Anthias in hypo dying

LobsterOfJustice

LobsterOfJustice

Recovering Detritophobe
I am treating my 180 with hypo. I lowered the salinity to 1.009 over about a week, and it's been there for two weeks. I've lost 6 lyretail anthias - within a few days of lowering the salinity I could see some of the females bloating and looking "fuzzy" or "puffy", because of their scales puffing out. Now I'm starting to see this happening on my healthy bimac anthias, I really dont want to lose this guy. But I'm not sure what I can do, if I bring the salinity up too quick that will kill him too, and I dont want to rip apart the tank and stress everyone out if hes going to die anyway.

Have other people had this experience with anthias reacting poorly to hypo? I still have a few other anthias in the tank, what should I do with them and the one whos bloated now?

Thanks,
Mike
 
Pull the fish out that arent handling hypo well, put them into a QT tank. Treat it with either the transfer method or copper.

Keep on doing hypo on your 180 like you planned, just pull out the fish who cant handle it well.
 
Do you think I should go ahead and just take all the anthias out while I'm at it? I have a sunburst, squarespot, and 2 bimacs left (the one bimac is the one looking bad). How fast can I bring up the salinity?
 
I wouldnt bring it up very fast, you're going to stress out what sounds like already stressed fish.

The thing is, there is no set limit on raising salinity. Most everyone agrees that it is fine to raise it one point a day. However, I know with my fish I used to get in the mail I'd acclimate them for an hour and then put them into my QT tank. I thought one day to check the salinity of the water in the bag and it was 1.019. So they were going from 1.019 to 1.025 in an hour and seemed fine for it. Same with the LFS, they keep their water at 1.017-1.019 and I just acclimate for an hour before moving them into my QT.

I guess what I'm getting at is you could probably raise your salinity up somewhere between one and five points per day and be fine. But it's hard to say, especially since your fish are already having some issues. I wouldnt stress over raising healthy fish from 1.009 to 1.015 in a day at all, I've done it plenty after quarantine.

Anyway, it all is guesswork. The faster you raise the salinity, the more you stress the fish. The slower you raise the salinity, the more stressed they are in the low salinity that they apparently arent liking...

Have you checked ammonia and pH? Low salinity tends to make pH drop pretty rapidly due to lack of hardness and I know when I hypo'd my 210g I had slight ammonia problems for the first week and had to use Seachem's Prime to take care of it until the biological filter caught back up.

It might not be salinity but instead ammonia/pH that's bugging your anthias, one of the more finicky fish... just a thought.
 
Hmmm, that's lower than I would let it stay if it was my tanks. I'm not saying that's the problem, but if it was I'd try to get that up to at least 8.0 (easy with some baking soda) over a day or two and keep it there. When I first hypo'd my 210, my fish were acting funny and not eating and I ended up measuring the pH which turned out to be 7.6 as well... I raised it up to 8.3 through adding about 2 cups of baking soda over 2 days and my fish resumed eating like normal.

I'm not saying it will fix your anthias, but it's an easy thing to try and fix and see if it makes a difference. 7.6 is pretty low, imo, for saltwater anything.
 
The thing is, there is no set limit on raising salinity. Most everyone agrees that it is fine to raise it one point a day. However, I know with my fish I used to get in the mail I'd acclimate them for an hour and then put them into my QT tank. I thought one day to check the salinity of the water in the bag and it was 1.019. So they were going from 1.019 to 1.025 in an hour and seemed fine for it. Same with the LFS, they keep their water at 1.017-1.019 and I just acclimate for an hour before moving them into my QT.[/QUOTE/

Good point.
Click to expand...
 
Agreed that 7.6 is too low. I just figured it was worth pointing out my system usually runs low anyway so it's not like they dropped from 8.3 to 7.6 or something. I thought it was baked baking soda that increased the pH?

Now the question is whether to increase pH and cross my fingers, or still remove the remaining anthias. Dont want to pull all the rock out of a 180 but I will if I have to.

