Our first mini tank crash : /

[madducks42]

We're going through our first tank crash with our 6 month old 90 gallon tank. In the last week we've lost a torch coral, a favia frag, and possibly a royal gramma. One of the clownfish looks like it's sick and the BTA doesn't look great and the condy anemone is on the move for the first time in months. Joy.

Some of these things actually aren't related, they just decided to happen in the same week to kick us while we're down. The favia frag fell into a torch coral at some point in the night and didn't recover, it died within 24 hours. The torch coral that is in the process of dying is a new one I picked up a week ago. Looked great for the first few days and then went downhill fast. Most of it's exoskeleton is showing and I expect it to be completely gone in the next 24 hours. No idea what caused it, the other torch coral is doing great. We've had that one for 2 months or so. I did put them close to each other, not touching but close. I thought that torch corals were supposed to be okay next to each other though?

I noticed the royal gramma looking off a week ago. It's skin looked sort of cloudy and like it had a lumpy mucous film over it. At first I thought it was because my boyfriend had cleaned the sand and something had irritated it's skin because there was a lot of sand debris floating around. But it didn't clear up after a day and I noticed the royal gramma rubbing itself on rocks and on the sand, which seemed to only make things worse. Unfortunately the little bugger is fast and likes to hide in the rocks and we haven't been able to catch it. I saw it once yesterday for about 10 seconds and then it went back in hiding, haven't seen it at all today.

Today we noticed that one of the clownfish seems off. Usually it's a super aggressive feeder but showed no interest today It doesn't look like the royal gramma did, it's skin doesn't look bumpy or cloudy. But it seems like it's lost some of it's color around it's fins. I did manage to catch it and we have it in a hospital tank within the display tank, setting up a quarantine tank now to put it in. The only other fish in the tank are a purple tang and another clownfish. Both of them look fine but I'll probably catch the other clownfish and put it with the other one in quarantine. We're debating about the purple tang. The quarantine tank is a 20 gallon and we're concerned about stressing out the tang by catching it and then putting it in a smaller tank. Still not sure what the fish have, it doesn't look like ich. Maybe Brooklynella? The purple tang is the last fish we got which was about 6 weeks ago. We didn't quarantine it but it was at the LFS for 6 weeks by itself in a tank. The clownfish and royal gramma we got about 4 months ago. They've never had any health issues.

Because it's a fairly new tank we check the water parameters every couple days, and aside from having to dose daily to keep alkalinity up everything has been stable.

Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: Less than 5
Phosphates: 0
Copper: 0
Calcium: 410
Alkalinity: 9.3
Magnesium: 1400
Salinity: 1.025
PH: 8.08
Temp: 79.4

The good, yet frustrating, part of this is most of the stuff in the tank actually looks awesome. We don't have a lot of fish but we do have quite a few coral frags consisting of, zoas, hammer coral, torch coral, favias, octospawn, dendro, goniopora. They're all doing pretty good, most of the have grown quite a bit since they've been in the tank. The condy anemone still looks awesome although it's on the move so I'm guessing something is bothering it. I picked up the BTA about a month or so ago, it looked good for about 2 weeks and then started acting weird. Lost some of it's color, would hide at various points throughout the day, etc. It never moved from it's spot though. I actually thought it was going to split but it hasn't done it yet and it actually looks better today than it has in weeks. It did poop yesterday so maybe that's what it needed to make itself feel happy again.

If anyone has any suggestions for what could be causing some of the problems in our tank that would be appreciated. Our plan right now is to quarantine the sick clownfish, if I can catch the other one I'll probably quarantine that one too. I think we're going to leave the tang in the display tank for now. I haven't seen the royal gramma yet today so unless we take apart the tank I don't have anyway to catch that fish. I'm keeping an eye on the ammonia levels although if it does die within the rock between the starfish, emerald crabs, and hermit crabs I think they'll eat it pretty fast.

 

[gzr918]

It could possibly be a fungal or bacterial disease, I would try and treat the clown with furan 2 or maracyn 2 or your preferred antibiotic

 

[Chris A.]

Run carbon and do a lot of small water changes with matched perimeters to the tank. It could be a side effect of coral warfare

 

[madducks42]

I managed to find Kordon Rid Ich Plus which appears to be a mix of formalin and malachite green. I also picked up a bottle of Pro Aquatics Malachite Green. Doing some research now on what would be better to treat with, I'm guessing the Kordon stuff. Only the sick clownfish is in qt currently, I couldn't catch the other one which so far looks healthy. Is it possible the royal gramma and clownfish are showing signs of chemical warfare? We did a water change yesterday, 20%, ad a small 10% change today. We're planning on doing another small water change tomorrow and looking into running carbon.

 

[Chris A.]

You had a couple of corals kill each other , the slime goes in the water column and could affect a lot of other things , I'd do it just for piece of mind if nothing else. Hope your clown gets better

 

[Bendint]

You had a couple of corals kill each other , the slime goes in the water column and could affect a lot of other things , I'd do it just for piece of mind if nothing else. Hope your clown gets better

I agree with Chris run carbon and water changes to remove the toxins floating from the battle


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[madducks42]

Thanks all! We'll do another small water change tomorrow and either pick up some carbon from the pet store or do an overnight shipment tomorrow so we can get that going as well. Fingers crossed the tank is looking better soon!

 

[aresangel]

Malachite is a copper treatment. Just an FYI!


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[madducks42]

Well we did another water change last night and setup carbon in the GFO. The tank has stopped sliding downhill and what's left of the purple/gold torch actually looks good. I don't think it will be able to recover, about 90% of it's head is gone. But the few remaining tentacles actually look healthy. The royal gramma is still in hiding although I did see it yesterday so it's still alive, I can't really tell if it's looking better or worse since it was hiding in the rocks. The clownfish that was sick is in quarantine and being treated, it hasn't gotten worse but also hasn't gotten better and isn't eating. The rest of the fish in the tank still look fine and are eating just as greedily as ever. Not sure if we'll ever know for certain what happened but I given that we introduced several new corals in the last month and things started to react positively after the second water change and even better after the third, I suspect you guys were right and it was chemical warfare from some of the corals. Maybe it damaged some of the fish enough that they developed a bacterial infection?

We'll probably leave the tank alone for the next few days and do another water change this weekend like we normally do. The sick clownfish will stay in quarantine for a while, hopefully it recovers okay. Aside from running carbon, are there any tips for avoiding chemical warfare among corals in the future? None of our corals were touching, except for the acan that fell directly into the torch coral, but the tank had already started to go downhill before then so that's not what triggered. The new torch coral is what reacted the worst and the closed coral to it was another torch which from everything I've read should have been okay. All of our corals are scattered across the tank and not close to each other, but I've seen plenty of pictures of peoples mature tanks where corals are in much closer proximity than ours and their tanks are doing great. Do corals get used to their neighbors after a while? Are there some corals that you have to specifically look out for? I know torch is one to be careful of. And I think leather toadstools and softies in general?

 

[Chris A.]

Toadstool shed when growing , just keep a eye on the skin as it can smother other corals. Normally as long as the flow is good it shouldn't be a problem, but you never know until it happens.
Life of a reefer is always on the edge lol

 

[gzr918]

It's usually safe to make a judgment on coral hostility based on tentacle length. But always double check, certain ones like Acan echinatas and Favias seem safe but are pretty vicious little things