jon_703 February 27, 2016 February 27, 2016 Please don't tell me this is hair algae. Tank has been cycling for about 2 weeks now. Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk
Origami February 27, 2016 February 27, 2016 Sure looks like it at this point. Plus - that's not a huge problem. It's just a sign that you have nutrients available to support it. If you're just starting out, let it grow a little and then start manually harvesting it. Let it soak up the nutrients while your biological filtration matures, and then export the nutrients trapped in its tissues by removing it.
gmerek2 February 27, 2016 February 27, 2016 No worries mon! We have all had it. The critters love to eat that tender fresh stuff too which will help when you get crabs and snails.
jon_703 February 27, 2016 Author February 27, 2016 It's a little on the rock and some on the back wall of the tank. Should I take out the rock and rinse it, and clean the walls of the tank? Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk
YHSublime February 27, 2016 February 27, 2016 No, you should breath, and relax. Have a beer, let your tank keep going, as mentioned, your snails and hermits will eat it, and it's s sign of having nutrients, once it grows you can pull out what you can and toss it. There is plenty of hair algae in the ocean. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
jon_703 February 27, 2016 Author February 27, 2016 No, you should breath, and relax. Have a beer, let your tank keep going, as mentioned, your snails and hermits will eat it, and it's s sign of having nutrients, once it grows you can pull out what you can and toss it. There is plenty of hair algae in the ocean. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I'm still kinda new to the hobby which is why I'm about to ask if it is at all harmful to livestock? Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk
jon_703 February 28, 2016 Author February 28, 2016 Nope, it's fine! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Soooo I added the correct amount of rock now, 75 pounds of rock. I have a black damsel in my tank and he has white spots. Is it too late to get rid of him before an ich outbreak? Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk
YHSublime February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 Yes. If it's ich, its present in the system. Your tank cycled in two weeks? When did you add the clown? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
jon_703 February 28, 2016 Author February 28, 2016 Yes. If it's ich, its present in the system. Your tank cycled in two weeks? When did you add the clown? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I cant confirm if it's ich. The damsel had these spots when I got it. Is there any way to confirm it's ich? If ight is ich, what does that mean for my system? Start all over? Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk
YHSublime February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 Is your system only two weeks old? Do you have any inverts? How many fish do you have? How big is your system? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
jon_703 February 28, 2016 Author February 28, 2016 Is your system only two weeks old? Do you have any inverts? How many fish do you have? How big is your system? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Yes about 2 and a half weeks now. It's a 75g system. Only one black damsel and about 20 snails. No inverts. Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk
YHSublime February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 Snails are inverts! You're moving to quick to fast. Nothing good happens fast in this hobby. How do you know you're done cycling? If it's ich, you can either deal with it and qt your fish for 8 weeks, or just deal with it being in your tank. Read up about qt and what it will take, it's not for the faint of heart. You should, regardless of a qt, run your system for 8 weeks without livestock anyways, which would be ideal to pair with a qt. just suggestion, and not really the standard practice, although it is a good one. Regardless, slow it down! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
jon_703 February 28, 2016 Author February 28, 2016 Snails are inverts! You're moving to quick to fast. Nothing good happens fast in this hobby. How do you know you're done cycling? If it's ich, you can either deal with it and qt your fish for 8 weeks, or just deal with it being in your tank. Read up about qt and what it will take, it's not for the faint of heart. You should, regardless of a qt, run your system for 8 weeks without livestock anyways, which would be ideal to pair with a qt. just suggestion, and not really the standard practice, although it is a good one. Regardless, slow it down! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk : ( sorry I was typing and not thinking. Take out livestock and let it run and ich should be removed over time? Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk
paul b February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 Yes it is hair algae and that is a good thing. If your tank did not grow hair algae at this point, something would be wrong. I have much more hair algae in my tank now and my tank is very old. It's normal and grows on every healthy reef in the world. I took this about 2 years ago on one of the outer Hawaiian Islands. It is hair algae. The Government decided not to change the water in the Pacific Ocean or scrub the rocks. They all went out and had a nice glass of Merlot and forgot about it and that is what you should do. One more thing. It will probably grow a lot more for a while.
AlanM February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 : ( sorry I was typing and not thinking. Take out livestock and let it run and ich should be removed over time? Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk He doesn't mean slow down your posting. He means slow down your reefing. You are adding fish and other things too quickly. Most people here measure in months the time before adding any fish to a new tank. Months is no time at all to wait. The ocean cycled for billions of years before fish showed up. 8) You can read up on marine ich and the lifecycle and how to "cure" it from various places on the web. If the fish is infected, then both the fish and the tank are infected since part of the lifecycle of the parasite involves living on solid surfaces in the tank. If you want to get rid of it you'd need to pull out the fish, put the fish in a smaller tank with no rock/sand where you'd treat it with anti-parasitic drugs for over 2 months and do water changes daily to keep the ammonia level in check. During that time you'd leave your main tank running (snails are OK the parasite doesn't infect them) and in the same time that your fish was being freed of ich the parasites in the tank would go through their lifecycle and die, not having found a fish to host one part of their lifecycle. As YHSublime says, though, doing a treatment tank with fish in it is not for the faint of heart. It is 2 months of daily work doing water changes and dosing cupramine and observing the fish carefully to see if it's eating, siphoning out uneaten food, adding more meds, testing medication levels... If you do it successfully you would have done a pretty difficult thing. It's difficult enough to get a fish completely healthy that plenty of people just accept the level of risk and parasites in their tank and instead try to keep the fish happy and well fed enough to have a strong immune system that can tolerate and combat the ongoing infection.
