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Good call Rambler.

I've had the felt sock in since Sunday morning, it's now late Sunday night /early Monday morning... I was out all day, came home to I think things looking worse, not better.

Did a 10g water change.

Fish look annoyed...not swimming around all too much...eating minimally. Lots of darting and generally hanging out, the 3 of them (2 clowns, 1 chromis) in one spot. The other Chromis continues to hide up behind the j tubes. That's status quo since the day I got him though.

I remain confused.
 
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Yeah one clownfish died. (SA bred Ocellaris Clownfish purchased as a pair from Manhattan Aquariums) His coloring was off Monday night. Tuesday morning it was the same (more yellow than orange) but he was swimming around, albeit near the bottom and not very fast. Didn't eat breakfast Tuesday morning while the other clown and the chromis scarfed it all down as I was dropping it in.

Was dead when I got home from work. Laying face down on the sand half wedged in a rock from the current, clearly starting to decay. Hermit was starting to pick him apart. I scooped him out while the other clown looked at the process forlornly. It was uh...sad.

Water is still cloudy. I did a 50% change last night and put in the new skimmer which is looking like a beast...it's producing foam though it's not brown yet. I have a feeling it'll work out well long term though. Definite upgrade from my other one. Whether or not it helps with bacteria is another story.

The felt sock and removing some dead chaeto has helped a little with the debris issue, I don't see that like I did, but I still definitely have the milky white clouds going on. The water was just as cloudy this morning as it was before the change last night. BTW, when I did the change I gravel vac-ed some rather than just siphon off water. Pulled out some brown junk from some of the sand.

I can do a 20-25% change again tonight, but not a 50% till at least very late tonight or on Thursday. I won't have enough RO/DI to make a second batch (ie another 25%) till later....then the salt has to mix in etc. I don't like the idea of mixing salt water and putting it in 10 minutes later either. I've read that can burn the fish.

Looking at UV units.

I take it there's no test for bacterial infection?

Ammonia, nitrite both 0, as they have been since mid November. Nitrate = 0 (again, go refugium) pH 8.2-8.3 ish. SG 1.024-1.025. temp is good. Flow is good. (So good I can see my powerheads blasting the milky water around)

Is it worth my looking at antibiotic treatments?
 

andylee

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No antibiotics. You'll wipe the tank and have to completely re-cycle. Are you sure ammonia, etc. are ok? If it's bacteria, they have to be feeding off something. Whatever it is, water changes will eventually dilute it out. You may want to consider putting the remaining fish in a hospital tank until then, though, since we now know that whatever this is is having a harmful effect.

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Ammonia is 0. I've taken to measuring it daily since this problem started getting bad, a couple times I did it twice a day. Nitrite too just to make sure I'm not nuts. According to the pretty colors in the test tubes, I'm perfectly sane.

Yesterday I rinsed out, with alternate-ingly very hot and very cold water, the felt sock I put in on Sunday. Nothing is still alive in that after that routine. I plan on rinsing it with RO/DI water, then soaking it in different RO water and swapping it back and repeating the process tomorrow. I don't think I want to go more than 48 hours with one sock if there is bacteria in the water. Also going to get some replacements. I toyed with microwaving the sock for 30 seconds just to make sure.

I'll probably do another 20% change tonight while I make more RO/DI for another 20% another day (probably tomorrow) If I wait to do a 50 tonight it'll be 2 AM and I'll be even more of a zombie.

UV comes Monday. Couldn't get it sooner. It's an inline model that's going on one of my 2 return legs. I was honestly tempted to get 2 for a few minutes...

I'm going to work on getting my hospital tank up ASAP. I need to replace a few items and fix my stand first. Need more hours in the day or to just not go to work.
 

andylee

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Hard to say what the problem is. The sock probably won't help with bacteria. The finest sock mesh is 100 microns. Bacteria are like 2 microns.

Making time to maintain your tank is rough. I usually stay up to do the work also. I guess that's why rich people pay service companies to do all the work.

