I committed the cardinal sin of reefkeeping..

[kaykay]

I have myself to blame...

Cycled my 200L new tank for a month. I thought to myself, not bad.. patient enough..

Well, as I only have 1 chiller, I decided to transfer all livestock in one session. I'm also fully aware that the new tank can barely take the sudden increase in bioload. I still insisted to go ahead..

On the morning of transfer, I went to the farm to get T5 parts. Saw this beautiful powder blue tang. Not the usual pbt, but one all the way from Maldives.. The colours were.. wow.. and the size was only 2"!!

Needless to say, I succumbed to the temptation.

Went back home, left this bag of pbt aside and got down busy to replumb the chiller, return pump, and all what-nots, and transferred the livestock.

In my busy-ness, I totally forgot about the bag of fish! And guess what, I left the bag standing on the floor for more than 10 hours! I only remembered I bought a fish when I was about to fall asleep at night.. Lol..

Instead of wanting to introduce this pbt first to reduce stress, now I added him last!

White spots were observed the very next day. Feeding garlic-soaked food didn't help. Tried to catch him out but hugely unsuccessful. He was gone in 5 days.

What's more, my fat blue tang and juvenile Atlantic blue tang got infected too..

At least the blue tang is feeding well, and he'll recover pretty soon.

For the juv ABT, the spots got more, and he completely lost appetite.

Finally managed to catch him out yesterday and did fw bath. He didn't make it overnight too.

Lessons learnt..

1. Never ever be in a hurry to add any livestock your tank cannot yet handle. This, my friends, is the cardinal sin.

A similarly good, if not better, specimen will always come in a later date. if it's meant to be in your tank, it will be in your tank.

2. Do not attempt to transfer livestock to a new environment all at once. I should have taken my time to transfer the corals first after plumbing in the chiller. At least I would have time to place then nicely. Fishes can take the higher temperature for a day or 2 more..

This ought to teach me a valuable lesson on patience.

[[V]tEc]

PBT is not a easy fish, and if I am not wrong, u used salt mix to cycle the tank. From my exp, salt mix cycled tank need a long time to stable down. my 1st tank and 3rd was nsw, never cycle, none of my fishes died inside due to tank crash, 2nd and 4th tank using salt mix, even after 1 mth of cycling, newly brought fishes were easily stressed up.

I lost alot of fishes in the past because of no QT to cure fishes. If possible, set up a QT tank. I notice fishes tend to be more relax when they are alone in the tank.

Powder series tang are almost 100% on getting white spots. It doesnt matter if u add in the pbt first or last, at least that few hrs or 1 day dont make any diff. that happen to all my powder series except for a hybrid pbt. I left it alone in a 4ft tank without chiller and lights for 2 mths. no whitespot breakout.

[Ahhyi]

Interesting. Should have take note of that too

[kamino]

Honestly some reefers do commit such mistakes time to time - being succumbed to the temptation. I also done such things before...although in my mind, I know patience is important but when the action begins, at time will try to find the convenient way out. Once I have some algae problem and high NO3, cannot tahan and wait for the parameters to stablise slowly so I did a drastic water change of nearly 50%. Ended up...sigh...

Don't feel so bad la. Learn the lesson and move on. Just dont do it again

[kaykay]

Wow never knew of using nsw to'"break in" a tank faster.. will do so for future tanks..

Haha after 2 successful attempts keeping pbts, I was sort of over confident.

Thanks. Now seriously thinking of setting up a QT, maybe a multi-segmented tank, each compartment independent of one another, to QT several fishes at one go.. hmmm.. next project maybe..

[John Deroe Kenedy]

Sorry for the lost bro. Tangs has limited chance of survival especially when water parameters which are not yet stable. Its a win or lose situation. By Chance maybe it will survive. To be frank, when i started to upgrade to my 400L tank, I didn't really cycle my tank. I think I only cycle my tank for 5 days (Salt Mix) as Hari Raya was coming and I can't have equipment and tank laying around. By chance my LS survive the last min transfer till now. No Tangs tho. There was no Skimmer, no lightings, no reactor. Added LS before fully commission

Edited January 3, 2013 by John Deroe Kenedy

[John Deroe Kenedy]

Double Post sorry

[[V]tEc]

Wow never knew of using nsw to'"break in" a tank faster.. will do so for future tanks..

Haha after 2 successful attempts keeping pbts, I was sort of over confident.

Thanks. Now seriously thinking of setting up a QT, maybe a multi-segmented tank, each compartment independent of one another, to QT several fishes at one go.. hmmm.. next project maybe..

NSW is fast to stable down tank, but perimeters are way off. CA and KH are easy to dose up but MG is a bitch to bring it up. so u need to weigh the pros and cons.

For a QT tank, try setting up one first. Managing a QT vs a main tank is totally different. I am using a big plastic container as my QT tank. 1 simple filter and some media from my main tank. U need to monitor the water perimeter closely. after 1 fish, i cant take it. too troublesome. now i buy fishes from selected shops and QT my main tank.

[Gouldian]

Great sharing, hope this will reduced the number of sins committed daily in reefing.

[oldnick]

RIP

[kaykay]

Casualties.

Lost a fat Watanabei angel, and one of the smaller blue eye lyretail anthias.

Changed 10% water to reduce sg to 1.022. Another 10% tmr, while minting sg at 1.021.

Dosed "It's Clear" to bind any free swimming parasites.

Will be dosing "Cure Ich" in 12 hours.

*Thanks bro kkk121 for these above 2 items in such a short notice. Owe you one.

Running a 9W UV to kill the persistent ones. Of course the good nitrifying bacteria will be killed along the way too. Sigh, that's what chemotherapy does to human body cells too.

Hope casualty list will stop growing.

Update you guys along the way.

[yeo99]

Uv light must use a new tube one,after certain hours of use, the uv tube become not effective.

Feed the fishes well too.

[epicfish]

Similar experience when I started too, bought pbt during cycling stage...surprisingly he made it through the month, then he developed ich all over, my guess was he couldnt find a rock to hide in...