Good ol Ich

[gregt]

Ah, never fear Casey. That picture was taken while I was testing the plumbing. There's at least 1500 gph going through the UV in it's current configuration.

[Casey]

Ah now I can rest cool

[mojoreef]

mojoreef
The comments that you made make me think that you are confusing hyposalinity therapy with a freshwater dip. They are not the same thing.

Why thank terry sometimes Saltwater and freshwater does confuse me

What I was saying is that I question the process when you take a fish that is obviously already stressed, has a parasite eating through his flesh, mostly has secondary infections from it. Then you want to chase the fish around the tank, capture it, and put it in SW with a salinity of 1.009 for a month or so.

I believe that the treatment and/or the process that you have to go through in order to do the treatment, will put far to much stress on the fish and will probibly kill it by itself. Now you couople that with the fact in order to really effectually treat it in this manner all fish must be removed and treated the same way. The effect of having to capture and remove however many fish you may have in your reef, will also most likely cause alot to disturbance and damage to the reef. ( iknow in my reef it would take partcial removal of a lot of the rock just to even come close)

I think I would perfer searching out other methods of preventative treatment and treatment once the fish gets it. I have also had a reef for a few years now, and do not have a quarantine system for them, and with the use of UV i have never had a case of ICH.


MIke

[TerryB10]

The vast majority of the time that someone gets ich in their reef it is because they have failed to quarantine all new fish to prevent getting ich into their system in the first place. If you quarantine correctly then you should be dealing with any ich PRIOR to adding the infected fish into the display. Yes it is a hassle to catch all of the fish out of a reef tank for treatment, all the more reason to quarantine and prevent such a quandary.
You are assuming that hyposalinity therapy is highly stressful to the fish, it is not. As a matter of fact, hypo salinity therapy is an effective means of alleviating the effects of many types of stress on reef fish.
Go ahead and search out other methods of treatment, there are dozens to choose from. Unfortunately, there are only two consistently effective treatments for ich and they are hyposalinity or copper treatment. All others are hit or miss at best. The only alternative treatment worth a mention is feeding the fish garlic soaked foods and this works much better as a preventative or with light infections (a couple of spots on one or two fish) than it does for a full-blown outbreak.
I am happy to hear that you haven’t had an outbreak in your reef over the few years that you have had it. The UV may have helped to prevent it. However, since you don’t quarantine it is more than likely that sometime you will have a full-blown outbreak in your aquarium and then it is unlikely that your UV will cure it. I can back up my opinions on all of this with references to the scientific journals on the subject if you care to read them. In my opinion, you are playing Russian Roulette without using a quarantine for all new fish BEFORE they ever go into your display.
Terry B