thegrimreefer
04-29-2007, 11:44 PM
Almost six weeks ago, The Lovely and Talented Mrs TheGrimReefer bought me a beautiful blue tang for my birthday.
Unfortunately, I'm in transition as far as tanks go, and I just don't have everything set up the way I want... In particular, I had no quarantine tank set up for fishies. All I could do was plop her into the temporary set-up, and hope for the best. A couple weeks later, and "Dory" has signs of ich. within days after that, she was REALLY covered, and looking bad.
I headed off to the LFS, bought an Aquaclear hang on filter, a filter sock for some ammonia absorbant (since I had no time to cycle the tank), some copper sulfate solution, and such, and set up a hospital tank in a 15H I had on hand.
After a huge headache trying to catch Dory, I got her, aclimated her to the hospital tank, and dosed the copper.
Every day I mixed up about 5 gallons of fresh SW, and vacuumed the bare bottom of the tank, and did a 30% water change, adding copper to replace what was lost in the water change.
For three days, she lay on her side, on the bottom. Fins twitching a little, refusing to eat, looking bad and then worse. After four days, she was a bit more upright, and avoided my water change hose somewhat.
Soon she was upright, and eating a bit, and after a couple more days, she was swimming and eating like nothing had happened. Eventually most of the ich seemed to be gone from her (visibly) as well. I could hardly believe it, I had been so sure she was a goner!
I continued the treatment regime, to be sure all the nasties were killed off.
Well, Friday, I got home after work, fed the fish (including Dory), and I noticed that Dory's water level was a little low. I turned on the RODI line, and let the fresh water slowly top up the tank.
I have no idea what distracted me, and drew me away from the fishie room, but I walked away... And didn't return until maybe 9:00 the next morning.
My wife could smell something, scorched plastic or something... She narrowed it down to the fishie room...
...Where Dory's hospital tank was slowly overflowing down the wall, the water flowing over an electrical outlet, which had shorted out, cooked a while, and finally, thank God, blown the circuit breaker.
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c35/TCMASTheGrimReefer/DSC03359.jpg
I assume the clear trail between the smoke tracks is where the water was flowing down to the outlet.
This outlet, by the way, powered the hospital tank's filter, and heater. And it also powered the in-ground sump pump... which meant that the water overflowing filled the sump basket, and was flowing out across the floor. Again, thank God the breaker tripped.
The result of all this was that the hospital tank was at 59 degrees F, and the salinity was so low that it didn't read at all on my hydrometer.
Dory's tail was just visible inside a two inch PVC pipe fitting I had placed in the tank for her to have some "cover". She, of course, wasn't moving.
I cleaned off the power plug for the sump pump, and plugged it into another outlet, and started pumping out the water, mopping up, and finally started to drain the tank. as I pulled out the PVC pieces, I saw Dory twitch.
I looked around, and grabbed a container, and scooped out some of the water-change water I had mixing from the day before, and, with no other real choice, just dropped Dory into it. She splashed around a bit. Since I couldn't put her back into the hospital tank, the only other place I could put her was back into the temporary reef. I was still convinced she was a goner (again), so I just scooped her out of the container, and dropped her into the reef.
Understand this. Within less than a minute's time, this blue tang went from almost no salt in her 59 degree water, to 1.025 salinity, 78.5 degree water. Lord only knows what the pH change was.
Later that day, she was swimming around and eating.
And here, though I now know why I never use this camera to take videos, is Dory this afternoon, eating mysis shrimp. She looks great, and is behaving like nothing ever happened to her.
Blue Tang (http://s24.photobucket.com/albums/c35/TCMASTheGrimReefer/?action=view¤t=MOV03360.flv)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c35/TCMASTheGrimReefer/th_MOV03360.jpg (http://s24.photobucket.com/albums/c35/TCMASTheGrimReefer/?action=view¤t=MOV03360.flv)
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, what do we do? We swim swim swim....
