Cycling - good parameters but fish fatality

[Pop87]

Hi All,

Brand new to this and a rough start. I’m five days in to a cycle with a pair of clownfish - 100g tank with 25h sump.

Used Fritz turbo start 900, dry purple rock and CaribSea special grade Arag Alive sand.

First clown was timid from the moment he entered the tank, but did become more active day 2. However, out of nowhere on day 4 he just stayed at the bottom with rapid mouth movements, hasn’t seemed to have eaten and generally lethargic. The second clown has bags of energy and looks great.

No white spots or signs of disease otherwise. Frequently checked water parameters and they are all within range,
Ammonia and nitrite haven’t really spiked and nitrates are beginning to show.

I tried to quarantine it and give it a freshwater dip in case it was parasites but to no avail. Concerned my tank may now be infected.

Am I missing something?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Without knowing your experience level, can you post a pic of the tank? Lets see how its built, how it is oxygenated. Even in an uncycled tank, 2 clowns should be fine in 100 gallons.

 

[Crabs McJones]

Welcome to R2R!

Can you post your parameters for us please?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Welcome to Reef2Reef, and sorry for your trouble!

Disease would be my first thought both with the symptoms the clown is displaying and with how common disease issues are, so let's see what the #fishmedic crew has to say.
(For clarification here, the hashtag to tag the crew is "#fishmedic" with no "s" on the end; it's confusing, particularly since there's more than one fish medic, but the added "s" may prevent them from actually being notified of this thread.)

If it is disease, a freshwater dip likely wouldn't do much - you'd likely need either a copper treatment/hyposalinity treatment, or a praziquantel treatment.

Anyway, as has been mentioned, pics and a description of your tank setup/equipment, your exact water parameters and what test kits you're using to test them, and a short video of the fish in question would all be useful for the fishmedic crew to help out here.




In case you need it, I'll leave the copper, hypo, and prazi treatments info below (copper should be used in a quarantine tank with no calcium carbonate-based substrates like typical reef rocks and aragonite sand), and for future use I'll link both R2R's disease expert's recommended quarantine procedure, and the R2R disease forum (where you'll be able to get help with future issues like this faster - as a note, don't use the disease forum for a new post on this current issue, as I've tagged the expert and other fish medics here already):

Copper (says for ich, but it also works for velvet; Hanna Instruments High Range Copper Colorimeter is the hobby gold standard for monitoring treatment levels of copper) and hyposalinity (works for ich and flukes, but not for velvet); if no visible trophonts, run for 30 days; with chelated copper, there's not a need to ramp up slowly (though some people prefer to raise the levels in two doses to make sure they did the calculations right and don't over or under dose it):

if you want to treat ich effectively, you need either copper medication (chelated copper like Coppersafe or Copper Power at 2.25-2.5ppm for 30 days after the last ich trophonts disappear is recommended) or hyposalinity (drop your salinity to 1.009 and keep the tank at that salinity for 30 days after the last signs/symptoms of the disease disappear)

For getting copper to the level needed:

Taken from BRS here:

"1.475 mL per gallon = 2.5 ppm"

Copper Power Parasite Treatment

Thanks to its special formulation, Copper Power is one of the safest and yet most effective copper solutions for treatment of external parasites, such as ich and velvet. Copper Power contains a very stable form of copper medication with low levels of precipitation, and thanks to this it is able...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

Edit: To add: each 0.1 ppm would be 0.059 mL/gal.

(Also, for anyone curious with Coppersafe, it's 1.25 mL/gal = 2.5 ppm or 0.05 mL/gal = 0.1 ppm).

Hyposalinity

Hyposalinity Jay Hemdal 2024 This term refers to a long-term bath treatment for marine fishes in which the salt content of the water is lowered and held below the point that certain parasites can survive. The salt level reached, and the time of the treatment are the two variables...

www.reef2reef.com

Prazi (the QT protocol goes into more detail on this):
Dose the amount recommended on the medicine label; you'll want to dose two or three times (three to be safe) with each dose being eight days apart - ensure the tank has plenty of aeration for this treatment.

Current Quarantine Protocol

2024 Quarantine Procedures Jay Hemdal David Scarborough Protozoans (Cryptocaryon/ich, Amyloodinium/velvet) and Metazoan trematodes/flukes are by far the most common parasites found on newly acquired fish. A carefully managed, proactive quarantine process can effectively eliminate these...

www.reef2reef.com

Fish Disease Treatment and Diagnosis

A forum for discussing treatment and diagnosing saltwater reef fish.

www.reef2reef.com