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Water going cloudy - with big update

Update over the past 24 hours...

I have an inline UV Sterilizer on the way from saltwatercritters. It's getting plumbed right into one of my return legs. (i toyed with getting 2, one for each leg, but also like having enough $ to eat) Unfortunately, I couldn't get it till Monday. So I sucked it up and bought, at Petco, this thing, last night, because I was starting to panic as things were getting worse, even with 50% water changes.

http://www.petco.com/product/114522...zer-with-Power-Head.aspx?CoreCat=OnSiteSearch

I could only get the 24watt unit, the biggest, most powerful one, allegedly 120 gph, "rated" for a tank 2x the size of mine.

It's basically a self contained UV unit/pump/powerhead in one. It sucks in the water through a foam pad, runs it through the (surprisingly long) UV cylinder, then blows it back out a pipe with fairly low velocity. It's silent, though it does blow some bubbles at first. That seems to have stopped though after 12 hours of use. I dropped it directly in my tank at the side, near the front where I had space. I had no room left in my sump.

The good news is that after that 12 hours... my water is almost completely clear. The bacteria bloom appears to be gone. My water is clear now where as last night it looked like someone had poured a (big) glass of milk in it. I couldn't even see halfway from one side to another, front to back. Now I can see clearly through my tank (end to end) into the next room.

I'm NOT going to run this thing full time...letting it run till I get home from work tonight then probably shutting down for at least a few hours. I don't wan to irradiate my bio filter. Also, when I get the inline UV, I'm going to remove this altogether and keep it in reserve / for the QT tank.

So that's the good news.

The bad news...

My other clownfish perished.

Last night he ate well, as did the Chromis. He was swimming about the tank up until I went to sleep (late again, you'll see why in a second). However I noticed some...stuff on him. It wasn't Ich... I couldn't see the tell tale salt grain looking thing (again, hard to see given the milky water). It could have been Brookynella or Velvet. Again, I'm not sure and I don't think I can say anything definitively given the clarity issues. All I know was I saw some white-ish "stuff" on his frontal sections and under the moon lights, it was quite apparent.

Unlike the other clown death, this guy wasn't turning yellow or looking lethargic or not eating. He chomped down dinner and was out exploring the tank as per the norm right up until I went to sleep.

I figured I should err on the side of caution though and remove him. I prepared a heated, pH adjusted dip with some blue in it as well that would at least buy me some time. Unfortunately I couldn't catch him. The little guy was fast. I even tried a sneaky approach with 2 nets. Tried just going for it, tried creeping up, but he out smarted me every time and hid in places I couldn't to get him. Clearly I'm not a professional. If whatever was eating at him was evil, it wasn't affecting his ability to swim. He was about as fast as anything I've ever seen. And clearly could see fine as he saw me coming from 36 inches away, in the dark too.

When I got up this morning I had the pleasure of seeing the water clear, but the displeasure of him laying on the sand, dead, clearly starting to decay, with 2 hermits picking at him.

<--- sad fish

Though also not surprised really.

Where I go from here remains to be seen. I still have the 2 Chromis in the tank who look healthy and are growing - when they are out and about (knocks on fake wood desk) and a metric ton of snails and a few crabs. I guess we'll see how things pan out in the coming weeks. I'm not adding any more fish to that tank for at least 2, maybe 3 months. If it is something parasitic, in theory it'll attack the chromis next...right? I could remove them...in a dream. I didn't come close to catching the clowns, the chromis are smaller and faster and hide more. Treating the DT directly, chemically, seems and sounds like a bad idea, even with my lack of coral...I don't want to do it. My current plan is to UV with the inline, water change weekly and just wait it out, unless someone has a better idea.

I sorta want to say those clowns had something latent on them when I got them and that started the whole mess. Serves me right for not QT-ing them. I'll never do that again. There's also the theory that there was something in my water that got them. Anyway, as my coworker likes to say often:

"Experience is what you get when you don't have it".
 

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