how to diagnose, casuses and treating blindness

[Corry Robbins]

hi
I had a nice little nano system set up in high school with just a clown and some zoas and had to go away for college, no fishes aloud in the dorm. I taught my dad how to tack care of the tank with him and me doing everything the tank needed...feedings, h2o changes, media changes,cleaning, top off, testing and dosing...for 2 months before I left.

I come back for summer break and everything is wrong! ph is 7.8, no calcium, phosphate is...well the test kit should read a light pink/purple, currently reads plum color:scared:. nitrates are also sky high and salinity is 1.037:scared:. to top it off he is feeding a tetra goldfish flake:bad:

after I passed out from shock, regained conciseness, and cussed out my father for 3 hrs. I baged the fish(coral were toast) broke down the system, tossed the rock and sand for new, and cleaned and set up the system anew. then proceeded to sloooooowly acclimate the clown back to 'normal'.

now though my poor clown will occasionally bump into the glass, won't eat, and doesn't even notice that I am about to touch him. I can literally put my finger a quarter millimeter from his nose and doesn't even flinch! I am thinking its blindness but of the umpteen thing that were wrong, what caused this? can I treat it? what else might it b?

thank you for your advise, anything would b helpful and no, my father will never be taking care of the tank again. I have put him on a restraining order and is no longer aloud within 25 paces of the tank.

 

[james-lee]

Don't be so hard on your old man. At least he tried lol. As far as the blindness goes if his eyes are cloudy chances are he gonna be blind for life. This is caused from the high nitrates and is nitrate poisoning. Seriously though don't yell at you pops you'll miss him before you know it.

 

[tofucube]

Agree on not being so hard on the old man. At least he tried to help. He didn't ask for a saltwater tank. Shoot..mine would have been like "how big are the fish?...I got a frying pans and trash cans" Hahaha!

 

[wickedfish]

I sincerely hope your dark humor and sarcasm is thicker than mine. And that 80% is just a rant.

The responsibility was yours, you passed reef keeping to your dad. He doesn't have to do sh!t. Except make sure you are okay.

I didn't take care of my 15k investment myself and that is why I started to sell it all. Your nano should have been passed to a more suited reef keeper instead of being a semi responsible son and saying "here dude, you handle this."

That's cool that you've stepped up to the plate to take care of your own responsibilities. Inclusively treating a now struggling beat up fish.

Once the tank is stable it might be good to get him or her a mate so maybe they can help each other out. And like others said, lay off your Dad, you made it past high school. There are fathers that don't ever care for the children they father. Lucky you have someone.

 

[Igarc009]

That's messed up.