please help, need advice!!!

[shawnmstout]

i had a tassle filefish i just lost today, it was at the end of its life so i put it out of its misery. Before this it was just flipping around upside down, sideways, ect..... This is a fairly new setup about 1.5 months old but on sunday i changed my 55 gallon aquarium to a 110 gallon. After i took measurements i wasnt doing to bad, here is what i had....
calcium 500ppm
ph 8.2
nitrite .1
alkalinity 3.6
nitrate 10
phosphate .5 (added some phate control)
and salinity 1.o26

i made proper adjustments on the phosphate and the salinity.

i just got rid of the fish not even 5 minutes ago.

this was the first saltwater fish in our tank so this really worries me as i have over 500 dollars worth of fish/coral comming tomorrow. the fish seamed like his equalibrium was all messed up. when i finally fished him out of a rock as he was laying upside down but barely breathing i noticed that he lossed all of his color...


do i possibly have a parasite?
if so what kind could it be and what can i do to save my shipment that is arriving at 10am tomorrow.

please help im in desperate need.

[kevin2000]

My 02

Do you possibly have a parasite - maybe.

Unfortunately disease/dead fish/ and lack of quarantine are the three topics that tend to go hand in hand on the disease forum.

If you have any ability to QT the fish arriving tomorrow .. thats what I recommend. A simple ten gallon tank works fine for one or two small fish .. if you have larger fish or more fish you might consider using the 55 gallon tank as a QT.

[shawnmstout]

is there a way to test for parasites? I do not have a qt tank. I just also saw a whole bunch of white things floating around my tank. I have a refugium so im hoping they are just copepods. any advice?

[Spracklcat]

Copepods aren't usually "floaty things". What do you have in the system now?

Not that you can help this now, but adding a whole lot of fish/corals to a system that is only 1.5 months old, all at once, is a really bad idea. Firstly, because adding so many things at once will stress the system, perhaps more than the biological filtration of the system will be able to handle. Second, if you do have a problem, you may not be able to tell who the offender is, because everyone went in all at once. Do yourself a favor and invest a few dollars in a 10g tank, sponge filter and air pump for the future.

For now, Kevin's idea is a good one--use your 55 for a quarantine. Also, you might want to go to the LFS and get some medications to have on hand if you need them: Prazi-pro will e a good general antiparasitic, and Furan-2 is a good all-around antibiotic. I hope you don't need them :)