the day from hell

So three days ago, fish in one of my tanks didn't eat. I didn't think too much of it and Tim didn't think it was a big deal, either. However, late that night when I came in to check on them, a couple had died. That was weird, but it was close to midnight so I couldn't exactly call Tim or Pete (especially because I didn't want to admit to them that I was in there checking on the fish that late). I necropsied the ones that died and found white granulomas (spots) on their liver and spleen, characteristic of mycobateriosis (the same bacteria that causes tuberculosis in humans). Even more scary. But mycobacteriosis is a chronic disease so I checked my water quality and went to sleep. The next morning, I came in to change water in the tanks quickly before rounds at the aquarium and...only two fish were left alive in the tank. Of course, they had to die on the day I had rounds that couldn't be rescheduled and the day that someone was coming to pick me up all the way from Dallas to take me home so I could drive another hour to get vaccinated for Ecuador and return to the coast. It was five minutes to 8am, rounds started at 8, and she was coming at 10. I quickly removed the fish, placed them in a cooler so to slow down the decomposition process, jotted down some quick notes for Dennis and Pete and ran over to the aquarium. I finished with rounds around 9:30 and returned to Hatfield to find Dennis and Pete arguing over a dead fish--the two that were left alive this morning had died, too. I tried to perform quick necropsies on the fish and on almost all of them found the characteristic white granulomas. I didn't get it though, this was one accute disease, and it didn't mesh with the mycobacteriosis theory. I checked and re-checked my water quality and it continued to be fine. My friend showed up to take me home right on time so I had to ask her to drive me to the local vet clinic to get formalin to package the fish and send them to the veterinary diagnostic lab at OSU for a histopathology. She was really nice about it, but the clinic's mail had already gone out so we had to drive to the post office, too. Unfortunately, the post office refused to take the package because my kidney cultures were taped in an envelope on the outside of the box containing the fish and they didn't have any materials to repackage them with. I was so frustrated at this point, I just left the post office and decided to figure out how to send the package later. My friend drove me straight home so I could make the mail in McMinnville but on the way I decided that it might just be easier to drop off the package at the lab myself since it was kind of on the way back to the coast. Our plans for a leisurely lunch ruined, I made her a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwidch at home and left for Salem to get vaccinated. When I was finally seen by the nurse (after waiting half an hour) she informed me that they yellow fever vaccine I was about to receive was a live virus and would make me very ill over the weekend. Grrr. On top of that, the rabies vaccine I was also receiving often made people ill. The one good thing about the whole day was that I finally made it to the diagnostic lab before they closed and dropped off the samples before heading back to the coast.
Fortunately, none of the fish in the other tanks have died yet. I am feeding them antibiotics in their food and waiting to hear back from the histopathology report on what killed the other fish. I was pretty sick on Saturday, but not nearly as bad as the nurse made it sound like I would be, so I guess that is a plus. It just seems like no matter what I do I cannot keep the clownfish alive. I just keep hoping that the histopathology will come back with a definitive cause of death so I know what happened.
I guess this is just one of the many joys of doing research with live animals :)