You ever pet your fish?

[+Hydro]

I got a tamini tang from RC on Friday. Poor guy came down with ich really bad, so bad that today I decided to put him on QT with copper. I was able to catch it right away (within seconds)...hoping this wouldn't stress the fish anymore. I covered the tank with a towel to give it as much piece as possible. After a couple of hours I decided to try and put a flake of food in to see if it would eat. The tang didn't go for it so I placed my hand in there to get out the flake...the tang came over and swam right in to my hand and turned on its side, I thought to myself this fish is wanting to be cleaned! I rubbed the fish on both sides and it just sat there in my hand for probably 10 seconds calm as it could be, then it casually swam away.

I really hope this fish pulls through, I think that its super cool now.

[GKarshens]

I used to have an Orange shoulder Tang that would eat the Nori from my hand and let me pet his side while he ate. Awesome fish! I hope your's makes it.

[Dena]

I had a 1ft puffer that would roll over for you to rub it's belly and let you pet it's back...and one of those algae blenny guys (can't think of the name) that I could pet while it was hanging out on rocks. I hope your guy makes it too...never want a fish to die even if it didn't like to be touched.

[Will]

i used to pet my octo

[+Hydro]

That's cool!

[+Hydro]

Found tamini dead this morning.

I'm getting tired of buying fish that just die. I have ordered them online, bought them in the local stores....same results. The tank is big, the paramters are kept perfect, there are no aggressive fish in my tank already....what is the deal? I'm getting pretty frustrated...in the last month we have lost over $500 in fish, but not only that the loss of the fish is dishearting.

What is worse is that we paid for a larger tamini tang at RC and they agreed to hold it for us. In the mean time they sold it to somoene else and offered this other smaller fish in its place. I don't think that it had been in there for very long...makes me wonder if I would have had the same results as the one that I paid for that had been there for a week.

[mFrame]

Awesome! How's he doing?

So sorry to hear about the loss. We got back from our trip over the fourth to find that our female Osc clown was dead in the biocube. Everything else was fine, params fine. No signs of damage. *sigh*

[Robb in Austin]

Hey Mike,

you might want to edit your post!

Sorry to hear your troubles Hydro.

[mhart032]

Man thats too bad, i hate to see fish die.. with your tank being fairly new i wouldn't think that the ich would have come from the new setup. the fish mite have already had it when you picked it up and there is a good possibility it had it before RC, i try and get the fish from them when they are still in the bags when they get the order in. they seem to do better to me, instead of being acclimated a couple times in the same week.

but anyway im sorry about the loss.. =\

[Crab Rangoon]

i try and get the fish when they are still in the bags when they get the order in.

they seem to do better to me, instead of being acclimated a couple times in the same week.

This is absolutely true, and I don't (currently) really flinch when my fish have ich, as 99% of the fish I get are very finicky - if not difficult - fish. This is true of tangs, too, and while it's suggested to add many of them early on, before allowing any dominance to set in - you're much better off quarantining before adding to a display.

I get 99.9% of all my fish directly from the shipping box, while I know this isn't an option available to everyone, it's certainly the easiest on the fish. My method is to acclimate the fish to the tank from the shipping bag, and introduce it to my refugium - which I use more as a QT than a fuge. I'm obviously not quarantining effectively for viruses/disease this way, but I'm definitely able to let the fish get it's wits about it as it finishes adjusting to my water parameters, and I can focus on feeding it. Only once I've had a QT fish taking well to at least two kinds of food, and typically pretty warmed up to the net/syringe as it's food source, do I introduce it to the aquarium.

Introducing new additions directly to the display is a lot more risky for the health of the new fish, more than the health of your current fish. A new specimen can suffer in the DT since it's not in the pecking order of your current fish come feeding time - and will often be a bit crypic/less active, and won't feel confident about picking up food quite yet.

I'm taking it one step further, and am going to rig a clear box up so that I may introduce the new specimen to the aquarium without letting any aggression play out. After being seen by the current fish for 2-3 days like that, I'll feel even more confident about it's journey into my tank being a safe one without issues. Hope that helps, and that your next Tangs pull through better!

[DaJMasta]

Have you considered a UV sterilizer? Do you have cleaner shrimp or fish (not a cleaner wrasse, but something that exhibits cleaner behavior)?

I've always heard that tangs are particularly bad with parasitic diseases and without those 'extras' or a FOWLR tank treated with ich meds, it can be incredibly difficult to keep them long term.

