Aquarium crisis

Excellent news on the Goby.

If you are seeing white spots on the fish and these spots appear one day, hang around, disappear and then re-appear that is most likely marine ich.

Life Stages of Marine Ich

1.TOMONT STAGE: May last anywhere from 3 - 28 days or even longer depending on water temperature. You can not see ich in this stage, it is attached to the substate.
2.THERONT STAGE: The free swimming stage lasting anywhere from 1 - 3 days.
3.TROPHONT STAGE: This is the only stage that you can actually visualize the parasite. At this stage it is attached to the fish and feeding on the fish, lasting 3 - 7 days.
4.TROPHONT FREE SWIMMING: The last stage where the parasite has fallan off the fish to begin it's reproduction cycling in the substrate.

THIS IS THE RUB: JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN NOT SEE IT ANY LONGER DOES NOT MEAN IT WAS ERRADICATED.

Your water source sounds fine so all is good with that IMO.

If it were my tank for now I would just let it continue to cycle or get easy soft corals instead of fish, you might be surprised how much easier soft corals are compared to fish initially.

 

Whenever I hear of active fish being affected like this the first thing I think of is your dissolved o2 levels. One thing that makes me feel more towards this direction is how you said the look worse at night. How much surface agitation (flow) do you have? Are you using a good skimmer?

 

Please excuse me if I am wrong but have you posted what type of power heads, filtration and type of flow ( weak, medium, strong), I can not seem to locate that information. Without more detail it's just a guessing game.

Perhaps you can post an image of your tank please.

I get the impression that you suspect the culprit is an aggressive hitch-hiker or aggressive shrimp so I am including this link, but honestly I do not think that is your issue.

Live Rock Hitch Hikers

Maybe you can find the worm you might have seen or something similar.

Good Luck

 

hi yes i strongly suspect a hitch hiker.. also cause early this morning i saw a worm moving from rock to rock.. an exhausted goby and a dead Coral beauty ... the shrimp was all over the beauty too.. so something must of killed it.. till yesterday she was recoving perfectly and eating .. all of a sudden this morning i find like holes in the sand and a dead fish.. I am so upset at the moment..feel like giving up on it all...

as for my aquaiurm I have tungston light 120 watts, a sump filtering system..

honestly i m lost.. all i did so far is i removed the rock in which i saw the worm.. and tomorrow first thing i ll try to catch the shrimp ..

 

Worms are to be expected and most are harmless. I do not believe a worm nor a shrimp could kill a healthy coral beauty unless that fish was tiny or already sick and on it's way out.

So again we go back to flow/oxygenation/gas exchange..... Unless you have some flow other than water going into and returning from the sump you most likely do not have enough flow/oxygenation/gas exchange.

This kind of seems like one of those topics where you are waiting for someone to post and provide you with the answer you want rather than taking some steps in problem solving the issue using the most logical and common solutions provided to you.

 

+1... Totally agreed.

The shrimp did not kill your fish. Neither did a worm or any other hitchhiker.

You mentioned white spots earlier, and now you say your goby is "exhausted". I'm assuming you mean it is stressed and breathing heavily. Sounds to me like you might have marine ich; however, that's not always deadly unless the fish are stressed or weakened, which could be caused by low dissolved oxygen and/or poor diet. You need to provide precise answers to questions so others can give better assistance.

 

once more thanks for your support...

as for oxygenating my water I use a Koralia Power Head together with a protein skimmer.....
when I said that goby looks exhausted..its only after the night that this happens during the day he fully recovers and is happly activity cleaning the sand ... however tomorrow I;ll go to the LFS to check weather I can purchase something else to help dissolve oxygen...

together with that today i took out all my live rock left it out for a couple of hours and took out every worm I saw (doesnt mean I took em all out) managed to find 6 two of which were approx 3 inches in length the others quite small...together with that I am taking back shrimps to the fish store tomorrow ..just in case and tonight i placed traps for crabs in my desert aquarium...

hope it sorts out..

 

try placing you powerhead higher in the tank and angleing it upwards to really increase surface agitation. I might be way off base but I think its totally o2 levels. If it was a mantis or nuisance crab I think all your fish would be chewed up of at least dead near the same place in your tank near it lair!

 

I'm kinda new.. but after reading this... I would have to agree with it sounds like an o2 issue. I have 3 big koralia in my 55 and one is pointed at the surface to help with the oxygen & gas exchange.

 

thanks good suggestion i ll try that too..however my last fish i.e. the beauty had all fins torn up..but it could be the shrimp that was nipping at her after death..who knows... i am also suspecting ich..so i'll keep on doing treatment not that i have only the goby left its safer for all..