drip acclimating fish into hypo?

[Netofficer3710]

I have a leamonpeal angel, a purple tang, and a longnose hawkfish in my 30 gal QT right now.

I wanted to get another fish or 2 (a small juvenile emperor angel or a pair of maroon clowns) into this batch since I quarantine for 8 weeks at hypo and prefer to do large batches to stock the tank faster.

well my tang and angel have horrible ich and I need to get my QT salinity down fast.

I was wondering if there's any chance that I could drip acclimate a fish to my QT later on (before I start the 8 week countdown) if the salinity is 1.009 or if I need to just suck it up and wait until the next batch.

 

[ErinCahir]

Your fish have ich because they are stressed being so cramped for space... adding more fish to the mix isn't going to help things. Maybe a bigger QT is in order.

 

[Netofficer3710]

actually they have ich because my LFS sold me 2 fish with bad ich...

the tank they were in did not allow me to get a very close look at them but they were covered from the moment they came out of the bags

all I am asking is if fish can be acclimated to hypo saltwater

I would not add anymore fish until the parasites drop off and I have the salinity at 1.009

 

[ErinCahir]

Why would you buy fish that have bad ich?

 

[Netofficer3710]

I did not see it before I got them

ich is hard to spot on yellow so it got away from me on the lemon peal. the purple tang was selected from a shallow coral prop tank for his brilliant coloration but I was not able to see the ich spots because I was watching him through the surface/ disturbance of the water.

I should have tried to look closer but I didn't. it doesn't really matter now though because I treat all new fish as if they are infected anyway.

 

[RyanEG]

If this is a straight up hospital tank why not use copper?

 

[567234ta]

I wouldn't, i have read that 36 hours is the fastest you would want to drop them. I am currently under going the same process and i spent 17 days just lowering the salinity. While that may be unusually long to do it they hardly noticed it and are doing just fine.

You could damage their cells from the pressure change if the salinity drops too fast, which on a fish that is already battling ich could be deadly. If they are already pretty sick acting i would do it very slowly and make sure they are eating good. Drip 1 or 2 drops per second out of a 5 gallon bucket of plain non salted ro water into the tank while on the other end taking it out at the same pace. It may take a few days to get the salinity to 1.009 but that would be the least stressful way to do it on the fish. I would wait on adding anymore fish until you get a bigger QT. You will have a hard time keeping them well fed and clean water as it is unless you got a great filter on it.

 

[papagimp]

i wouldn't either. A hypo treatment isn't something you adjust to that quickly, could cause more stress.

and on a side note, wanting to stock faster could lead to issues. Learn to be patient. Your tanks biological filtration needs to catch up between any bioload increase.

 

[Netofficer3710]

I say I want to stock faster because 8 weeks is a long time

if I were to quarantine 1 fish at a time it could take years to stock my tanks and that's not something I call practical.

I use a large ammount or rock and I think 3 or 4 fish (assuming they are small) per quarantine is far from excessive considering the time between batches going into the DT is over 10 weeks when all is said and done.

I am also stocking 2 tanks at the moment so I hardly think I am taking things too fast.

The reason I do not want to use copper BTW is that I find running a quarantine tank much easier if I can run a bacteria colony which survives my hypo treatments.

 

[ErinCahir]

How big are the tanks these fish are going into?

Stocking too fast is a recipe for disaster. You may not call it practical, but neither is crashing your tank and having to start all over again.

 

[Palting]

I did it. I already had 10 fish in a 110 that I had just gotten to 1.009. My kids saw Dori, hippo tang, at the LFS, and just had to have it. So, I bought it, drip acclimated it for 45 minutes, and dropped her into the 1.009 water. No biggie. Go for it.

BTW, IMO, hyposalinity is way better than copper for Ich. Here's my Hypo thread: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1892446 . Post #3 is where I added the hippo.

 

[Dr. Reef]

i hate to differ, but in this hobby we see people stretch limits all the time which doesnt make it a norm. i think dropping salinity down in 2-3 hrs from a normal to hypo is a very stressfull process to a fish and if that fish is not strong or healthy it probably will not kill it over time. just my 2 cents.

 

[567234ta]

When you lower salinity you are changing the pressure on the cells of the fish. They can handle it better then an anemone or other soft tissue creature but it still can cause death if done too quickly. Think when a diver comes up to quickly they get the Bends.

That is just the pressure from the salinity change not even talking about the drastic change in pH and other parameters that they have to adapt to.

 

[papagimp]

I say I want to stock faster because 8 weeks is a long time

to us, maybe, to your tank. Not really.

stocking two different tanks at the same time does make a little difference in my thinking but alot will also depend on the size of the tanks. Adding 2-3 fish to a 29g for instance could see a very noticeable spike in ammonia. but tossing in 4-5 fish on a 1000 g system, probably not so much. You can have lot's of live rock but keep in mind the rock is colonized for your current bioload only, not for the additions as of yet. waiting 8-10 weeks between additions however seems plenty of time to catch up imo. given the new information I'd just say keep a bottle of some type of ammo-lock product around just in case. But sounds alot better now than your orignal posting.

I'm still in aggreement with the peanut gallery on the hypo thing though. Not to fast

 

[Netofficer3710]

the hawkfish is going in a 60 gal reef and the tang and lemonpeal are going in a 125 FOWLR.