Makes me wonder about floating the bags, and letting a little water in, to balance the pH, and all that.
Whew.
Unfortunately, I'm in transition as far as tanks go, and I just don't have everything set up the way I want... In particular, I had no quarantine tank set up for fishies. All I could do was plop her into the temporary set-up, and hope for the best. A couple weeks later, and "Dory" has signs of ich. within days after that, she was REALLY covered, and looking bad.
I headed off to the LFS, bought an Aquaclear hang on filter, a filter sock for some ammonia absorbant (since I had no time to cycle the tank), some copper sulfate solution, and such, and set up a hospital tank in a 15H I had on hand.
After a huge headache trying to catch Dory, I got her, aclimated her to the hospital tank, and dosed the copper.
Every day I mixed up about 5 gallons of fresh SW, and vacuumed the bare bottom of the tank, and did a 30% water change, adding copper to replace what was lost in the water change.
For three days, she lay on her side, on the bottom. Fins twitching a little, refusing to eat, looking bad and then worse. After four days, she was a bit more upright, and avoided my water change hose somewhat.
Soon she was upright, and eating a bit, and after a couple more days, she was swimming and eating like nothing had happened. Eventually most of the ich seemed to be gone from her (visibly) as well. I could hardly believe it, I had been so sure she was a goner!
I continued the treatment regime, to be sure all the nasties were killed off.
Well, Friday, I got home after work, fed the fish (including Dory), and I noticed that Dory's water level was a little low. I turned on the RODI line, and let the fresh water slowly top up the tank.
I have no idea what distracted me, and drew me away from the fishie room, but I walked away... And didn't return until maybe 9:00 the next morning.
My wife could smell something, scorched plastic or something... She narrowed it down to the fishie room...
...Where Dory's hospital tank was slowly overflowing down the wall, the water flowing over an electrical outlet, which had shorted out, cooked a while, and finally, thank God, blown the circuit breaker.
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c35/TCMASTheGrimReefer/DSC03359.jpg
I assume the clear trail between the smoke tracks is where the water was flowing down to the outlet.
This outlet, by the way, powered the hospital tank's filter, and heater. And it also powered the in-ground sump pump... which meant that the water overflowing filled the sump basket, and was flowing out across the floor. Again, thank God the breaker tripped.
The result of all this was that the hospital tank was at 59 degrees F, and the salinity was so low that it didn't read at all on my hydrometer.
Dory's tail was just visible inside a two inch PVC pipe fitting I had placed in the tank for her to have some "cover". She, of course, wasn't moving.
I cleaned off the power plug for the sump pump, and plugged it into another outlet, and started pumping out the water, mopping up, and finally started to drain the tank. as I pulled out the PVC pieces, I saw Dory twitch.
I looked around, and grabbed a container, and scooped out some of the water-change water I had mixing from the day before, and, with no other real choice, just dropped Dory into it. She splashed around a bit. Since I couldn't put her back into the hospital tank, the only other place I could put her was back into the temporary reef. I was still convinced she was a goner (again), so I just scooped her out of the container, and dropped her into the reef.
Understand this. Within less than a minute's time, this blue tang went from almost no salt in her 59 degree water, to 1.025 salinity, 78.5 degree water. Lord only knows what the pH change was.
Later that day, she was swimming around and eating.
And here, though I now know why I never use this camera to take videos, is Dory this afternoon, eating mysis shrimp. She looks great, and is behaving like nothing ever happened to her.
Blue Tang (http://s24.photobucket.com/albums/c35/TCMASTheGrimReefer/?action=view¤t=MOV03360.flv)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c35/TCMASTheGrimReefer/th_MOV03360.jpg (http://s24.photobucket.com/albums/c35/TCMASTheGrimReefer/?action=view¤t=MOV03360.flv)
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, what do we do? We swim swim swim....
Makes me wonder about floating the bags, and letting a little water in, to balance the pH, and all that.
Whew.