Hyposalinity and Ich

[Ekudl]

Help.......after loosing 3 fish, CBB, Maroon Clown, and a Coral Beauty Angel to the dreaded Ich I decided to scratch the meds and setup a quarentine / hospital tank. I'm using hyposalinity of 1.009 in it and after it cycles wil move my remaining fish, Maroon Clown, Yellow Tang, Filefish into it. I tried Hexamit and Kent RxP to no avail. I even can see the Ich on the glass, is that possible?

Anyways I have a few questions as follows:

1) How long does a fish have to be quarentined in the hospital tank of hypo for both when first buying them and treating them now ?

2) In my display tank it has inverts and soon no fish, how long before all of the Ich dies off without having hosts available, in other words when can I move my fish back into the display tank ?

3) I've learned a valuable lesson to never not use a quarentine tank, which I will from now on. Do I keep it running at hypo levels of 1.009 with one or two damsels in it for ever ?

4) In the quarentine tank, should there be any substrate or anything or just plain water ?

Thanks in advance for any help to these questions. Oh yeah by the way now I have a 75 Gl display tank with a 10 Gl quarentine / hospital tank.

[thefatman]

bump

[Harpo]

We just battled ich ourselves, wasn't pretty.
I believe that normally the display tank should be given approx. 7 weeks fish free, host free.
You might want to add copper to the hospital tank, and soak all foods in garlic.
You need not put substrate in this tank, but maybe some PVC or something for the fish to hide and feel safe in. It is also not nessecary to keep the quarentine tank up. It can be broken down and reassembled for new arrivals.
When quarentining new fish, I would give them about 2 weeks, making sure they feed, and they carry no parisites.

Bill

[beach bum]

Do not use copper and hyposalinity together.

Run a hospital tank at 1.009-1.010 for at least 6 weeks for ich.

For a Q-tank low salinity is fine, but ich treatment levels are not necessary.

Without a fish host in the main tank the levels of crypto parasites will drop drastically within the first week, but will not disappear entirely. By the time your fishes return from the hospital the main tank should be good to go.

The parasite can live on for extended periods of time inside the bodies of fish. Puffers for example have great susceptibility to this.

In other words, you'll never be free of it entirely, but getting the population of parasites down and the resistance of the fish up should be the goal.

Decorating the tank depends on the needs of the particular fish, but bare bones is easiest to maintain.

Keeping some established filter media handy is fine, no need to keep the tank itself running full time. The water does not need to cycle and using all new water is acceptable, nitrifying bacteria are not free floating.

good luck.
bb

[Rick O]

How are you planning to acclimate the fish to 1.009 from your normal SG level of 1.02X? I would start the fish out with water parameters that match your tank then over a period of days slowly lower the SG of the hospitaL TANK TO 1.009.

[Ekudl]

Thanks Beach Bum and Harpo for your advice. I won't use Copper and Hypo at the same time, its one or the other and I chose Hypo. I am a little concerned about adding fish to a non cycled hospital tank though. I do however have a Biowheel that I kept in the display tank just in case I needed it and I'm glad I did that but what would of happened if I didn't keep that ? Even with using a cup of LS from the display tank may not provide the needed bacteria to eliminate the cycle of the Hospital tank.

RickO, I planned on adding the fish from my 1.02X salinity display tank to the 1.009 hosptial tank after about 1 hour of accilmating them. I have read that going to a lesser salinity level is not much stress because it carries more O2 at lower levels but going up is more of a concern. In this case I may keep my fish in the Q/H tank for about 4 to 5 weeks then bring the levels up in the Q Tank to 1.02X before moving them back into display.

I am curiuos how others do this. Because I would prefer to keep the Q/H Tank at low level salt because I will be wanting to add more fish once I beat this dreaded ICH. Unless others only quaratine their fish in normal salt levels and not hypo.
I would think quaratining your new fish in Hypo would be good idea that way you know you would not be introducing ICH in the display tank for sure and not by just a visual judgement call.

[beach bum]

"Unless others only quaratine their fish in normal salt levels and not hypo."

- Don't think black or white here, there is room in between the two. Many of the LFS's will keep the salinity for their FO sections is low - like between 1.014 - 1.020.


"I would think quaratining your new fish in Hypo would be good idea that way you know you would not be introducing ICH in the display tank for sure and not by just a visual judgement call."

- Quaranitine is simply to observe the fish for outward signs, not to cure it of anything. It is a bad habit (imo) to randomly prescribe treatments for fish that are perfectly healthy as far as you know. There are very few diseases that have to be treated ASAP, like Brooklynella. Besides, crypto is always present, you can quarantine a fish till the cows come home and still have a sick fish after introduction because you will be upsetting the 'balance' of the tank, adding stress to the current inhabitants, etc...

"Even with using a cup of LS from the display tank may not provide the needed bacteria to eliminate the cycle of the Hospital tank."

You can use Live Rock in the Q-tank, the filtration capacity will still be there but you will lose invertebrate life on the rock - a small or large sacrifice depending on your perspective. Some die-off will affect the water quality, but (this is just what I might do, no scientific data ) if you give the rock a quick freshwater dip or rinse to remove the larger critters like copepods, etc... you might avoid some of the die-off (which probably wouldn't be too debilitating anyway).

hth,
bb