Newbie whitespot warning

[Monkeyboy]

Hello,
I'm new to this forum and have read lots of the threads here and think that now, belatedly, i understand the problem with my tank.
I have been successfully keeping a tropical freshwater tank for a couple of years and have just made the move to marine. However I now find i was woefully unprepared for the horrors of marine diseases. We (my girlfriend and I) have been maturing the tank (60litres - small i know but only wanted a couple of fish until next tank purchase.) The ammonia/nitrite = 0 nitrate minimal. Protien skimmer and RO water was mistakenly thought to be enough to secure a safe tank.
So two days ago we went to our local fish shop and bought a couple of captivity bred black and white clownfish and some live rock. All good, fish were healthy and happy.
Next day i see a couple of tiny spots and think 'that looks like white spot' but also thought that maybe i was being paranoid as all fish in the shop looked healthy and there was nothing suspicious on any of the fish i saw there. I started a careful watch and yesterday i was almost sure that there were more spots appearing. I couldn't quite tell as i had the fish only for one night.
I have not got any medicine for my fish.
I can't go and buy any because i can't get to the only shop round here that sells marine medicine.
I feel really bad because i've been trying some freshwater dips but the little white spots multiply exponentially and seem to be eating the upper layer of the fish skin. It looks really painful and i'm powerless to do anything else until the medicine i've ordered arrives.
I'm hoping that they will survive the night but the poor little baby fish are covered in white blobs and just flapping around at the bottom.
I guess my point is that the shop must have had the facilities to keep whatever diseases were floating around (from the discussions i've read i'd guess amyloodium? - spelling - of the other version of whitespot type parasite) but as other people have written, i'm no expert and have no microscope! although would look if i had one. They must have been able to keep the free floating parasites at a level low enough to not be apparent to me.
So when the fish get into my tank i foolishly put the bag full of shop water into my tank to balance the temperature for 20 minutes then put a hole in it to slowly mix the waters together and after another 10 minutes enlargened the hole and let the fish swim out by itself. They looked very happy.
I got back from work today and they are on deaths door.
I'm annoyed that i was so complacent as to believe that there was nothing wrong with the fish shop water/fish.
Now i'm watching two little fish slowly die, hoping they'll survive until some medicine that might kill them in their weakened state anyway arrives.
Anyway,
a warning to all - be more prepared than i was, at least have a few remedies on standby even if you never have to use them.
Pierre - Monkeyboy

[instantsquid]

Sorry to hear about your woes Pierre. What medicine have you bought? You should be aware that if you have live rock in the tank, some medication (noticeably those containing Copper) will kill off any invertebrates living on the rock. If it is Amyloodinium (a very nasty disease) then you ideally you need to treat the fish in a seperate tank. However it does not sound like Amyloodinium to me, from your description. It could be Whitespot (Cryptocaryon irritans) or it could be Brookynella hostillis. Maybe do a search for both diseases and see if the symptoms help you identify the fish disease further.

Good luck,
- Ian

[Monkeyboy]

Last night was horrible, the fish disease got worse and worse, lots of little white blobs forming all over the fish, at one point I saw one of them turn into a little streamer of white goo coming off the fish. I was imagining this to be like an explosion of fish eating bugs, I scooped out the fish and put them in freshwater for 60 seconds but the spots never seemed to diminish.
Slowly over the evening the top layer of scales seemed to be eroded away and eventually one of the little fish died.
I managed to find some anti slime and velvet medicine that claimed could be used with marine fish to kill parasites so gave the tank a dose but i felt at the time this was too little, too late.
When I woke up this morning I found the other little fish was dead. All in all not a very good start to marine fish keeping.
My girlfriend was very upset and I feel an overwhelming amount of responsibility for the suffering they went through.
I can’t remember the name of the medicine I ordered but it hasn’t arrived yet anyway, but it did claim to not hurt inverts too much ‘ used with care’ was the term I believe. I chose that one as I did not want to pollute the tank with copper for potential future invertebrates. After reading a few threads I’m not sure it will even work as copper is not the active agent. It is a parasite killer manufactured by Kent…
Now I have a tank with a lump of rock and potentially a dose of copper from the med I put in.
I’ve learned a lot from this experience and will not put any more fish into my tank until I’m sure they won’t die.
I’m reluctant to scrap the tank and start a whole new set up if it can be avoided as I spent a lot of time already maturing the filter, getting the water right…etc…
At the moment I am considering the following options –
1) completely sterilise the tank as there is only a tiny bit of live rock and start all over again.
2) wait 80 days for all the bugs to die (first option is actually quicker but more hassle)
3) lower the salinity to kill any parasites left in the tank for a few weeks and try again. Carefully.

Option 3 looks like the fastest way to get back on track but at this point I’m not willing to compromise the health of any more fish for the sake of a few weeks.

