Updates

[Thunderkat]

Update to my original post about all my new fish dying: I bought an algae blenny from Alex and its still alive! I am not going to buy any more fish from the place I was buying from here in San Antonio before I bought from Alex. I saw Alex acclimitize his fish properly so I will use him as my primary source. I also bought two types of mushrooms and some zoos from him and they are also still alive. The live rock I bought from him was AWESOME, lots of macro algae on it with all kinds of cool stuff on it. One of the things that has me fascinated are these small discs on the rock that move around, I have no idea what they are.

Update to cyano problem: After adding the phosphate sponge its finally going away. I followed everybodys recommendations: use RO unit, increase flow, use activated carbon, make sure skimmers are tweaked, and add phosphate sponge. Thanks everybody

Update to sick clown fish with brooklynosis: It still has the broolynosis, it refused to eat mysis (even with the garlic added), it refuses to eat flake food now (even with the garlic added), all it eats now is brine shrimp. I have been feeding the brine shrimp some of the garlic solution and then feeding it to the clownfish in hopes that it helps.

The formalin didn't seem to work on it. Any recommendations? Please don't say kill the fish I like it too much.

[CD]

The formalin didn't seem to work on it. Any recommendations? Please don't say kill the fish I like it too much.

Are you doing your weekly water changes in the hospital tank? With these smaller tanks it is very important to keep the water quality as high as possible - especially with a sick fish. Once the water quality starts going down hill, the fish will follow suit. Does the hospital tank have decent water circulation? I was thinking (in the other thread about this fish) that you had mentioned something about having cyano in this tank as well? Is the salinity still at 1.020?
I'd be really worried about that diet of brine too. Even soaking it in garlic, it won't have the needed nutrition that your clown will need to build up it's immune system. Maybe you could try soaking the food in Selcon as well, but eventually that fish is going to have to learn to eat healthier foods.

Wendy

[Reef69]

The small discs seem like flat worms to me..lol..

Formalin does work, i would keep using it, dont expect the fish to be well over night, saltwater parasites take a while to die..

[Thunderkat]

I take out one gallon of water every other day (hospital tank is 5 gallons) and get water from my main tank (maybe thats why it has cyano).

Water is at 1.020 (I have to add RO water to bring it down).

It has all the brine it can eat, its constantly pecking at them, I can still see lots of the brine swimming around so its not lacking there. I tried mysis shrimp and it ignores them.

There is good flow in the tank, I have a UV steralizer and pump hooked up but I had to turn that off when I couldn't get it to eat flake or mysis. Don't want to kill the brine it is still eating. I have a good filter with biowheel on it, its one of those little tanks from Wal-Mart that has the hood light and filter all built in, its pretty nice.

I know what everybody says brine is bad but it doesn't want to eat anything else. Brine is better than starving the little guy.

I want to feed it other stuff but in order to get it to eat something more nutritious I would have to starve it by only feeding the better stuff. Would this be recommended for a sick fish?

[Polkster13]

I would NOT use water from the main tank. Use only newly made up fresh saltwater but with a lower salinty. Saltwater fish have to drink the water so they don't get dehydrated (it's a little thing called osmosis) and they have to get rid of the excess salt through their urine. Therefore, anything bad in the tank that the fish is in is going to be taken into the fish though the gills or digestive tract. The higher the salinty, the more the fish has to work at keeping hydrated and removing the salt and other toxins from it's body. This is why you run a hospital tank at a lower salinty. As GaryP is so fond of saying, "The solution to pollution is dilution". So if you are adding bad stuff from your main tank into your hospital tank, you are only aggrevating the existing problems.

[DeletedAccount]

You may also need to do more frequent water changes. I do them EVERY DAY on my hospital tank with 20 gallons. About 50 - 75 %. Remember, these fish in hospital tnaks have NO bacteria, the meds kill it off. Also, brine pollute water very quickly.

[CD]

The small discs seem like flat worms to me..lol..

I was going to say that, but...LOL

I want to feed it other stuff but in order to get it to eat something more nutritious I would have to starve it by only feeding the better stuff. Would this be recommended for a sick fish?

Probably not. He's already in a delicate enough situation as it is. I guess you can work on his diet after he is on his way to recovery (ASAP), but for now the Selcon (vitamin) soaked food is going to be a step in the right direction.

Water is at 1.020 (I have to add RO water to bring it down).

So you are lowering the salinity in the tank by adding RO every time you do a water change with a higher salinity water? Could you clarify how you are doing this for me? If you are doing water changes with say 1.025 salinity water from you main tank (as an example), and then lowering the salinity via dumping in fresh RO/DI directly into the hospital tank to compensate for the salinity levels, this could be causing undue stress on the clown as well...OR do you mix the water from your main tank with RO to lower the salinity (to match the hospital tank) and *then* do the water change? I don't think using water from the main tank is such a good idea though. I'd go with the fresh stuff personally. Less "germs" to worry about in a fish who's defenses are down in the first place. Sorry I'm asking so many questions, but I want your little clown to get better too!

Also, as Diego said - it DOES take some time to get rid of that durn brook. It took almost 3 months to cure mine...I contribute that longevity partially due to the fact that I started with only the formalin, and not the lowered salinity combo.

Wendy

[Thunderkat]

Have been taking the water out from the main tank in a plastic gallon jug and putting the RO in there and then into the hospital tank, I try to get the salinity to match as close as I can.

I haven't tried freeze dried tubifex worms, is that good for marine fish? How about shrimp (cut into tiny pieces of course)?

I would like to get it off the brine shrimp so I can turn on the UV steralizer again.

The biggest problem with feeding this fish is that it is not very bright. Other fish chase the food, it looks at it excitedly as the food falls to the bottom then it forgets about it.

[GaryP]

As GaryP is so fond of saying, "The solution to pollution is dilution".

Did I say that? Really?

If I did say that, please don't tell the EPA that I did. In most industrial situations, dilution is considered an illegal form of waste treatment. I don't want to be the reefer equivalent of the bird man of Alcatraz.

Seriously though, what I was referring to was the use of water changes to dilute pollutants with new water. The problem with that though is that is is very inefficient and takes multiple large water changes to make a serious impact. For example, a 1.0 ppm phosphate level is only reduced to 0.9 ppm by a 10% water change. If someone did a weekly 10% water change and there was a weekly increase of .1 ppm of phosphates as a result of feeding, then there is no net decrease in the phosphate levels. On the other hand, large water changes such as a 50% change, can cause other more serious problems.

I am not putting down the importance of water changes, but rather I am saying that they should only be one part of a more comprehensive water quality management program. In other words, water changes are a tool, but its not the whole tool box.

[Polkster13]

Well said, Gary. Didn't mean to miss quote you. The point I was trying to make is that by using water from the main tank as makeup water for the hospital tank, that water is going to add pollution to the hospital tank, not take it out. You should only use 100 percent new water (RO+salt mix) for the hospital tank.