monkiboy February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 I cant confirm if it's ich. The damsel had these spots when I got it. Is there any way to confirm it's ich? If ight is ich, what does that mean for my system? Start all over? when you have a moment check out these threads as a great resource for where you are now and primers on these topics. it'll get you a baseline on proper quarantine and treatment protocols, it'll help you figure out what your capabilities are and where you want them to be, and what methods, if any, you will employ for your own protocol/methods in quarantine/treatment of livestock. I put them in the order that I think would best suit you. hope you find it very helpful, sir. if you have any particular questions, feel free to PM and i'd be glad to help sir - g'luck! http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-to-quarantine.189815/ http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/understanding-ich.188770/ http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/ich-eradication-vs-ich-management.188775/ http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/fish-diseases-101.189284/
Anemone February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 Soooo I added the correct amount of rock now, 75 pounds of rock. I have a black damsel in my tank and he has white spots. Is it too late to get rid of him before an ich outbreak? Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk I'd recommend returning all fish if you can. Without fish, the ich eggs will hatch and the larvae should starve and die (I think they are called tomonts and tomites but you get the idea). After a few weeks without fish the tank should be ich free. If you keep the fish, the bad news is that the effective treatments would kill off your invertebrates if you try to do it in the display tank. Not just snails and crabs, but also the smaller ones that came with your live rock. This could be a disaster as now you are dealing with ammonia from dead and rotting inverts in addition to the ich. As others said, the practical solution is to use a hospital tank. Or possibly your sump if you've got one. You'd have to turn off the return pump of course. Keeping fish alive in a hospital tank is a ton of work since you won't have effective biofiltration established. The combination of ich infection, nitrite and ammonia exposure, and the toxicity of the treatment (copper, formalin, or lower salinity) can be tough to survive which is why returning the fish should be preferred. Best of luck to you and your fish. Please let us know what happens.
AlanM February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 Don't use the sump if you're going to be treating with copper or other meds. You can't get it all out and it will contaminate the rest of the tank when you turn it back on. Get a cheap dedicated tank for meds if you end up doing it.
WheresTheReef February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 Lots of good advice above. Would definitely look into monkiboy's recommended readings. His advice is really worth listening to. At this point, consider everything you have as infected. If it is only the damsel, then I would also consider returning the fish to give yourself enough time to research, plan and setup an appropriate QT and treatment protocol. Let your tank go through the fallow period (w/o fish) to eradicate it from your system. Take this time to let your tank properly cycle and mature. It sucks to start this way, but at least you don't have a tank full of fish that are in danger of death at this point. I speak from experience. For future reference, don't buy fish with visible issues and not properly eating. I have crossed a couple of LFS from my shopping list as I have seen too many issues with parasites and infections over time. I prefer buying locally and supporting our local fish stores (LFS). I am one to look at all tanks in a LFS for visible signs of issues and how they care for their store and livestock. Even with this, you can't be certain that fish and/or inverts aren't infected so quarantining all your new arrivals is important. This hobby comes with lots of challenges, but it's rewarding once things get established. I'm not quite there yet . Good luck and definitely continue to seek advice.
Anemone February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 Don't use the sump if you're going to be treating with copper or other meds. You can't get it all out and it will contaminate the rest of the tank when you turn it back on. Get a cheap dedicated tank for meds if you end up doing it. Would you worry even if the sump was bare bottom? Or at least the substrate was cleared out after?
AlanM February 28, 2016 February 28, 2016 Would you worry even if the sump was bare bottom? Or at least the substrate was cleared out after? Most people do. If they're giving away a free tank they will disclose that it was used with copper, for instance. It may be superstition, but people worry that it soaks into the silicone or other plastic bits.
Anemone February 29, 2016 February 29, 2016 This makes me think of the movie Alien, where the blood from the face hugger ate through almost the whole ship. "Molecular Acid" they said. As hard as this is for me to imagine, it's better safe than sorry, eh? A scientist that I very much respect was wont to say: "Failure to imagine does not constitute proof."
jon_703 February 29, 2016 Author February 29, 2016 Hey everyone!thank you sooooo much for the help and links to reference in regard to this unfortunate situation. I will follow up again tomorrow to this post in more detail on what's going on.....just been trying to deal with this Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk
Steve175 March 17, 2016 March 17, 2016 Did things settle out? BTW, I have never run a system free of Ich. But also, with a healthy system, the fish have never been affected. This is probably heretical speak, but if I were in your situation I would do nothing for a while. As reinterated above, slow way down and let things settle. Meaning don't add a single new thing for a month or so. . .
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