Disease, never put copper into your main tank, it will kill your live rock and corals. If a fish gets ache which are white spots over its scales, put it in a quarantined tank and treat it with copper. Just read the directions on the back, usually a drop per gallon. Most new tanks no matter how well set up get at least one case of ache in the beginning.

If you have set up a good system with good water quality and good movement, the ache should soon go away and once treated in the quarantined tank. If you don’t for some reason take our advice and set up a quarantined tank, don’t panic, the ache should go away on its own although it will take long to do so. There is a chance of it spreading throughout the tank. But if your fish are healthy and you are doing everything else right, there is an excellent chance it won’t spread. The fish get ache and other diseases when their immune system goes down. The best prevention is good water quality, constant temperature and low stress from tank mates, room to move around in places too hard.

If you can catch the fish easily, without stressing them you might want to dip the fish. Make sure the temperature and PH are the same as in the main tank. Use a PH buffer, don’t have salt, the fish can survive for a five minute or so in fresh water but the parasites die off. I also add an ache medication this combined with the fresh water should help get rid of the fishes ache.

How do you catch a small fish that can hide in and around the live rock? This shrouded chrome was a terrible bully in our demo tank and we wanted him out. The trouble was, we cannot catch him. We moved many rocks until it took refuge inside the rock itself. Then we took the whole rock out of the water and held it over a bucket. He had no choice. He had to jump out of the rock and into our bucket.

If you do have an algae bloom when you first setup you tank don’t be worried. Usually, the initial setup you will have an algae bloom of brown or green. Just continue with good maintenance and water changes and the algae should disappear within a month or so.

If the noise from your tank bothers you, you can always put professional sound insulation on your doors but there will always be some noise from your tank.