can you hypo a fowl

[BigBadBlenny]

i was wondering this to kill ich. i dont have space for a qt tank and i am not sure chemicals really do what they are supposed to.

any thoughts?? is there a chemical that is ok to use in a fowl or can i hypo the whole system?

 

[Ev's Reef]

besides your fish do you have live rock, corals or inverts?

 

[BigBadBlenny]

just fish and live rock.

 

[Ev's Reef]

If you have good filtration, you can hypo the fish with the rock in there. Slowly bring down the salinity to 1.009 but no lower. leave it there for a couple of weeks, and then very slowly bring it back up. hypo in a tank with nothing but live rock wont hurt anything, but it might kill off a bit of the creature so this is why i wonder what kind of filtration you have. what kind of disease are you dealing with, what are the fish inhabitants?

 

[Ev's Reef]

I am sorry for the confusion, I meant hypo could kill of some of the tiny creatures that live in the work such as pods, and small things like that, not your fish. Again sorry for the confusion.

 

[BigBadBlenny]

just a pakistani butterfly and a flame back angel. both under 2" in 130 or so total gallons. i have 100 lbs rock 40 or so lbs sand and cheato in the sump. i have a swc 250 skimmer and i am thinking of throwing a UV sterilizer on it.

 

[Ev's Reef]

I really dont know what running hypo will do to your refugium and algae. other then that i think that amount of biological filtration and mechanical filtration you have compared to your bioload, i believe you will be alright. But i dont want to tell you wrong information so get a second opinion on the algae. I only ran hypo on my display tank before I had a refugium. Now I have corals so I wouldn't even consider it. If you have anymore questions or concerns feel free to PM me.

Ev

 

[Ev's Reef]

about the question where you want to use chemicals. I have used ICHATTACK and it is reef safe, so using that in a FOWLR tank along with hypo. I would think as long as your fish are eating well, they will make it through this.

 

[Recty]

When I hypo'd my tank, all the algae in my refugium died. I had red chaeto and also some small patches of green. All of it lost color then died, the longest it lasted was about 2 weeks.

 

[Stuart60611]

It can be done. I have done it. The biggest problem you are potentially going to have is an ammonia issue. If you have a lot of algae, worms, other fauna you are likely going to have a big die off and potential ammonia spike. Therefore, you really need to monitor your ammonia carefully.

The best way I have found in dealing with ammonia is to buy some good live bacteria, like biodigest, and dose it heavily immediatley before and for several days after reaching near or about hypo levels. If you still have any ammonia problems, then have fresh water and/or amquel available. Also, manual removal of decaying algae and/or any other dead organic matter, such as worms, goes a long way to avoiding a major ammonia problem.

I will add that hypo did not work for me in eliminating ich. Now, it is possible (and even likely) that I did not do it long enough and/or maintained a correct salinity level so I am not suggesting it won't work for you. Ultimately, I resorted to cupramining the system thereafter for a full 30 days at .5 which was successful with all fish tolerating the treatment well and absolutely no signs of ich for well over 4 months. All measurable copper has been removed with no observeable negative effects.

 

[MatthewLaw]

i have always been told that lowering the salinity to that level will kill the bacteria on the LR and cause a significant ammonia spike. therefore i would always remove the live rock before lowering SG and as much sand if possible (if not BB) to a rubbermaid container. i would run a powerhead and heater in there and keep it without fish for at least 6 weeks. in the meantime slowly lower the SG in the display tank with the fish inside. i have never had any issues this way.

 

[Stuart60611]

Lowering the salinity to hypo levels does not kill the biological filter. At most, it may retard it for several days. The ammonia is not caused from the biological filter failing but caused from the fauna dying as a result of the hypo salinity level. From personal experience, the biological filtering bacteria do just fine at hypo levels which I maintained for 6 weeks feeding heavily with a heavily stocked tank without any water changes or ammonia problems. But you will definitely loose substantial life on your live rock and sand if you do it, and this loss of life, particularly in concentrated event, can cause major ammonia spike and resulting fish deaths. How much excess ammonia you will have to deal with will largely depend on how "live" your live rock is and how much algae, inverts, and other fauna you have in the system which may die off from the hypo. As such, it is probably fair to opine that as a tank matures the ammonia spike from hypo will be greater.

 

[LukFox]

When I hypo'd my display, I moved my "liveliest" rock to 5 gallon buckets with a pump going to preserve life and help avoid big ammonia problems. This way when the tank was brought out of hypo, I could replenish pods, sponges, and other sorts of life. It worked out well for me. The rock in the buckets is the same idea as keeping a tank fallow, as without fish the ich will die leaving clean rock. Hypo successfully got rid of the ich.

I should also add that I don't have a sand bed, so I didn't have to deal with die off there.