Does anyone else have experience treating anthias and hypo and can say one way or another "yeah, thats what happens to anthias in hypo" or "no, I've treated them and they were fine"? That would help narrow down if its the hypo itself or something else like pH.
 
LobsterOfJustice said:
Agreed that 7.6 is too low. I just figured it was worth pointing out my system usually runs low anyway so it's not like they dropped from 8.3 to 7.6 or something. I thought it was baked baking soda that increased the pH?
Click to expand...

Baked baking soda? Never heard of it, I just bought the normal arm and hammer baking soda. Make sure you find one that isnt scented.
 
hypo is supposed to be easier on the fish im pretty sure that raising the ph will help your anthias.

i am currently 6 weeks into my hypo treatment and i keep my ph around 8.0 -8.2. I have no anthias but i have 2 ocellaris clowns, 1 sailfin, 1 powder blue tang, 1 orangeshoulder tang, 1 sixline wrasse, and 1 orange diamond goby.

the whole time all of them have ate great and showed no signs of stress
 
i had a friend who also lost all his anthias due to hyposalinity , they seem to be one of the marine teleost fishes that dont handle hypo well, could be that they are always found on coral reefs and dont often find juveniles in mangroves nursery enviroments
 
LobsterOfJustice said:
Agreed that 7.6 is too low. I just figured it was worth pointing out my system usually runs low anyway so it's not like they dropped from 8.3 to 7.6 or something. I thought it was baked baking soda that increased the pH?
Click to expand...

I don't have any experience with Anthias in hypo, but regarding the baking soda - if your ph is on the low side you definitely should bake it before using. Your understanding that it will not lower (and may raise) the pH is correct. Baking burns off the CO2 within the baking soda. (I used to bake the stuff all the time for my home made 2 part)
 
Hmmmm, that's weird I've never heard that. I used baking soda a lot on my tanks and on my QT tanks and never baked it.
 
Started bumping up the pH, keeping it closer to 8.0 now. Lost a candy hogfish. I think the bimac is looking better but I'm not sure.

I'm considering ending the treatment early. At this point the ich is under control (i.e. gone). What it comes down to is I've lost 7 fish to the treatment and none to the disease I was actually treating for. I figure ich is bound to get reintroduced at some point anyway - it sounds nice in theory, but I know I'm not going to QT all incoming inverts, corals, and rock fishless for 8 weeks. So I think I'll just cut my losses and be happy that the outbreak is gone, even though Ich will probably still remain in my system.
 
I have had my Lyretails in QT since MemorialDay, the closer I got to .09 the more my LT's would hide and/or not be active and eat. I lost my foxface, 6 line, and my prized spotted yellow eye tang, on the way to .09. I should add that I am using Cuprimine. Since I have brought my salanity up to .19/.20, the LT's are acting like normal, as are my bangaii's and clown. I decided to bring my salanity up after reading this post and a couple others in regards to LT's and hypo.

BTW I'am treating fish that showed signs of ick(yellow eye,foxface,clown) the clown is the only survior. All fish were eating, in the DT, and were extremely plump. Ick showed up once I added a LT that came from a tank that had a fish that was showing signs. I did this to my self.......\\Bottom line from what I have seen and read LT's dont like hypo...my 2 cents
 
Anthias don't take hypo well from my experience. They are very fincky fishes.

Its like putting someone very very old from a cold weather and in a very very hot weather and all of sudden suffers from a heart attack.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

D
Corals slowly dying / getting white spots water tests good
Replies
18
Views
2K
griss
griss
D
Coral beauty Sick - how do i treat
Replies
3
Views
1K
leebca
L
E
What's Old is New Again
Replies
2
Views
221
Uncle99
Uncle99
H
25 year old yellow tang dying :(
Replies
10
Views
2K
sallypur
S
F
Starting tank again
Replies
6
Views
1K
Dr. Reef
Dr. Reef
Back
Top