[mhart032]

Ich isn't as bad as it used to be. Many say that if the fish is stressed it's ich if the fish doesn't eat it's ich, everything is ich now days. But ich is easily treated there are good medications out for this now days. But a qt tank is deff a big help in this. And it's easy to set up one provided you have the space.

[Derek]

I used to have a Lawnmower Blenny that would let me pet him on top of the head. He would come up to the surface when I was feeding and I'd rub his little head.

[+Hydro]

Have you considered a UV sterilizer? Do you have cleaner shrimp or fish (not a cleaner wrasse, but something that exhibits cleaner behavior)?

I've always heard that tangs are particularly bad with parasitic diseases and without those 'extras' or a FOWLR tank treated with ich meds, it can be incredibly difficult to keep them long term.

I've got a commercial sized UV and about 10 cleaner shrimp in the tank (my best cleaners are my fire shrimp). Plus I feed nori and mysid soaked in garlic and zoe to help out too.

There was no aggression towards this fish at all that I noticed. I really thought that there would be but the other tangs could have cared less about it...and it ate 15 min after being put in the tank so it wasn't to stressed. When I came back to the office the next morning it went from no signs of ich to completely devasted by it which was strange to me. It continued to eat well until yesterday.

[+Hydro]

Jake sent me a PM about the fish and b/c of the situation he offered to replace it for me which I thought was really nice of him. I'm going to take him up on that but not right now, I'm going to give it a while.

I also thought it was really cool that Jake is reading the forums!

[mhart032]

That's great to hear that he's going to replace it for you. And yeah I agree it's cool that our sponsors are really involved in the forums as well. I wouldn't have thought with that big of a tank that the tangs would beat up on each other. You have plenty of room for all of them. If it got ich that fast then I would have to say no way it got it from your setup. It may have had slight signs or something when it was brought in and the stress of acclimation made it more pronounced. As far as Jake replacing it. The guys over at rc are good about things like that. I had a 6line that died the next day really I don't think it was RC fault at all it just didn't make it and they were very cool about a new one. But anyway good news man! The next one will be better!

Matt

[Crab Rangoon]

...the next morning it went from no signs of ich to completely devastated by it which was strange to me..

Coming from someone who's had ich on 95% of the fish I've introduced to my current tank, I can say that ich is MOST prominent in the morning. The only time any of my affected specimens "look bad" is bright & early in the morning. By the time I get home from work they've had 4 feedings & have been swimming around for 9-10 hours, and have cleared up to very minor/minimal ich coverage.

[mFrame]

I still think a QT tank is best. I've come around to the idea that ich is in all of our tanks, but last year I introduced a Kole tang straight to my tank. As soon as it hit the water, under actinics, I could see ich all over it but it was too late to catch him or pull him out since he immediately sought cover. Three days later he was dead, my large frozen-food-eating mandarin was dead, and all of my other fish had ich on them. Saying that the tang was stressed doesn't account for all of my other fish becoming infected at the same time.

A QT tank is easy enough to run that I'd recommend it. Don't let the joy of a new fish be ruined by watching some of your existing fish suffer or die. Just my two cents...

[slowdog]

Sorry to hear about your loss. I don't know if I'm missing anything in this in terms of what you did prior to introducing the fish into your main tank. After my initial experience with Ich and fish dying when first entering the hobby, I learned after difficulties that a minimum month long quarantine in a completely separate QT tank is the best way to go. It saved me a couple of times when new purchases would come down with ich or velvet. With the ich, I was able to treat in the QT and make sure the fish was completely healthy before introducing it into the main tank. With velvet, the disease happened so quickly and two weeks after I first put the fish in QT that there was nothing I could do. It was definitely a pain to not have the new purchase in the tank immediately, but after losing so much livestock initially, it ultimately became worth it. No matter how good an LFS is, the fish is exposed to different occupants in the tank from different shipments and origin points over the course of the time that it is there. Even if it's been there for a few weeks, there's nothing that keeps ich or other diseases from the day's shipment to get onto the livestock already in the tank. Again, I don't know if multi week quarantine is already part of your normal practice, so apologies in advance if this is already the case..

Found tamini dead this morning.

I'm getting tired of buying fish that just die. I have ordered them online, bought them in the local stores....same results. The tank is big, the paramters are kept perfect, there are no aggressive fish in my tank already....what is the deal? I'm getting pretty frustrated...in the last month we have lost over $500 in fish, but not only that the loss of the fish is dishearting.

What is worse is that we paid for a larger tamini tang at RC and they agreed to hold it for us. In the mean time they sold it to somoene else and offered this other smaller fish in its place. I don't think that it had been in there for very long...makes me wonder if I would have had the same results as the one that I paid for that had been there for a week.

