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View Full Version : Could I have a disease?



MorganAtlanta
10-28-2012, 07:28 AM
I've been losing fish intermittently for the past several months. It's been about one a month or so. I've lost a ghost eel, naso tang, scribbled rabbit fish, spiny box puffer (could be unrelated, they are just hard to keep), and then this week a midas blenny that I'd had for over two years. Aside from the puffer, they were all eating well and showed no signs of stress or outward signs of disease. No white spots, velvet, fungus, flukes, etc. They just croaked. I'm wondering if my tank has an infection of something, maybe an internal parasite?

My parameters are pretty good, but not great for this site. Nitrate measures zero on an API test kit. Phosphate measures 0.19 on a Hannah Checker. Alk/Calc are okay, but little low.

The tank is pretty much a FOWLR except for kenya tree, teal palys and GSP.

The tank is a standard 125 gallon with a 29 gallon sump. I've only got 7 small fish left-- three anthias, a cardinal, a watchman goby, a kole tang and a longnose hawk.

I'm feeding two cubes of mixed frozen every other day, plus a very small amount of pellets twice a day for the anthias.

The current scrubber is an LED lit, single-sided, 8 x 10 screen waterfall with very good growth.

I'm battling a cyano outbreak also, but I think that is due to the high phosphate and probably unrelated to the fish issues.

Do fish loses like mine fit a pattern of an aquarium disease? From what I've read, they just don't seem to, so I'm a little baffled as to what could be killing them off.

Any thoughts?

RkyRickstr
10-28-2012, 07:37 AM
Bro, you scared the crap out of me.. lol.. u gotta change that tittle...

MorganAtlanta
10-28-2012, 08:19 AM
It got you to look...

sklywag
10-28-2012, 08:51 AM
Have posted on other sites with a more diverse crowd than us? Might be some fish geeks.
There was a while in my last set up I couldn't add fish for who knows why. Everything that went in lived about a week or so eating and swimming fine then in the morning or after work I'd see it behind the rocks with my clean up crew enjoying themselves.

MorganAtlanta
10-28-2012, 11:38 AM
I haven't, because it would go bad as soon as I get the question about my water change schedule and I say I haven't done a significant one in at least 6 months, and the fact that I don't have a skimmer. People will jump on that as clearly "the problem", but as my nutrient measures show, that's not it.

Also, I've wondered about stray current, but that's not it either as I've replaced all my powerheads and my main pump, and my heaters were out of the system all summer, so there's no electrical component that hasn't been replaced.

Garf
10-28-2012, 12:02 PM
Did they just disappear, or did you find the bodies. Intermittent, sounds like a hungry unseen predator, but obviously not the case if you've found them floating around.

MorganAtlanta
10-28-2012, 12:34 PM
Found them sunk to the bottom.

Garf
10-30-2012, 04:00 PM
Might be talking out of my hat, but don't the puffers give off toxins ?

MorganAtlanta
10-30-2012, 05:35 PM
When they croak, potentially, but that one was removed quickly, and was three months ago. Lost the rabbitfish and blenny since then.

sklywag
10-30-2012, 07:50 PM
Yeah. I know how it is when you talk to people and they find out you're a scrubber. I recently met an importer for a fish company here locally at an adoptian/foster family meeting and he asked if I were part of a club. Told him I'd be an outcast because I don't skim. I scrub. He sort of agreed but then said whatever works for you.

When I was losing my fish it wasn't fish I already owned. It was only new fish that wouldn't make it. I just recently added a ground probe to my tank after getting zapped. Until then my fish and corals were doing fine. I thought I read somewhere that it doesn't effect them because they're not completing the circuit like we do or something to that ilk.

You're losing them slowly over months? Starving to death? Can't be with a scrubber.

sklywag
10-30-2012, 08:06 PM
check this out. http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/f6/tank-crashing-193805.html