 

[beezer06840]

Here is my experience with hypo so far due to an ich outbreak from not QTing long enough. I am in week 6 of 9. I have a 180 gallon heavily stocked FOWLR with very minimal aggression among some aggressive fish so I didn't want to disrupt this harmony and therefore decided to treat the DT. I brought the SG down to 1.009 over 4 days. Here are the major observations so far.

1) as expected the cleaner shrimp and fire shrimp died but I had no way to remove them without tearing apart the tank

2) my pair of mystery wrasses died and when i posted this on RC another person responded with a similar story, so I don't think that mystery wrasses tolerate hypo.

3) my ammonia rose slighty on day 7-10, but I did a 60 gallon WC and the ammonia dropped back to undectectable. I have continued with the 60 gallon WC every 10 days.

4) I don't see any more pods in my sump, whereas it was full of life prior to hypo.

5) My guess is that about 10-20%% of the snails have survived so far,

6) The chaeto in my sump is still green, so i assume it is still alive.

7) All the current fish are acting normal in the tank and eatting normally

8) No ich spots on my fish since a few days into hypo

9) A refractometer is critical to achieving the proper SG

10) Do a search on hypo, there is a lot of useful information out there.

So the bottom line is that IMO hypo is a relatively minimally invasive option to help combat and hopefully eradicate ich. I figure that it will be easy enough to re-seed the tank with life with some algae from some fellow reefers. I am hesitant to introduce chemicals into the tank and the is why i choose hypo in the first place. Hope this helps

 

[aldiver311]

I have done both, Hypo and Cupramine I have never tried cleated copper (coppersafe). though I am told works well. First time I did hypo was about 2 years ago, left it that way for about 8 weeks also kept temp at 82-84 to speed up life cycle. Worked great, ick was no longer seen just after a few days. Got Ick again about 8 months later tried hypo again this time no affect at all on ick. Tank was even at .006 for over 2 weeks and ick did not die off. Finally treated whole display with Cupramine for 6 weeks. Then removed copper with Cuprisorb.Tank was ick free for almost 5 months. Then about 2 weeks ago my Tusk and Emporer got it. Tried hypo again no affect on ick what so ever. I finally dosed cuprmine and after 3 days tusk is ick free and Emporer shows only a couple spots. Bad thing is my Bannana eel is almost dead. She went throgh the first time I dosed with copper and stopped eatting for a couple of days, then went back to normal. This time I still have the tank in hypo and I don't think she can take both.I 'm in the process of bringing the salinity back up but its only at .012. So I removed her and put her in QT. I pray she comes back to normal. Moral of the story sometimes hypo works and sometimes not. I almost wonder if they build an immunity up to it.

 

[Stuart60611]

As far as hypo working or not, there is plenty of debate on that issue, and I have not seen any scientific data yet to support its ineffectiveness as rumored against certain strains of ich. However, after doing both hypo and cupramine treatments, I do believe that hypo really has a much narrower margin for error than cupramine and is much more difficult to do correctly. You have to keep your salinity in a very narrow low range at all times for hypo or otherwise the treatment may not work. Moreover, the hypo treatment time is much longer than cupramine thereby introducing more opportunities for mistakes. In contrast, cupramine has a shorter treatment time and a very broad effective range so you can screw up quite a bit and still rid the system of ich. I think a lot of people's failures with hypo, including mine, can be attributed to human error during its application and not the treatment's ineffectiveness.

 

[LukFox]

What is the treatment time of cupramine anyway? My bottle says it is a total of 16 days (including time to get it to the desired level), but I see people on here going for weeks. Why is that? I don't mean to derail the thread, as I think it counts in the cupramine vs hypo debate.

 

[Stuart60611]

2-4 weeks for cupramine with an effective range of .3-.5. If you keep at a straight .5 for 2 weeks ich should be gone. Most people, however. recommend to treat for 3 weeks to be safe and 4 to be super safe. When I discussed this with Seachem, they advised me that if you maintain copper levels toward the lower end of the effective range because you are treating sensitive fish, such as puffers or angels, you should treat for a period closer to the 4 week mark. Hypo is 4-12 weeks depending on who you ask and the temperature you maintain during treatment.

When I did hypo I treated for 6 weeks at .008 at 80F (so I thought) and failed. When I treated with cupramine I maintained .5 for 30 days and .5-.2 for about 5 days thereafter during the removal process which appears to have succeeded. I should add that I had two puffers who went through the cupramine treatment without any observable problems at the .5 concentration.

 

[LukFox]

Alright, thanks!

 

[aldiver311]

Becareful, my 400.00 Bannana eel just died from a 0.05 level of Cupramine. But survied the last treatment of the same level. This was a very hard loss for me. I have had that eel for almost a year and she was fat and healthy, and shes dead because of my stupid mistake.