[+Hydro]

I don't normally QT my new fish. I feel like it stresses them even more to just keep moving them, but I'm willing to try anything, I'm going to QT this powder brown that I bought at the same time as the tamini since it also has ich. All of my other fish are fine (mostly tangs), there are a couple of small spots on my foxface but nothing serious. Assuming that the powder brown lives I will keep it in the QT for a couple of weeks with copper before trying to introducing him again. My thinking is that the sooner you can have the fish in a low stress environment the better it will do, that is why usually place them in the display tank. I don't worry so much about my other fish and ich b/c they might get a couple of bumps on them but that's it. I also wanted to mention that most of the losses that we have had lately are from fish that had been in the tank for weeks and even months. Most of our losses were in the move and also most of the new fish we bought to add to the tank. The tamini I feel like we lost to ich, and maybe the powder brown, but our other losses I think was just from stress. This could have been stress of being shipped, moved from one tank to another, having our hands in there for a week...not sure.

Thanks for the suggestions. On the QT tank I was planning to use cupramine and follow the instructions. I was also going to raise the temp to 82 and change 50% of the water everyday with fresh salwater adding cupramine as needed, anything else that I need to know?

[Crab Rangoon]

On the QT tank I was planning to use cupramine and follow the instructions. I was also going to raise the temp to 82 and change 50% of the water everyday with fresh salwater adding cupramine as needed, anything else that I need to know?

Let me start with referencing a post from John Coppolino who might as well be an F'n wizard at successfully keeping fish - if you haven't read up on him, followed his tanks/expeditions/experience, there is a LOT of insightful stuff to read.

This complex of tangs within Acanthurus... the goldrim, achilles, and powder blue to name a few, falls victim regularly to that "dump and hope approach" I mention... these fish come in very stressed, usually in a weakened state with little fat reserves left... combine this with their tiny scaled thin skin, and they very often succumb to ich and other maladies... again it comes back to proper QT... people may buy one of these fish with it being seemingly free or free of ich in a store or through the mail... this is because most every fish system in the industry runs copper, ozone, UV, or something else that treats for this parasite... when we dump this fish into our reef tank in this weakened state if there is any ich present on the fish or in our system it attacks the fish in its weakened state... ich itself is not that bad, but to a fish like this in a bad state it will often put it over the edge...

Ich is very easy to treat for in QT with cupramine or other copper products. I only take my fish out of QT not only when they're disease free, but when they're fully adapted with their fat reserves restored... this benefits fish like this tremendously, as they are much more resistant to ich when they are settled in and fat and happy... putting the fish to marinate in this copper treated water in its weakened state allows it to adapt without the threat of ich. By adding the fish after that to the stressful environment that is our reef tanks results in a much higher success rate... with some fish I even place them in a transition tank hooked up to my large system... this introduces them to the water environment of my reef system without the stress of the "herd" in the display... if they take on something from there they go back into QT...

This is not the "easy way"... many people have the attitude that they'll just keep trying until one lives... which is unfortunate... we all have killed fish, but we have the moral obligation to learn from our mistakes and correct accordingly... I have a collection of rare tangs... some one of a kind... that I will share later this week... and again using the methods above you have the MOST control over the life of the fish... the "tang police" jump on so many people for keeping tangs in small tanks, when there are thousands of tangs that die as a result of this for every one that will outgrow a system...

You can read the entire post, and much more about his QT banter starting about here: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=13954917#post13954917 & http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13940800&postcount=115

Typically the most sound/efficient way to maintain the QT is to fill it with water from your display, and when doing water-changes, continue using water from your display tank. This will in turn make for very small but frequent changes on your DT - but ensures that the water you're using in the QT is definitely mixed & primed beyond necessity. I also see no reason to use standard salinity in the QT - running a mild hyposalinity is easier as you'll be mixing less saltwater per water-change (say a 2:1 or 3:1 saltwater:RO/DI ratio), and will be just-as-good if not better for QTing & medicating a fish. I would maintain it with Cupramine for sure, but you don't have to stop there.. You could go the extra mile and run Formalin, or Prazi - and once the fish is readily feeding, you could also soak the food in some Metronidazol as a preventive for 3-4 days; but this is more than some people will want to mess with :shrug:

Oh, and make sure you don't put the QT on the floor it'll compound the PITA-factor of removing the water for water-changes due to zero gravity feed for a hose, and I don't recommend using a pump to do it (just personal preference). Hope that helps!