fishes keep dying

[DaveTeu]

I've got boxer, cleaner, fire shrimps living in my tank fine for the past 3 months, even my anemone and other corals like jewel etc. But I'm not sure how come the fishes in my tank are always dying.... yellow gobbie.. all sort of clown... they usually start having white spots and die..

 

I follow the procedure of putting the bag inside the tank to let them get used to the temperature and slowly pour my tank water into the bag to let them get used to the water every half an hour.. and after that I put them in a quarrentine cage inside the tank to let them get used to the surrounding...

 

but in the end white spots still occur and they die...

changing of water? I change half the tank every like 1 week.

 

Yes mine is a 1ft by 1 ft by 1ft tank

[xcajx]

Your tank is infested with Ich. Do not add any fish for 2 months - yup that's right, 2 MONTHS - so the Ich can live out its life cycle.

 

Google it and you will find a ton of information. Some belive all tanks have ich laying dormant until something sparks it off. Most chemical rememdies use malachit green or another copper based substance which is a mjor no-no for reef tanks. Gotta wait it out and if you keep putting fish in there it is gonna hang around.

 

Keep with the water changes and try to stir the top layer of sand right before. That's where it tends to hang out.

[Tigahboy]

I agree...You definitely have a major ich problem. It lies dormant in your coral, LR, and sand. No real reef-safe treatment out there, so best to avoid anything even if it claims to be "reef safe." Luckily, the ich has no ill effect to your coral and inverts so you can keep all that stuff in your tank. But gotta keep the tank "fallow" - which for us basically means fish-less - for a good 1-2 months...but I agree w/ xcajx that you should wait it out closer to 2 months to be absolutely safe.

 

You should keep your tank fallow b/c ich, as xcajx also mentioned, does have a definite life cycle and when the dormant ich awakens, they go to any fish they can find to continue w/ their life cycle. If there are no fish, the active ich will not find a host and therefore will simply die off and can't reproduce. So it is VERY important that you keep the tank fishless for the 2 months so it will give sufficient time for the ich to become active and die off. Even tho the cycle is less than 2 months, this amount of time is good since not all the dormant ich will become active at the same time, and 2 months should be enough to catch any slacker ich that become active after the first ones become active.

 

If you follow this procedure, when you start to add fish later, you should be ich free...assuming of course that any fish or corals you add subsequent to your fallow period doesn't carry the ich into your tank again. It's a pain I know, but it happens to most of us at one point or another. Good luck!