during the day and it’s a fish that would take advantage of your caves and ledges and they look good as well, I will be getting one soon for my new big tank as well MARK
You are very thorough Mark. Setting up a tank slowly is always best! Nice joke about going fresh water. My wife and daughter want me to maintain fresh water planted tanks for them, I like planted tanks too but for me nothing beats keeping a reef in my living room!
i had a lion fish and he ate one of my hermit crabs and died because of it but he was really cool and i had an anglerfish with the hermit crabs but he died because of an anammonia outbreak and he died
Hi Matt,
I would simply refer you to a series of 5 articles published by the previous author I mentioned in my original post (Terry Bartelme) entitled “News From The Warfront With Cryptocaryon Irritans.” These 5 articles encompass an exellent summation of a lot of research studies on the topic as it applies to the ornamental marine hobby. Much of the original reasearch was done by scientists for the food aquaculture business but also has a direct application to the marine hobby as well. The key is to seek our “true” research with contolled studies rather than individual anecdotal testimony of hobbyists in such things as the length of parasitic life cycles/durations, and fallow periods being useless and ineefective because of some sort of indefinitely extended dormancy period. I’m not calling these hobbyist liars. I’m just saying that thier experience with such a thing is generally an issue of reintroduction of the disease rather than the ineffectiveness of the fallow period. They either did not quarantine/treat the reintroduced fish properly/thoroughly, or else not at all. I, too, believe such testimony is real to them. But, it is due to reintroduction issues, not the inefectiveness of the fallow period. The longest life cycle measured in a controlled study of one of these parasites was 72 days, and this was in very cold water, which slows down the lifecycle of these parasites. In a tropical reef environment (high 70s low 80s) 99% of these parasites have totally completed life cycles within 30 days. The other 1% that might take as long as 6 weeks. The bottom line is that the extent of possible life cycles in a tropical water temperature environment is probably more like 6 weeks max. Using 2 months for a fallow period is just to provide peace of mind….at least for me. Again, I can’t reemphaisze enough that the testimonies from hobbyists of a fallow period being ineffective, and the dormancy of these parasites being indefinite are basically an issue of reintroduction of the disease on the hobbyists part. To avoid reintroduction of the parasites I recommend the hypo-transfer method (also outlined in the articles listed above by Terry Bartelme). Additionally, if the fish you are quarantining happens to be a hyposalinity-sensitive fish (there a few – such as clownfish) just use the pure transfer method with regular salinities with these fish. Also, it is critical that following any quarantine period using hyposilinity, you observe the fish afterwards for a long period of time and bring up the salinity “very slowly” before placing it into the display tank once the equality in the salinities between the 2 tanks has been achieved. Marine fish generally tolerate much bigger drops in salinity a lot easier than big increases. Therefore, it is critical to bring up the salinity very slowly after such treatment. This is also a great time to simply monitor the fish to ensure that the treatment was effective before placing it into the display tank. Again, much of this is outlines in those articles by Terry Bartelme. As far as other “giants” in the hobby who agree with the position that disease-free systems are absolutely attainable and have been accomplished many times……Bob Fenner for one (author of “The Conscientious Marine Aquarist”) not to mention the founder of the wetwebmedia website and numerous other article/books. The bottom line is that if you check out the research (much of it from the aquaculture food industy) you’ll find the real facts on the parasites that plague the marine hobby.
Tom Duck
Hi Mark, I really like that new sump you have from my reef creations, where and how did you create it and customize it to your liking?
Hi Mark, Just curious where you got the sump? I know its from mrc and ive been looking but cant find anything… What are the specs and how do you like it?
@4:59 bahahahahahahahahaha…. I haven’t laughed that hard all day. Thank you for that.