Sad Times In A Challenging Hobby.
Today is a sad day for me in this hobby....
A day that I've been through once before and I was crushed!!!
Before the reefuge was a forum, years ago I went through this event of loosing all my fish to a virus, that event caused me to shut down and sell out leaving an empty space in both my heart and lounge area.
9 months later I picked up a second hand aqua one ,dusted off that sad day and grew an awesome nano tank into a full coral donor tank for Aitutaki.
Having that nano tank was like a quarantine tank for better things to come.
Setting up Aitutaki was done methodically , to the point where I seeded the tank with coralline on day one and by the two or so week mark I was growing coraline all over the glass. Never had any fish issues prob due to not adding
fish and if I did it was a rare occasion with the fear of going through a tank wipeout.
By contrast Serenity was a bit rushed from moving house , loosing all my frags in the move and dumping half the water from the temporary pond that housed my fish into the tank and using tap water since there was no money in the fish tank fund for replacement RO filter cartridge. Well needless to say saw my first bit of coralline after about three months.
It was around that time when my skimmer impeller broke followed by replacement Cal reactor pump and further tinkering to get alkalinity right.
They talk about stability being the key to a successful reef , well that said my alkalinity has been everywhere from 10 down to 6 - this will not only shut down growth of SPS and prob cause all kinds of other problems.
In the fish department I have had a lot of fish pass through the tank. In an effort to have a beautiful reef , five anthias were introduced.
Three were as tough as anything so I added more but that number went back down to three again. The next fish was a mandarin which went well as there were heaps of pods due to no carnivores in the tank. The fine balance was upset as recently I added a dragon wrasse who was a greedy little thing. He would gouge out on pods to the point when I thought his belly would explode.
I can't really put my finger on what happened but over the course of three days it looked like the mandarin was not active , I did not think he had starved to death as he was not skinny and no symptoms.
Next to go was the dotty back, he looked panicked and not happy for a couple of days and then I found him dead with no visible symptoms. The Kole tang was next, he lost his colour and developed white spot which blew out to velvet like mucous over night. I knew he was not coming back when he jumped the tank.
Clowns went skinny and velvet like along with the dragon. The last two anthias had bulging eye and white spot.
I tried what I could with ginger , cupramine and lower salinity and hospital tank.
I think treating marine fish is a tricky thing and by no means have I ever got it right.
Viral, fungal / I think if I had access to some of the decent hi power stuff they use at quarantine facilities there could have been a better outcome.
Running a mini Eco system is not going to be easy , when it's good it's great - when it sucks , it hurts the see the suffering.
My tank will now run fishless until I get the courage back to put some back to into Serenity.
A day that I've been through once before and I was crushed!!!
Before the reefuge was a forum, years ago I went through this event of loosing all my fish to a virus, that event caused me to shut down and sell out leaving an empty space in both my heart and lounge area.
9 months later I picked up a second hand aqua one ,dusted off that sad day and grew an awesome nano tank into a full coral donor tank for Aitutaki.
Having that nano tank was like a quarantine tank for better things to come.
Setting up Aitutaki was done methodically , to the point where I seeded the tank with coralline on day one and by the two or so week mark I was growing coraline all over the glass. Never had any fish issues prob due to not adding
fish and if I did it was a rare occasion with the fear of going through a tank wipeout.
By contrast Serenity was a bit rushed from moving house , loosing all my frags in the move and dumping half the water from the temporary pond that housed my fish into the tank and using tap water since there was no money in the fish tank fund for replacement RO filter cartridge. Well needless to say saw my first bit of coralline after about three months.
It was around that time when my skimmer impeller broke followed by replacement Cal reactor pump and further tinkering to get alkalinity right.
They talk about stability being the key to a successful reef , well that said my alkalinity has been everywhere from 10 down to 6 - this will not only shut down growth of SPS and prob cause all kinds of other problems.
In the fish department I have had a lot of fish pass through the tank. In an effort to have a beautiful reef , five anthias were introduced.
Three were as tough as anything so I added more but that number went back down to three again. The next fish was a mandarin which went well as there were heaps of pods due to no carnivores in the tank. The fine balance was upset as recently I added a dragon wrasse who was a greedy little thing. He would gouge out on pods to the point when I thought his belly would explode.
I can't really put my finger on what happened but over the course of three days it looked like the mandarin was not active , I did not think he had starved to death as he was not skinny and no symptoms.
Next to go was the dotty back, he looked panicked and not happy for a couple of days and then I found him dead with no visible symptoms. The Kole tang was next, he lost his colour and developed white spot which blew out to velvet like mucous over night. I knew he was not coming back when he jumped the tank.
Clowns went skinny and velvet like along with the dragon. The last two anthias had bulging eye and white spot.
I tried what I could with ginger , cupramine and lower salinity and hospital tank.
I think treating marine fish is a tricky thing and by no means have I ever got it right.
Viral, fungal / I think if I had access to some of the decent hi power stuff they use at quarantine facilities there could have been a better outcome.
Running a mini Eco system is not going to be easy , when it's good it's great - when it sucks , it hurts the see the suffering.
My tank will now run fishless until I get the courage back to put some back to into Serenity.
