OK, so in the last two days I lost a flame angel and mandarin dragon net. Neither showed any signs of disease/parasites just showed up dead one morning. Now my black/white clown has white spots all over him and has been rubbing himself across the sand bed as if he was itchy. There is no mucus just the white tiny white spots and they seem a little twitchy as well (parasite?) I cant get any good pics but looks like brooklynella possibly? Other percula has been rubbbing himself on the sand but shows no signs of illness. Never had any illness experience before, any help would be most appreciated. Thanks.


Tank parameters
temp - 80
ammonia - 0
nitrites - 0
nitrates - 0
phosphates - 0
calcium - 440
magnesium - 1400
ph - 8.0
alkalinity - 10
salinity - 1.025

probably ick. common symptoms of it

They are also eating normally so NO loss of appetite.

how old is this tank?

brooklynella is more of a covering, not spots. It's like a mucus that covers their scales.

They will show spots from coral stings but it doesn't sound like that esp with the other dead fish

Yea not really any mucus just white dots all over, other percula is starting to get white dots too. The 2 fish that died had no physical signs of illiness, skin looked prestine. Here are tank specs. Not sure what to do???

Tanks Specs
- over 2 years old
- display frog spawn, rtba, rics, zoas, dsb, 75+ LR
- cadlight 34 gal bareback
- solaris led lighting
- tunze 9010 skimmer
- vortech mp40w
- 30 gal refugium (chaeto, ulva lettuce, mangroves, dsb, LR)
- lifereef overflow

sounds like ich

The other two fish dieing is just random or could they have been sick with no signs of illness? Also what should i do to fix the problem? Set up a QT tank and dose what?

+1 sounds like cryptocaryon irritans (ich).

Have you added anything recently which you did not quarantine?

Regarding the fish you still have, you have a choice to make. You can quarantine them and either treat with copper (copper sulfate is the most common, but I recommend cupramine, by seachem) OR hyposalinity between 1.010 and 1.015. Of course doing either of these will stress the fish out quite a bit, so once you choose a method of treatment, stick with it.

Also, try soaking your food in garlic concentrate before feeding. The garlic can help boost the immune system, as well as stimulate appetite.

Sigh, yes added the flame angel and tricolor fairy wrasse without quarantine . So best option is to use hyposalinity with garlic supplement for food? Should I quarantine and treat all my fish? Do I need to do anything to kill the parasites in my display? Gonna get 10-15 gal tank tomorrow can I use display water for quarantine tank is that ok? It was only a matter of time to when not quarantining fish would bite me in the @$$.

Yeah... sucks.

Angels are notorious for bringing in nasties. They're hardy fish, which means they can handle a lot of crap in the wild. This is fine until they get stressed out being acclimated to captivity and they slowly get taken over.

Anyways, if you feel your fish are up to it, I believe their best chance at survival lies in a simple QT. It doesn't need to be expensive. Make sure you have some flow, and lots of hiding spots. I went out and bought a variety of PVC pieces which worked well. Your main priority from now on is to keep the stress level on the fish to a minimum. You can see the QT tank I made in my tank thread. To start your QT use 1/2 tank water from your display and 1/2 new water (you don't want the wastes to build up too fast).

On that note, the hyposalinity is probably the easiest on the fish, however, it's pretty difficult do to and there's an increased chance of screwing it up. I've only participated in a hypo treatment once, and this is sort of how it was done, only I went to 1.010: http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/fish-d...nt-process.html

On that note, if you think that a hypo treatment might be out of your league I would highly suggest using a medication called "cupramine" made by seachem. Dose exactly as it says on the bottle. No more, no less. It's effective against quite a few parasites & bacteria. You will still need to do water changes frequently (and dose the WC water to maintain the right concentration of cupramine) because the copper will kill off any bacteria in the tank.

As for your display tank, the only thing you can do is go fishless for 4-6 weeks (the longer the better) and wait for the parasite to go through it's life cycle. It won't harm your corals or inverts, so you can leave those alone.

how big is this tank? how long has it been set up?....both answers may help to explain the deaths of the first fish. if a new nano, you shouldnt have probably had either the angel or the mandarin...

Tanks Specs
- over 2 years old
- display frog spawn, rtba, rics, zoas, dsb, 75+ LR
- cadlight 34 gal bareback
- solaris led lighting
- tunze 9010 skimmer
- vortech mp40w
- 30 gal refugium (chaeto, ulva lettuce, mangroves, dsb, LR)
- lifereef overflow

nevermind then....

LFS isn't open on Sunday, should I do the hyposalinity treatment because I would have to wait til Monday to start a copper base treatment? Also where could I get garlic supplement to treat their food?

the garlic doesnt do anything other than stimulate appetite....for now, you need to keep feeding them.....they may fight it on their own.

Actually garlic has been shown to boost the immune system in empirical studies.

Many LFS's will sell garlic, but that's expensive. You can get it at the pharmacy. I just take some garlic & water, smash it, soak it, & feed it.

Whether or not to do the hypo treatment or the copper is up to you. Be sure to document what do do very carefully so as not to mess anything up, whichever route you go. Also I think it would be beneficial to share your results on the forum while being a proponent of using quarantine tanks. Many fish are lost simply because we often choose not to quarantine new livestock.

Thank you for all the help. I decided to go ahead with the hypo-salinity theraphy. I set up a 10g quarantine tank and got the two clowns in there. They were a little stressed out the first day as I slowly lowered the salinity over 36 hours but are doing great now. They have a big appetite and are eating everything I throw in there. Hopefully it was caught in time to save the clowns. I think you were right, flame angel had parasites when I bought him. I most definitely will be using a quarantine tank from now on. I highly recommend it as its a minor inconvenience when compared to losing all of your livestock. I certainly learned my lesson, unfortunately it was the hard way, but learned none the less. I will keep you posted in hopes the two clowns make a full recovery. Thanks.

Thanks for the follow up.

It's great when you get to hear back from a thread. What did you end up at salinity-wise?

I went with 1.010 for the salinity. They seem to be doing quite well. Should I do weekly water changes on the QT tank?

Yeah water changes would be a good idea. I'm not 100% sure on the effects of the hypo treatment on your biological filtration, however, since it will be pretty weak in the newly established tank you'll most likely need a way to remove waste manually. You might consider testing for ammonia more frequently.

That and water changes usually don't hurt anything if done properly. How are the other fish doing?

I throw a tetra tech filter on the qt tank with carbon and some filter pads. Does a decent job on cleaning any waste and left over food. Then I'll just rinse the pads out of any waste/food debris every couple of days. I used a couple of gallons of water from the display tank to start the QT. The fish are doing great, the clowns are paired up and just hang out together. Havent noticed any signs of twitching since I put them in there. They also have been eating twice a day. If I maintain the hypo-salinity therapy properly I think they should be just fine. Thanks.

When you rinse the filter pads off be sure you do it in saltwater. The reason is that you want this tank to establish a biological filtration as soon as possible. Changing out the filter pads might remove some of the physical waste particles from the water, however the filter pads alone will not remove the waste byproducts such as ammonia. Bacteria which grow on the filter pads do that, so if you wash the pads off in tap water all the bacteria will die & you could possibly end up with an ammonia problem.

It may also help to raise the temp in both the quarantine and display tank in order to speed up the life cycle of the ich parasite.

I got the same problem with my false clown, I dosed "Attack Ich" and for feeding, I mixed pellet food with powder seasoning garlic. The ich is gone in couple days.