Can a Brackish water puffer introduce Ich into reef tank

[ezhoops]

Ok, so I might a bit of a blunder, my daughter loves puffers and since I only have a smaller reef tank I settled to get her an 8 spotted brackish water puffer. Prior to this I had QT all current fish for 6 weeks and left tank fallow as long. The puffer was intro'd without QT (terrible mistake I think) and about 6 weeks later I noticed that my clowns and dwarf angel were fighting a little and after this begun ich began to show its ugly face.

My questions on how you think the ich showed up:

1. Was it the puffer and not being QT?

2. Was it that the tank still had ich present?

3. Was it that the fish still had ich in their system?

4. Was it the aggression between the fish that lowered their immunity (but if they were qt they should be ok, confused) and brought out the ich
BTW: I treated with cupramine and kept levels appropriate for treatment

 

[davidwillis]

I don't have the answer for sure, but what was the salinity of the water the puffer was kept in?

 

[ezhoops]

its kept in a complete reef tank now (1.025) and I dont know what it was kept at. it was already acclimated to full salt water when I bought it

 

[davidwillis]

In that case, I would suspect that it could easily have brought in the ich. However I am no expert, so I may be wrong.

 

[SkullV]

its kept in a complete reef tank now (1.025) and I dont know what it was kept at. it was already acclimated to full salt water when I bought it

Yes, if it was in full marine then it could have brought it in. The fact that the fish is brackish or freshwater has no difference, as long as it is a bony structure fish in conditions where marine ich (crypt) can live/breed then it can be a carrier.

If you could convince a goldfish to live in full marine then it could carry marine ich (crypt) too.

 

[syrinx]

Puffers and cowfish/trunkfish are the most ich havinest fish known to man. I always QT them for 2 to 3 times the usual QT.

 

[SkullV]

Puffers and cowfish/trunkfish are the most ich havinest fish known to man. I always QT them for 2 to 3 times the usual QT.

and Tangs

 

[syrinx]

Tangs get it easier in all likelyhood- but the species I was speaking of "hold"the ich,even in QT

 

[SkullV]

Tangs get it easier in all likelyhood- but the species I was speaking of "hold"the ich,even in QT

Do you use Copper or Hypo?

 

[ezhoops]

is the puffer safe with cupramine?

 

[SkullV]

is the puffer safe with cupramine?

Generally puffers must be put through Hypo. Copper burns their skin and it falls off in white patches.

 

[Pufferpunk]

my daughter loves puffers and since I only have a smaller reef tank I settled to get her an 8 spotted brackish water puffer.

Which is it--a Figure 8 or a Green Spotted puffer?

 

[Stuart60611]

Any fish already acclimated to ocean salinity or salinity greater than 1.008 can bring in crypt. However, no fish previously living in freshwater and yet to be acclimated to salinity greater than 1.008 can bring in crypt. The freshwater version of this parasite is ich, a term we often misuse in the saltwater context. Ich, although related to crypt, is an entirely different species which cannot survive in ocean salinity. Crypt cannot reproduce in salinity lower than 1.008, and therefore, any fish living in this salinity or lower for at least 10 consecutive weeks cannot bring crypt into your system. Ich cannot survive in ocean salinity and even in salinity much lower than full ocean salinity. In fact, one of the treatments people with freshwater systems use to cure ich is the addition of salt to kill the parasite. As such, ich can never survive in a marine system which has a salinity even close to ocean salinity.

 

[Pufferpunk]

Thank God someone is clarifying this! It makes me nuts when folks here say their SW fish has ich. :crazy1:

 

[ezhoops]

Green spotted puffer.

Sorry for the misuse of the term ich.

I just introduced him to the QT tank with a clown. I am using cupramine and so should I get him out.

 

[Stuart60611]

Green spotted puffer.

Sorry for the misuse of the term ich.

I just introduced him to the QT tank with a clown. I am using cupramine and so should I get him out.

I would treat the puffer at this point. I would, however, try to slowly raise the copper level to .5 over at least 4 and preferably 5 days. If you are already at that copper level, then I guess hope that he adjusts to it ok, which he should. Cupramine is not only to treat crypt, but a whole host of other parasites, some which, like velvet, are real lethal. I would treat him at .5 for a full 3 weeks because you do not want to introduce any parasite to your display. To be more safe, I would also do 1 round of prazipro which can be mixed with cupramine and done during the last week of cupramine.

 

[syrinx]

Copper products are not to be recommended. Hypo is the treatment for this type of fish. Whether something is called ich, velvet,crypt- or taffy for that matter is not a issue- we are not doing a definitive diagnosis- and the treatment for this class of parasites is the same.

 

[Stuart60611]

Copper products are not to be recommended. Hypo is the treatment for this type of fish. Whether something is called ich, velvet,crypt- or taffy for that matter is not a issue- we are not doing a definitive diagnosis- and the treatment for this class of parasites is the same.

All coppers are not created equal in this regard. Cupramine, unlike other coppers, is very safe to use on puffers, tangs, angels, and many otherwise copper sensitive fish. I have treated no less than 4 puffers with cupramine (2 of them twice b/c I stupidly re-infected them 6 months later with a poorly quarantined new fish addition) without any problems. Cupramine is a complex copper which is safe to use on many fish which are copper sensitive and cannot withstand ionic copper. The key with cupramine to avoid any adverse reaction is to ramp up to .5 strength as I indicaed above very slowly.

 

[syrinx]

Just diffrent experiences. I have seen many problems with puffers and copper products including cupramine over the years. I am glad you had no problems and hope the OP has no issues either. However since the fish will easily treated in hypo- which is a normal habitat for the fish-stressing it with chemicals is in my opinion a lesser option.

 

[Stuart60611]

Just diffrent experiences. I have seen many problems with puffers and copper products including cupramine over the years. I am glad you had no problems and hope the OP has no issues either. However since the fish will easily treated in hypo- which is a normal habitat for the fish-stressing it with chemicals is in my opinion a lesser option.

Fair point. However, hypo is also much more difficult than cupramine to apply correctly. Any slight elevation in salinity will render the treatment ineffective (salinity must be maintained in the narrow range of 1.008-1.009) because otherwise crypt will be able to reproduce (hypo does not kill crypt but only stops it from reproducing). Cupramine, on the other hand, is very easy to apply because it has a very broad effective range of .2-.5 and thus is hard to misapply. As such, careful and frequent toping off is critical to hypo because a failure to do so will ofen result in treatment failure. Plus, hypo is a much longer treatment of 8-10 weeks where cupramine is only 3. I find that the often undersized and poorly filtered quarantine systems cause more stress to fish than chemicals do. As such, I would contend that cupramine is far less harsh on fish than hypo because it allows one to get a fish out of substandard quarantine facilities much sooner, thereby greatly reducing stresss. Also, hypo only cures ich and no other parasites so it has limited application. Finally, because PH is hard to maintain in hypo and the lengthy treatment frequent water changes are often required in hypo which exponentially increase the liklihood that the treatment will not succeed because inevitably salinity gets too high for a period when doing these water changes (only need a brief period of elevated salinity for hypo to fail). Conversely, cupramine can usually be applied without a single water change because of its short treatment duration, and once you reach your target copper level it is pretty much a "set it and forget it" operation.