I give up!

[budsreef]

Before I put one drop of water in my 120G I decided to make McCosker's Flasher Wrasses the centerpiece of the tank with a male and several females. After getting them established I planned on adding several other male fairy and flasher wrasses that would be compatible. Here is what I have gone through:

10/29/08 I bought three McCoskers but one turned out to be a different kind.
1 McCoskers died 11/15/08
1 McCoskers died 11/17/08
1 Unk Jumped out 2/19/09

11/21/08 I bought four female McCoskers but one of these turned out to be a differnt kind.
1 McCoskers died 11/26/08
1 McCoskers died 11/29/08
1 Unk died 11/30/08
1 McCoskers died 12/01/08

1/20/09 I bought one male McCoskers
1 McCoskers died 1/26/09

1/21/09 I bought one Filamented Flasher Wrasse
1 Filamented jumped out 4/17/09

1/29/08 I bought 2 McCoskers
1 McCoskers died 2/6/09
1 McCoskers jumped 6/17/09

3/21/09 I bought one Purple Fairy Wrasse
1 Purple Fairy Wrasse died 4/20/09

4/3/09 I bought two Long-finned Flasher Wrasses
1 Long-finned died 5/11/09

4/9/09 I bought three female McCoskers and one female Long-finned
1 Long-finned died 6/1/09

6/11/09 I bought one female McCoskers

Most all of them died while in various QTs. The first was a 10G with a filter, heater, PH, and pvc pieces to hide in. The second QT was a 10G with filter, heater, PH, and live rock instead of pvc. The third was a 20G with filter, heater, PH, live rock and sand. And the final QT that I was most successful with was my anemone tank with sump, live rock, skimmer and UV.

Last night my beautiful male jumped through the screen top and I found it stuck in the screen this morning. After all this I have just 4 female McCoskers and 1 male Long-finned.

I need to make a smaller screen and/or give up on the small wrasses and right now just giving up seems in order.

 

[glxtrix]

Sorry to hear about all your losses Bud...It's tough loving a fish that likes to jump. I'd say make a smaller screen if you're willing to put forth the effort again. Hope things work out better for ya.

 

[cr500_af]

Wow... I was just on the verge of starting to learn about wrasses since they seem to be the darlings of so many people here. Now I'm starting to think I shouldn't...

But I did see a beautiful five-bar mystery wrasse last night that was begging me to take him home...

 

[ryanh487]

get a bigger quarantine tank or don't quarantine wrasses at all. they get extremely stressed in shipping and need a stable, secure environment to properly recover in. wrasses very, very rarely get ich as they shed their slime coat to get rid of parasites as needed, and if you're really worried about it just add some formalin3 or paraguard to the bucket for a 1 hour dip after you've drip acclimated them to your reef. i think you'll have much better luck introducing a stressed out wrasse to a tank full of rock, sand, and pods than a 10 gallon with a piece of pvc.

 

[sailfish]

Dang Bud I am sorry to hear about all your troubles.

Joe

 

[hellfire]

I have also heard, but not experienced, that Wrasses do horrible in a non-reef like environment. So maybe throw some LR and sand in the QT, instead of just PVC piping.

Tyler

 

[dakota9]

I had read that your QT tank needs to be 30% to 40% the size of your display. How this figure is derived remains uncertain.

Just throwing that out there. Sorry for all the bad luck of late.

 

[ralph atl]

instead of QT'ing wrasses, you could (that's could) treat the display tank with prazipro. I got that from Jeremy, and with 2 treatments my Leopard is great, & nothing died including SPS.

 

[derek_s]

I will be on the dark side of this one, and say I would try no QT as well. I have QT'd and not QT'd, and really had the best luck with non-QT (and short acclimations). Lots of variables and risks with that, but that is just how it has panned out with me.

I also usually do a methyl, formalin, and/or prazipro dip.