I would appreciate any advice on how to stop this sort of thing happening again. My tank is effectively a QT anyway as anything I put in will be the only thing in there and before adding too many more things a larger tank will be purchased.

60 litre (ish) tank – 400l/h filter – V400 protein skimmer with 2000l/h pump.
I also read somewhere that micro bubbles can cause illness. – could somebody please explain this?

[Wombat]

I tend to think, from your description, this is more likely to be Brooklynella, as instant squid suggests, especially the excess mucus production. Rather than marine white spot.

As for treatment I'd be tempted to wait the 6-8 weeks myself

Re microbubbles they can contribute to gas bubble disease due to supersaturation of gases. This most commonly affects Anthius in reef systems

[Monkeyboy]

Cheers for the advice guys, i've been looking everywhere about fish parasites and i think your right about the brooklynella. it all fits with that disease. Have decided to go for the 6-8 weeks running an empty tank and will probably go for a little sump to hang my protein skimmer off as the 'bubble stop' is actually a bubble leak. Less hassle for the fish that way too i suppose.
Gonna sort out a QT as well, have read about the 3 tank 3 day method of making sure no whitespot makes it to the tank. has anybody had success with this or just the scientist who did it? Will it stress the fish too much? As i'm considering this as a possibility as well as getting medicines to cover pretty much every disease.

[instantsquid]

Not familiar with the "3 tank 3 day" method - and without hearing more I couldn't comment. However, experience suggests that if something is too good to be true, it usually is. I run a seperate quarantine setup and generally leave my fish in it for about 6 weeks. This is generally considered enough time for any disease to become visible, at which point I would use an appropriate treatment.
This is one of my favourite articles on quarantine procedures - have a read!
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-10/sp/feature/index.php

- Ian.

[Tiggsy]

so you had zero live rock until you added the fish?

what did you mature? an internal filter? do you not plan to use LR for filtration?

unless i missunderstand i would suggest you plan your setup further before anything else!

[Dr Bee]

Hi,

well it's not considered to be a scientific method for the curing of white spot. It only comes form one worker at one university and is a web publication which as far as I can tell it isn't peer reviewed (critical to ensure scientific quality) so I'm skeptical

but the big reason not to use it is it is this method is described for treating freshwater white spot (Ichthyophthirius multifiliis) NOT marine white which is Cryptocaryon irritans a different and not very closely related parasite

[Monkeyboy]

Hello,
Definately going to fully quarantine everything going into tank, there was no live rock in my tank until the fish went in.
I was assured in the shop that it had been cured and would help the filtration rather than hinder it. Saying this i got my infected fish from the same place.
I matured an internal filter for two months to make sure it was fully cycled. 0 ammonia / nitrites.
I am planning on building a nitrate filter and sump.
The article i read about this three tank changes can be found here:

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/3daytransfer.html

The reason i assumed (possibly wrongly) that some scientist had carried this test out is because the first line of the article is:
'Colorni (1985) successfully achieved the total eradication of Cryptocaryon irritans by switching fish between two aquaria every three days for four switches in total.'
It can be seen that '3 day 3 tank' was wrongly quoted. If anyone has actually attempted this I would be interested to know how it went.
I am not planning to rely on live rock alone to filter my tank although i do have some it's mainly just to make the fish happier and to provide support to the filtration already there. I'm considering getting more though.
Pierre

[Wombat]

When I read that paper that wasn't the take home message I got from it. It does concentrate on hyposalinity treatments

The only reference I found on it was

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/BODY_FA006

but a bit of a shocker IMHO and for freshwater white spot

[craighuckins]

Do some more research before you do anything else. A protein skimmer and Live rock will provide excellent filtration for your reef, or would have done as it is likely now dead rock after being hit with an anti - parasite treatment. Is the medicine you were trying to get Kent RXP by any chance? this is a capsicin based treatment derived from chillies which irritates the fishes mucus membranes, causing excess mucus production which stops the parasite encysting. The ironic thing is that the attempts at curing the fish have probably contributed more to their demise than the disease itself - at the end of the day given good water quality & peace and quiet fish that are still feeding wil generally rid themselves of whitespot. If I were you I'd think about the system that I want, plan it carefully then build it SLOWLY. A reef tank starts to mature at about 5 - 6 MONTHS and probably doesn't mature fully untill at least a year old. Chin up Pierre! We all get disasters from time to time when new to the hobby. Just remember to use the compounded knowledge that is Ultimate reef and remember the mantra of 'the only things that happen quickly in reef tanks are bad ones....' Welcome to the hobby of the eternally skinted!

[craighuckins]

The '3 for 3' strategy is a short term hyposalinity treatment explained here:
http://www.marineaquariumadvice.com/aquarium_fish_3.html

[Wombat]

The '3 for 3' strategy is a short term hyposalinity treatment explained here:
http://www.marineaquariumadvice.com/aquarium_fish_3.html

But that credits the 3 day treatment to Colorni's 1985 paper which does not mention this method at all