what do i do ?????????????

lemme start from the begging. my sw tank is about 7 months old now and i have had nothing remain stable since day 1. probably since i keep changing things around. so i started my tank with a hundred pounds of dry rock and cycled it with three damsels (fyi my tanks a 100 gallon with a 30gallon sump) i never experianced and spikes in ammonia or nitrates. so a month later i added 2 clowns every things fine. at this point i have a fuge set up in 1/3 of the sump a protien skimmer and a return pump. so i decide to add my first coral (frog spawn). the last time it fully came out of its head was at the fish store. so i figure its just a bad coral. two weeks later i added two zoo frags a royal garamme and a fire fish. the fire fish lived about 1 week and never was seen again, the gramme lived about 4 months and died. the zoos also never came out once they went into the tank.

so some thing i forgot to mention in my refugium i had just a about an inch of aggronite sand with some small pieces of dry rock. i added 5 lbs of live rock to the fuge to try and seed the tank. the live rock died.well at this point i decided to take my fuge out cause it looked like it was just trapping a bunch of detrious so i replaced it with bioballs. big improvement. so at month five i get 20lbs of live rock and add to my display tank. few days later i get a diatom bloom (was kinda cool to get some color in the tank lol). the diatom bloom came and went.

fast foward to 3 weeks ago i added a yellow tang and some green chromises. at this point i have three blue damsels,two clowns, two green chromises and a yellow tang i talked to my lfs to try to figure out whats going on with my tank my fish are doing great minus the few causualtys along the way. my params are great but i still cant get any corals to survive i gave one of the zoo frags to a frined to see if it would pull through no luck the other one is a skeleton as well as the frog spawn. so lfs guy give me a poly filter which came up that i have copper in my water. idk how cause every thing is plumbed in plastic (im a plumber) so i removed the poly filter and ordered some cuprisorb which still hasnt arrived. so last night i had family over admiring the tank when i noticed my tang acting weird. a closer look revealed what i think is ich. its coverd in tiny white dots. im freaking out at this point. so im watching the tang eating a piece of shrimp next to the frog spawn skeleton and ill be damed one of the frog spawns head has come back to life. so i came home form lunch today and all three damsels are dead but the were alive when i left for work this morning and looked to be ich free.

so heres my dilema i have finally got a coral to grow (possible the poly filter removing the copper) and ive noticed coraline alge staring to grow around the tank to which is a first also. so do i nuke the tank to try and save the fish or do i let it ride and focus on the survival of the coral any input thoughts or ideas would greatly be appreciated.


sorry about the long winded story

 

What are your parameters? Also in what manner are you adding your new fish to your tank?

 

No, you don't nuke the tank. You need to learn about water chemistry. Get an RODI unit. The copper comes from the municipal water supply. Get your own test kits for calcium, alkalinity and magnesium (assuming you have them for nitrate and ammonia). If you don't have a refractometer, get one, and get calibrating solution for it.

Post some pictures of your setup so everyone has a better idea of what you are doing.

Ich is another whole thread.

 

Sounds more like marine velvet than ich if the fish died that fast.

 

It mostly like low PH from the DIY rock. Rock can take 6-8 months to cure to an appropriate ph level.

 

sorry to hear your losses- have you considered altering your salinity for the ich- as opposed to medicating the tank? (hypo vs hyper)? worked for me when I bought a tang from AT in Gainesville- no other fish was affected.

Also- www.bulkreefsupply.com has a great selection of ro/di units check them out - cost effective, too

 

i use always use ro/di water for top off and i buy salt water from the fish store. i havnt had a chance to test today i loaned my kit to a friend who just started a fw tank but all my params are perfect i havnt had any swings of anything just a small spike in ammonia whent the diatom bloom happend. i bought all my dry rock from marco rocks. com. i have a refractometer i though you calibrate it with ro water??? i thought it might be velvet to but idk ive never actually seen ich or velvet before and trying to diagnos from pics off the web is hard the tang is still alive looks like crap though his fins are spliting. his eyes are glazed and he has a whit film with white dots if that help for a discription im working on geting pics

 

thanks for the help everybody

 

The white film with dots sounds more like velvet, but it's hard to tell without seeing it in person. Hard to get a good picture. Either way, at the stage it's in, you would need copper treatment asap to save it, and if you're not prepared and know what to do, it can be difficult.

Better to use 35ppt seawater calibration. IMO, mix your own salt and don't leave the fate of your tank in someone else's hands. It's cheaper, too.

When you say you have perfect parameters, mmmm, I don't believe you, lol. Nobody has perfect water. Posting your actual numbers will give everyone a better baseline to help you, though.

How about some other things? What do you have for light and flow?

 

I'm retarded, I thought it said you made 100 pounds of DIY Rock..... I retract my statement, which was of course, poorly typed.