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I appreciate it.

I initially QT’d prior to adding to the main tank. My best guess with what happened is a cross contamination occurred while working on the tanks at some point. I wear medical gloves and frequently wash my hands so I try to be extra sensitive to that, regardless it still happened.

Once the breakout took root in the display after my first QT I explored options like hyposalinity and other treatments.

I have been working hard to rid the fish of any remaining disease. I had to draw a line after months due to the sheer cost of material and medications.

I agree, it’s best to start small and slow, but that has to be balanced with your goals. I’ve had a lot of success keeping acanthurus tangs in groups, but that requires qting them together and introducing in large groups. Atleast for my methods. So my QT started with small tangs in a 55 gallon that made it difficult to TTM effectively. Which led to the use of copper.

Ultimately, I support QT, but I’ve had very low success rate with it. Reflecting on why hasn’t highlighted any glaring issues in my QT process. And I have reflected on that A LOT.

I believe the tools we have to effectively monitor, treat, and contain diseases are just to limited. I look at a lot of the vendors that attempt to QT and the losses they experience certainly are not minimal. There is always something new like Uronema that is resistant to metro, or velvet that is tolerant of copper, etc.

Without better tools I will still implement QT protocols like TTM and using TTO for Uronema, but I will never again let it drag out, and be as financially demanding and time consuming as the last few months.

Instead my approach is to stock the tank and I will use H2O2 to control parasite loads over the next few months. I may get lucky and break the cycle, or the fish build up more than a temporary immunity. Those are both unlikely outcomes, but I have a wedding coming up and would like some time with my fiancée.
 
Blaise006 said:
I’m dosing H2O2 in high amounts as a preventative. My QT experience has been abysmal for the last 4 months. Probably doing more harm than good, but if you see my thread over on humble fish it’s a terribly long list of disappointment.
Click to expand...
There is your problem, posting elsewhere!!! It's all gravy over here on BAR ;)
 
yah, I hear you on QT. I have had a a few lessons over the years and I can really only vouch for a few methods for a few things but everything else... LOST. I see all these people offering this service now treating with meds and such and it makes me wonder if they are just creating disease resistance themselves or if it is the volume they are dealing with and talking about that makers this apparent. A lot of fish just die on the wholesale side that we typically don't see. Its why a .30 fish to the collectors is a $100 fish to you. You can be 100% sure some are not doing everything right and just riding the message boards and experimenting with everyone else as a hobby or Buisness. I am sure some are doing it well but not sure you know who to trust.

I had a outbreak in a tank after I homed a foxface from a friend, wiped everything out except the few strong that survived and could never add a fish again. Message boards were just a mess with what I should do and I ended up just keeping my surviving fish for many years after that and never adding any again, which was fine as I started downsizing the tank with a move later. Those super fish survived a tank crashing power outage that pretty much got me out of the hobby for a long while, hence my return so many years later. Don't want to see that happen to you and yah your Fiancé needs some you time. I am sure she hates the mess in the house for what looks like months now.

Only thing I could advise is downsize your fish care to whatever you can manage in the tanks you have in the garage and let your DT fallow at a high temp so you at least know you have a safe home for your future fish vs decide you are going to let whatever is in the tank survive but limit your future goals and nix sensitive fish. Would hate to see that but it is your call.

Future QT, maybe just observe and black mollie each addition, especially with the fleet of tangs and such. If the mollie gets sick, you can abandon the fish or then try and treat. Putting all your fish through a chemical brigade preemptively is so hard to watch and we don't do that to humans. I just don't personally want to deal with endless QT on my tank this time so electing to go all captive strait from the breeders, but very limiting to fish. I chose the clowns locally because I wanted to cherry pick the patterns on them so I am doing the basic QT on them as the LFS defiantly has something in the tanks as I know they are not broken down, cleaned, etc. Clowns are probably the easiest to QT and I hate seeing them all lethargic in the tank going through the QT especially since I got them all healthy and they were likely fine. I could be responsible for their death - not saving them. I could not personally handle that with all the more sensitive wild fish and don't want to dedicate the time. Would rather focus on QT the corals etc. as that is a forever task and less stressful before they are in the tank.

One trick on adding Tangs to the tank is to use the sump as you acquire you next tang. Gets their bio load on the tank but you can then add them to the DT with your next batch of tangs. It just adds one more place to hold the fish while you sort the addition out - assuming you have room for them of corse.

Offer stands if you want to off load something just to downsize and focus on what you feel is important. I have all the basic meds and test kits with space for a smaller tank. Would treat is as a loss, but I'll do my best with them. I am sure you are way more up to speed on all of this then I with this experience so I appreciate your knowledge.

Congrats on the Wedding! Hope you can get someplace stable and have an awesome stress free honeymoon somewhere. Your future wife will be around longer then the fish hopefully, so keep her happy!
 
Qwiv said:
yah, I hear you on QT. I have had a a few lessons over the years and I can really only vouch for a few methods for a few things but everything else... LOST. I see all these people offering this service now treating with meds and such and it makes me wonder if they are just creating disease resistance themselves or if it is the volume they are dealing with and talking about that makers this apparent. A lot of fish just die on the wholesale side that we typically don't see. Its why a .30 fish to the collectors is a $100 fish to you. You can be 100% sure some are not doing everything right and just riding the message boards and experimenting with everyone else as a hobby or Buisness. I am sure some are doing it well but not sure you know who to trust.

