RIP two fish... checking some info before I replce them

[benzrider85]

So I've lost a black and white striped banner fish and a blue hippo tang. I'd like some confirmation of what I think went wrong and what I did wrong.

First off, when I started on this hobby I definitely got some ridiculous advice from a LFS. That and my lack of reading before starting this contributed to my fish loss I believe.

My display tank is a 70g tank thats been up and running for about four months. I've got two clowns, a yellow Tang and a coral beauty in there that are doing great. Water conditions probably weren't great when the other two got sick, but within acceptable range.

I wasn't using a QT tank for my new fish. Of course after the hippo tang and the banner fish got ick I set up a 20g tank and put them in. My first mistake was probably to put sand in the QT tank. I'm reading most people don't use anything for the bottom of the QT tank. Is that right? My second mistake was to put live rock in there as well.

After about a week the fish seemed to be getting better, however, I missed a couple days of water tests and figured out the ammonia was high, and the nitrates and nitires were in deadly areas. I lost the banner fish first and the hippo tang a couple days later. Even after doing a 50% water change and 2 30% water changes, I couldn't lower these stats enough.

My question is that by putting the live rock in there and treating the tank with copper, I killed everything in the live rock. Did the dead critters create the poor water quality? My fish were very active and much more healthy when they went in the tank and I'm sure my mismanagement of the QT tank I killed them.

When I replace these fish, I'll do it one at a time and I'll use the QT tank from the start. I want to make sure I do it right this time. Thanks for the help and sorry about the length of this message. Let me know if you need any more details!

Note: My display tank is up and running great now! Switching from mixing my own tap water with conditioner to premixed, filtered from the store it really helped my PH and ammonia levels!

[Gwynhidwy]

Yes, you made some mistakes, but everyone does. It is good that you are learning from them. You'll definitely have better luck with all your tanks using filtered water, hopefully it is RO/DI filtered.

Yes, the copper killed off most of what was on the live rock and that contributed to the ammonia spike. That is one reason not to use live rock in a hospital tank. Another is that the rock, as well as aragonite based sands, will remove some of the copper from the water. This makes it very difficult to maintain stable therapeutic levels. When medicating fish it is best to use a bare tank with no substrate or rock and pvc pipes of various shapes and sizes for the fish to hide in. It is also important to not run any chemical filter media, like carbon, while medicating as it will also remove medications from the water.

Unfortunately all of the fish in your DT will have been exposed to whatever killed your other fish, since they were all in the same tank for a while. If the infection was caused by ich, you will need to remove ALL fish from your DT and leave it completely fishless for 8 weeks. While the fish are not in your DT they ALL need to be treated for ich with a copper based medication (I use Cupramine by Seachem), OR hyposalinity, OR tank transfer method.

Whenever you have fish being treated, water quality can go downhill fast, so its good practice to test water twice daily. If you are treating with a copper based medication you need to test for that as well, because too much will kill your fish and not enough will be ineffective. Its a pain, but worth it to have a healthy DT.

I know you didn't ask about this, but you may want to look at your stocking. Its not usually a good idea to have that many large fish in a 70G tank, particularly since multiple tangs were involved.

[benzrider85]

Thanks for the the help. Always learning...this forum has been a huge help so far!