Anthias post-mortem

[d3rryc]

So here's the story... Last Friday, I bought three juvenile lyretail anthias. I brought them home, did the standard acclimation stuff and dropped them in my 20-gal QT. I've had mixed results with prophylactic dips, so I skipped dipping them. All three started pecking at frozen mysis that evening, and by Monday morning, everyone was eating well. So far, so good. However, on Wednesday evening, I thought I saw some dusting on one of them. The next morning, I confirmed the dusting with a magnifying glass, with early signs now showing on a second fish, and determined that I had a velvet outbreak on my hands. I pulled the carbon and started treating with CopperSafe, but by yesterday evening, the velvet had definitely gotten worse, with all three fish showing symptoms. I set up a fw dip, with a temp and pH matching that of the QT tank, and dipped each fish for about one minute (they started listing onto their sides pretty quickly, and I was afraid to leave them in any longer than that). Unfortunately, this morning all three were dead.

My question is, what could/should/might I have done differently throughout this process that would have lessened my chances of ending up with three dead fish this morning? They all looked great at the LFS. All three had been eating well for several days. Should I have just let the CopperSafe run its course? Was a fw dip the right thing to do to increase their chances of beating the velvet? The only good news in all of this is that I had the good sense to have a QT set up instead of dropping them in my DT and killing ALL of my fish. Any advice from the more experienced folks out there are most welcome.

Thanks!
Derry

[Bill S]

I'm guessing that the additional stress of the dip was enough to push them over the edge. While I've lost my share of fish over the years, I'm just not a fan of FW dips. I think, hindsight being 20/20, I'd have left them in the QT with the copper.

[Kristy]

Yeah, I became "not a fan" of FW dips when I took a fish who was definitely stressed and fighting off disease and threw him in a carefully prepared bucket of FW, then watched him thrash his final death throes. I'm sure he was not going to make it either way, but there has to be a more dignified way to die.

I have had fish that were eating well recover from the velvet and that is/was probably your best chance. It's such a tough call how to get your best odds of success with these guys, because most literature agrees that it's best not to bother to quarantine anthias for a number of valid reasons.

I was very pleased with the three I originally acquired from Live Aquaria and know several others who have had the same experience. Highly recommend going that route for lyretail anthias. Good luck whatever you decide to do.

[d3rryc]

The main reason I've seen for not QT'ing anthias is b/c it's hard to get them enough food during the day. My wife is usually at home during the day, and she was giving them "lunch" for me, getting us around the food issue. I just shudder to think what would have happened if these guys had been in the DT instead.

What are the other reasons against putting anthias in QT?

[DrMark]

Yeah, I became "not a fan" of FW dips when I took a fish who was definitely stressed and fighting off disease and threw him in a carefully prepared bucket of FW, then watched him thrash his final death throes. I'm sure he was not going to make it either way, but there has to be a more dignified way to die.

I have had fish that were eating well recover from the velvet and that is/was probably your best chance. It's such a tough call how to get your best odds of success with these guys, because most literature agrees that it's best not to bother to quarantine anthias for a number of valid reasons.

I was very pleased with the three I originally acquired from Live Aquaria and know several others who have had the same experience. Highly recommend going that route for lyretail anthias. Good luck whatever you decide to do.

Have to agree with the comment on LiveAquaria. I am all for supporting the LFS, but I have almost 100% long term survival from liveaquaria, hard for me to buy fish anywhere else. I bought 8 Lyetails from them about 6 months ago, all doing well. Also, bought 6 blotched anthias from them, but sadly, lost one. Rest are all well.
mark

[Kristy]

The main reason I've seen for not QT'ing anthias is b/c it's hard to get them enough food during the day. My wife is usually at home during the day, and she was giving them "lunch" for me, getting us around the food issue. I just shudder to think what would have happened if these guys had been in the DT instead.

What are the other reasons against putting anthias in QT?

Never understood it to be about the frequency of feeding. The assumption is that if you are going to keep anthias, you need to be able to provide frequent feedings.

Bob Fenner and wetwebmedia go into great detail discussing the reasons and the logic behind not quaranting this type of fish, which I could really not do justice without going back and researching to find the threads and then re-reading them, trying to summarize them. Definitely worth the time and effort to read if you intend to keep anthias. The upshot has to do with how timid the anthias can be and their need for good hiding places, which a quarantine tank does not typically provide, and the absence of good hiding places causing such signficant stress to them as to threaten their chances of survival. There IS an issue with feeding as well, in that they sometimes don't seem to understand what they should be eating in captivity and only seem to get the hang of it after observing other fish eat. There is more to the explanation but that is some of the basic logic.

Research it. And check for Live Aquaria's specials. They put them on sale every few weeks for a really good price.