Let’s talk about fish.
My husband and I have a 180 gallon saltwater aquarium. He researched for at least three years before we finally started working on our own. My husband and I (I use the term “I” loosely because he did the lion’s share of the work) built a bar in our basement with our aquarium being the showcase piece for it. He did a beautiful job. And though I started out with a “whatever” attitude about the tank, it was impossible not to get involved.
I assumed he would take care of it while I enjoyed it.
Newsflash: When your husband works graves on a police officer’s schedule (which includes numerous court dates on his supposed weekend), you have to get involved to ensure the tank is running smoothly and your fish/coral are healthy. So unbeknownst to me and my eye rolling “over it” attitude while my husband gushed on about saltwater aquariums pre-ownership….I was slowly suckered in. Not only is it super expensive (thus I would like to make sure everything survives and is healthy so we don’t need to spend more money on things) but I actually found pleasure in it.
So, for any another aquairiests out there, as well as for maintaining my own records, I decided to write/record our experience while we built up our fish tank.
We purchased our first sea creatures on 9/25/17 (we cycled the tank for a month prior), which consisted of hermit crabs (including a Halloween Hermit called Jack), snails, turbo snails, and a cleaner shrimp (Fergus). We lost Fergus over night and replaced him a week later when we got two Naked Clownfish (Callie and George) and two Bengai Cardinals (Dale and Brennan).
Having had no fish in the tank and the clowns being captive bred, we were comfortable putting the clowns directly into the tank without quarantine. The cardinals were put into quarantine for observation. They showed no signs of illness so we were comfortable putting them into the DT (display tank) after two weeks.
On 10/25/17 we purchased two Squarespot Anthias (Male-Jamie and Female-Claire) as well as a Foxface Rabbitfish. These three were a cluster. I originally hated the idea of quarantine. It’s a bummer to have new fish but unable to put them into a DT for four weeks. Plus, taking care of two tanks is a pain in the butt. But after these three I am a full supporter of quarantining your fish. I think these three were the reason I started having more interest in fish. I hated the idea of blowing money on fish that die before they even get into the DT, let alone seeing fish suffer.
Introducing Dr. Bell. I became a fish doctor. In-between working on my manuscripts I did some serious studying on fish illnesses and after some time diagnosed our fish correctly. To start, Foxface obviously had worms. Easy fix, feed the fish dewormer. That wasn’t the only thing though. Here are each fish and either their symptoms or actual illness.
Foxface: Worms, lymphocystis, and super skinny
Jamie: Fin/tail rot, fuzzy/torn lips (from fighting with Claire), cloudy eyes, loss of appetite, swimming in place and/or up and down, yawning a lot, a lot of flashing, and head shaking.
Claire: Cloudy eyes, swimming in place, a lot of flashing, yawned a lot.
All of these symptoms happened in the first week of observation. We also had to have a bit of a learning curve when it came to the different medications. We started treating the fish with Paragard and a Copper treatment at the same time, which is a big no no. So we did a water change and began flushing the water out (carbon), deciding to start with a two week copper treatment and then transitioning to Paragard. Before we did these treatments (correctly) however, we decided to treat the fish as if they had flukes.
If you have flukes, the eggs are most likely in the tank and it needs to lie fallow to ensure the eggs die. But we don’t have a third tank to use as QT. So we decided to simply treat the fish to give them relief and then go from there. Treatment for flukes consists of doing a fresh water dip. The concept of this scared the crap out of me. Taking a sick/stressed fish out of its saltwater and placing it in a bucket with an air stone, matching water temperature, but using fresh water (RODI)….yeesh. We did it for 15 minutes for each fish…I believe. 10 or 15. After that, the medication in the tank and copper treatment, all of them recovered. So whether or not they had flukes, it all worked out in the end. On a side note-do not be scared to do a fresh water dip to your fish. If they do not make it, they probably weren’t going to anyhow.
During this six week stretch, we also put KanaPlex in the food for the DT and QT fish. Because of Jamie’s apparent fin/tail rot we thought this was best. Plus, the cardinals had a red tinge to them and Callie a possible red bump that wasn’t there before. So to be safe we gave it to everyone. Three doses over a 10 day period. We dosed their food with the medication, Focus (helps them not taste the medicine), and garlic. KanaPlex is not invertebrate safe so we dosed the food rather than the tank itself.
We ended up putting the QT fish into the DT around the second week of December. Just to be safe we probably should have waited a few more weeks but we were having trouble controlling the nitrates in the QT tank, which in the end can make the fish sick so we felt it best to get them out of there. Jamie’s tail grew back by Christmas and as I write this (January) it is long and more beautiful than ever.
A week after putting the big boys into the tank, we noticed that our smaller cardinal (Brennan) was beginning to wither away, have shredded fins, and not eat. After a lot of sneaking in to spy on the tank (fish like to pretend they are nice while people are watching them), I found that the other cardinal (Dale) was being a total jerk. Sadly, they will not be a good pair. We removed the smaller cardinal (now named Princess) and put her into the sump so she would not stress and could get food while she healed. We will wait until our next batch of fish is introduced to try and put her back into the DT. Maybe the hierarchy will change up a bit and she and Dale can cohabit together. Not holding my breath on that one. Also, realized Dale is actually a girl. She started shaking like crazy and chasing our big fish around, shaking against them (not rubbing as if she had ich). This is a sign of a horny, female cardinal. So Dale, without a male cardinal around, is getting hot and bothered trying to shake against our other fish. She’s special.
After moving Princess into the sump we turned our sights on coral after purchasing the correct lighting for them. We purchased two types of Zoa’s, a pulsing Xenia, Duncan, Favia, and Torch coral. They all are still doing well. At the end of the month we brought in some more cleaning crew because the coral lights encourage algae growth, which didn’t take long to begin appearing. We purchased more sifting snails, a brittle starfish (the Kraken), tuxedo urchin (Niffler), and two peppermint shrimp(Cheech and Chong). One of our zoa’s had aiptasia and we were told the peppermint shrimp would be a good solution so long as the aiptasia didn’t get too big yet. Sure enough, overnight, the aiptasia disappeared. Aiptasia spreads quickly and competes for food. You do not want it in your aquarium. If you try to remove it yourself, it can spread easily. So having a shrimp eat it is ideal but there are a few other options that I won’t get into now.
We have a few more new additions to the tank, as well as a sad story about our Mandarin Dragonett. But I think that is for another day.
The Writing LEOW 