 

[texhorns98]

andregarcia_73;359100 wrote: I have a wrasse in a FOWLR so it doesn't have to be a reef but the LR def helps. They will feel more secure and stress a bit less. My QT looks like a reg tank and Has LR, LS and other small and peaceful fish. Just imagine yourself as a fish. Wouldn't you acclimate to your new surroundings easier and quicker if they had others like you and an environment that looked similar or exaclty like where you came from? I know I would.

If you're QTing for ich or other protozoans aren't you defeating the purpose by using LR and sand? That only allows for the cysts to fall off the host, reproduce in the substrate and jump back on them again.

This is, of course, just my opinion. But I've done a fair amount of research having had two tank wipeouts from ich and brooklynella.

If you're QTing using prophylactic measures, I guess that would be a different story.

 

[budsreef]

I've had these same arguements about QT with myself through all of this. The first group of three were in a 10G bare QT with PVC. Two died in QT and one made it to the display but jumped through eggcrate three months later. The second group of four were in a 10G QT with live rock instead of PVC. After a week they all started dying and none made it out of QT. The next single one, I put in a 20G QT with live rock and sand and it died within a week.

The next one I put straight in the display and it made it for almost three months then jumped while I had the top off doing some work and I didn't notice until too late.

The next two went straight into the display and one dissappeared within a week and the other lived for about five months and was the male that just jumped through the screen last night.

Next was the Purple Fairy Wrasse that went straight to the display and it lived about a month and then died.

Next were two Long-finned Wrasses, one went into the display and one went into the 20G QT. The one in the display made it five weeks and then dissappeared. The one in the QT stayed there for six weeks and was then moved to the display and it is still one that is alive and doing well.

Next were three female McCoskers and one female Long-finned which I put into my 30L anemone tank which is connected to a sump along with my frag tank and a UV. The long-finned started swimming upside down after a week so I moved it to a 10G tank where I treated over a six week period with various medications before it finally passed on. The three female McCoskers stayed in the QT for five weeks and are now in the display and doing well.

The last one was a female McCoskers that had been in a stand alone tank for two months and looked great so I put it straight into the display where it has been for just a week.

During this time I have added several other fish to the display and have too much to risk to add fish without QTing them. I've had some that died in QT and some that died without QTing so because of the risk to the rest of the tank I will continue to try to QT any others before adding them to the display.

 

[dannybradley]

That's pretty rough Bud, but you're absolutely right about QT'ing. You have too much to lose if you don't. Case and point-

I QT every fish for a minimum of two weeks before I'll consider putting them in a client's tank. My QT holds 260 gallons of water, has biological filtration, 80w U.V., 200mg/hr O3, and a MR-3R skimmer. I had a number of fish for 4-6 weeks that I felt were healthy and ready. A week after I delivered a TR Maculosus Angel and 3 TR Ocellaris my QT was slammed with ich.

The client that received the fish was also affected. All it took was one little trophont of ich hiding on a gill plate like a time bomb ready to explode to give me one hell of a headace.

Granted the timeline on this was pretty extreme and the possibility of it happening was extremely low within that timeline, had I just dumped the fish in my client's tanks I would have had to deal with many systems affected with significant losses. It was treated with SG 1.016, 8min F/W bath, and 2 weeks of Cupramine at 0.5mg/l in my system and formalin/malachite green in my client's system.

Always QT.

 

[skriz]

Not QT'ing is asking for trouble. There is some confusion on what a QT tank and Hospital tank is, however.

A hospital tank is a sterile tank without substrate or rock; often stocked with pvc pipe for hiding. This tank is used to treat a fish with medications.

A qt tank is a stable tank that is used for OBSERVATION, not treatment. This tank should resemble the display tank (same water, temp, etc.). The QT will have sand and LR so the fish is in a more comfortable environment. Fish have a higher chance of survival when in a comfortable environment. A hospital tank is not comfy!

Now that I'm done ranting, that sucks big time Bud. I lost a dozen p. cyanis wrasses and just felt sick about it. I decided I was just not going to do the whole little fish thing anymore...all big fish for me now.