I had a outbreak in a tank after I homed a foxface from a friend, wiped everything out except the few strong that survived and could never add a fish again. Message boards were just a mess with what I should do and I ended up just keeping my surviving fish for many years after that and never adding any again, which was fine as I started downsizing the tank with a move later. Those super fish survived a tank crashing power outage that pretty much got me out of the hobby for a long while, hence my return so many years later. Don't want to see that happen to you and yah your Fiancé needs some you time. I am sure she hates the mess in the house for what looks like months now.

Only thing I could advise is downsize your fish care to whatever you can manage in the tanks you have in the garage and let your DT fallow at a high temp so you at least know you have a safe home for your future fish vs decide you are going to let whatever is in the tank survive but limit your future goals and nix sensitive fish. Would hate to see that but it is your call.

Future QT, maybe just observe and black mollie each addition, especially with the fleet of tangs and such. If the mollie gets sick, you can abandon the fish or then try and treat. Putting all your fish through a chemical brigade preemptively is so hard to watch and we don't do that to humans. I just don't personally want to deal with endless QT on my tank this time so electing to go all captive strait from the breeders, but very limiting to fish. I chose the clowns locally because I wanted to cherry pick the patterns on them so I am doing the basic QT on them as the LFS defiantly has something in the tanks as I know they are not broken down, cleaned, etc. Clowns are probably the easiest to QT and I hate seeing them all lethargic in the tank going through the QT especially since I got them all healthy and they were likely fine. I could be responsible for their death - not saving them. I could not personally handle that with all the more sensitive wild fish and don't want to dedicate the time. Would rather focus on QT the corals etc. as that is a forever task and less stressful before they are in the tank.

One trick on adding Tangs to the tank is to use the sump as you acquire you next tang. Gets their bio load on the tank but you can then add them to the DT with your next batch of tangs. It just adds one more place to hold the fish while you sort the addition out - assuming you have room for them of corse.

Offer stands if you want to off load something just to downsize and focus on what you feel is important. I have all the basic meds and test kits with space for a smaller tank. Would treat is as a loss, but I'll do my best with them. I am sure you are way more up to speed on all of this then I with this experience so I appreciate your knowledge.

Congrats on the Wedding! Hope you can get someplace stable and have an awesome stress free honeymoon somewhere. Your future wife will be around longer then the fish hopefully, so keep her happy!
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Thank you :)
 
Decent coralline growth.

End of April

8F26B0AE-8A8E-4203-8C1D-0B41BF22EAC9.png


June 10th



5167C5F0-2682-49C9-9688-476F525866FF.jpeg
 
No material update. Nitrates are down to roughly 60ppm, down from 100ppm from the beginning of July. Slowly working them back down with water changes. Po4 is >6ppm. Carbon dosing hasn’t done much to maintain the levels, but that’s not surprising given the tank is only a few months old.

Everything is going great, and hope to start adding corals in 30-60 days depending nutrient control and the frag tank coming back from Aqua biomics showing no diseases (other than Uronema, no getting rid of that).

C676341B-F264-4603-896E-2728FEF089E7.jpeg
 
Starter SPS frags STNd over multiple weeks. LPS are fine, but not thriving.

I suspect that allowing a tank to mature without any starter coral for too long supports an environment not conducive to coral. It’s been 2 months since those additions. I am going to try a single Bali slimmer frag again.

I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a hydrogen peroxide dose for a couple week based on my assumption that the biological environment is atypical.

An aquabiomics test would probably be a great way to support that test but I don’t know that I feel like waiting for multiple months to make all that happen.
 
Blaise006 said:
Starter SPS frags STNd over multiple weeks. LPS are fine, but not thriving.

I suspect that allowing a tank to mature without any starter coral for too long supports an environment not conducive to coral. It’s been 2 months since those additions. I am going to try a single Bali slimmer frag again.

I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a hydrogen peroxide dose for a couple week based on my assumption that the biological environment is atypical.

An aquabiomics test would probably be a great way to support that test but I don’t know that I feel like waiting for multiple months to make all that happen.
Click to expand...

If you feel that a more diverse set of bacteria will help you, you’re welcome to a cup of sand.

Or if you buy some Maxspect Nano Blocks, you can swap them out with the ones I have in my IM75.

Maxspect Nano-Tech Bio Block (2 blocks) | Premium Aquatics

Aquarium & Fish Supplies Superstore. Guaranteed Low Prices. Free Shipping for qualified orders. Aquarium supply for your aquarium fish, saltwater aquariums, freshwater aquariums and ponds. The best aquarium lighting, protein skimmers, aquarium chillers, calcium reactors, aquarium pumps for fish...
premiumaquatics.com premiumaquatics.com
 
RandyC said:
If you feel that a more diverse set of bacteria will help you, you’re welcome to a cup of sand.

Or if you buy some Maxspect Nano Blocks, you can swap them out with the ones I have in my IM75.

Maxspect Nano-Tech Bio Block (2 blocks) | Premium Aquatics

Aquarium & Fish Supplies Superstore. Guaranteed Low Prices. Free Shipping for qualified orders. Aquarium supply for your aquarium fish, saltwater aquariums, freshwater aquariums and ponds. The best aquarium lighting, protein skimmers, aquarium chillers, calcium reactors, aquarium pumps for fish...
premiumaquatics.com premiumaquatics.com
Click to expand...

I took some rocks from the frag system and put them in the sump. I doubt it’s going to do much at this point. My frag system has its own problems but a rock from that system better than nothing I guess. I’ve kinda hit my wits end so I’m just going to let the tank coast for a bit.
1A240A22-577E-40AB-A97D-E282CF155812.jpeg
 
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