Help with tank

[Mango_Fish]

Finally, my tank is doing great. The corals are growing exceptionally and the tank looks great but one problem I have sick or velvet on a couple of my fish. How do I get rid of this disease without killing my tank? I know there’s reef safe options. I have used one in the past. I will say I’ve had very bad luck with fish over the time and have probably bought over 50 fish and only about five of them have survived overall I’m not gonna name the store that I get them from but I’ve had many cases of buying fish from there and getting it again and again. I have a scopes tang and my tank and he is the one that has it the most. funny enough my two rasses that I have in my tank do not have it at all. Eventually I’m gonna need to rehome the scopes tang, so I wanna try to figure out how to get the disease away before I do anything with him. Because I would love to eventually add a bio yellow tank or getting a couple new rasses for the tank, but I’m too worried to buy anything until I get the disease done first.
 

thanks, matt

[ReeferMan]

I just went through this and pulled all my fish from the display and treated them with copper in a QT tank and went fishless for over 76 days. Velvet usually kills things quickly. Polylab is supposed to make something you can treat in the tank, but I did not go that route. Wrasses have a slime coat, so they do not normally show up with spots. I would treat before adding any more fish or they will get it as well. 

[Mango_Fish]

Thanks ReeferMan, should I pull out all the fish, or all that are affeced and how do I keep the nutrince up with no fish? and how do i set up a qt tank?

[ReeferMan]

You need to treat the whole tank or remove them all and QT them. You need the parasite to die off without a host to attach to. You can still feed your corals. QT is basically water, pvc pipes for hiding, filter and powerhead. You can't cycle it that quickly so you have to do water changes every 3-4 days. Not a fun experience. 

[ranger]

ozone and hp works........ask me how i know.

[Mango_Fish]

Would UV help??

[WheresTheReef]

It's worthwhile trying to determine what you're dealing with. Velvet is way more deadly than ich. The number of spots can be used as a indicator. See link below.

https://humble.fish/community/threads/marine-velvet-disease.12/

 

You can approach this in two ways, eradicate or manage. Eradication requires removing the fish, treating them in a QT and running the tank fallow. Managing means trying to keep high quality water, good nutrition and trying to minimize stress. UV at proper rates can help with both ich and velvet.

 

Setting up a QT, if done correctly, can make a significant impact in success in the hobby. A simple setup such as a 20g long is good enough. It's best to have separate equipment to reduce the chances of cross contamination.

 

https://humble.fish/community/threads/quarantine.2/

 

You can go about quarantine in two ways. Observation only vs treating prophylactically. A QT for only observation will help you get to know your new fish, look for diseases (treat if needed) and also work to get a new fish eating without competition and stress from other territorial fish. I choose to treat fish to minimize the chances of introducing parasites into the DT where it can destroy your fish population. The QT also helps to minimize acclimation. I adjust the QT to closely match the vendor salinity. Many online vendors run low salinity e.g. 1.018-1.020. I always ask before the fish ship, but also verify when the fish arrive. I can then float them for temp acclimation, and do a very quick water acclimation before putting them into the QT. More recently, I have started performing Safety Stop baths pre-QT. Just know that part A does have formalin so it requires safe handling. 

 

Of course, it all begins with sourcing fish that are somewhat healthy. Unfortunately, loss is likely inevitable, but it looks like you've lost a lot of fish. What time span? How did you lose them? Did they die immediately and do you know what they died of? Having something like velvet in the DT and introducing a stressed fish can create an outbreak and lead to significant loss. If you're buying from a vendor with very unhealthy fish likely means you need to find another source of livestock imo.

 

Trying to minimize fish loss should be a high priority since we are dealing with living animals that depend on us to survive. It's good for you to take a step back to analyze how you're doing things and see what you can do differently moving forward.