eel, ich and the 6 week process

[VegasMike]

I have just gone through the worst rash of fish death in my ten years in this hobby due to the fact that I did not follow my own practice of QT or two week hypo.

I set up a new tank a few months ago and transferred fish from my existing 450 reef into the new 350 reef. The fish were fine for a month. Then I added a new fish from the store that they had just gotten in and just unpacked that morning, big mistake.

Anyway, that led to ich and the loss of every fish in the tank except the snowflake eel.

My question is this:

Since the eel has no sign of ich and they are evidently very resistant to the parasite, do I need to take him out of the tank for 6-8 weeks to let the existing ich parasites die off?

Since there are no other fish and the tank is full of corals and inverts, I do not want to treat the tank. Letting the tank sit idle for two months is the most appealing approach to me. Taking the eel out and putting it in my 37 gallon soon to be QT tank does not sound good either, but I will do that if that is what it takes. Also, can eels be treated by hypo in the QT just to make sure?

I know copper is out of the question with an eel.

Mike

 

[wooden_reefer]

I think you should take the eel out and let the tank go fallow of fish for two months.

How are you going to support the eel for the two months? You can use a part of your biologial filter medium if it can be partitioned. If you only have liverock for biological filter and a lot of stuffs have grown on all of your LR, you can have a problem. Treatment for ich would likely kill some of the stuffs on the mature LR, causing amminia surge.

I hope you have not been using LR exclusively for nitrification medium or some of your LR does not have much growth.

 

[VegasMike]

I plan on converting my office tank to a QT from scratch. I am going to empty it out and use some of the LR from my 150 gallon refugium. I am also in the process of removing some of the LR from my 450 SPS tank, so the LR is not the problem. I plan on setting up the 37 gallon basically from scratch, transferring the corals (only a few) to my 350 or 450 and using a few larger pieces from the 450's refugium with a bare bottom on the 37. The eel should be fine as the only occupant. It is just going t be a pain to get the eel out. Much of the LR would be considered base rock. The 37 also has an Aquaclear 110 filter and a skimmer.

 

[wooden_reefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10630137#post10630137 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by VegasMike
I plan on converting my office tank to a QT from scratch. I am going to empty it out and use some of the LR from my 150 gallon refugium. I am also in the process of removing some of the LR from my 450 SPS tank, so the LR is not the problem. I plan on setting up the 37 gallon basically from scratch, transferring the corals (only a few) to my 350 or 450 and using a few larger pieces from the 450's refugium with a bare bottom on the 37. The eel should be fine as the only occupant. It is just going t be a pain to get the eel out. Much of the LR would be considered base rock. The 37 also has an Aquaclear 110 filter and a skimmer.

You have to support the eel and at the same time actively treat the eel to eradicate the last organism of ich on it and the water that contains it. You cannot just isolate the eel for two months and do not actively treat it at the same time. This is not the same as letting your reef tank fallow of fish for two months without treatment. How are you going to do that?

 

[VegasMike]

Please reread the first post as it addresses that issue. Eels supposedly don't do well with copper and the only other treatment I know of is hypo, which I plan to use. I just want to make sure that I am nt killing the eel with the treatment.

It only makes common sense that I would need to treat the eel while out of the tank, otherwise there would be no point in removing the eel in the first place. My real question was more to the point of if the eel can be the host that the parasite needs to survive. If so, then it will need to be removed and treated while the tank remains fishless for two months.

The eel remains free of any signs of the parasite and eats very well.

 

[wooden_reefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10634247#post10634247 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by VegasMike
Please reread the first post as it addresses that issue. Eels supposedly don't do well with copper and the only other treatment I know of is hypo, which I plan to use. I just want to make sure that I am nt killing the eel with the treatment.

It only makes common sense that I would need to treat the eel while out of the tank, otherwise there would be no point in removing the eel in the first place. My real question was more to the point of if the eel can be the host that the parasite needs to survive. If so, then it will need to be removed and treated while the tank remains fishless for two months.

The eel remains free of any signs of the parasite and eats very well.

Hypo would kill many invertebrates. If you can treat the eel with hypo and support it with a nitrification medium that does not have invertebrates that can be killed (and give out amminia), you should be fine in general.

I don't know how well eels as a class of fish take hypo. May be other people who have tried hypo with eels can tell you.

Most fish that are usually resistant to ich are not immune to it so a tank with them is not effectively fallow.

 

[Gwynhidwy]

I've not had eels, but what I understand is that they are only resistant, which means they can likely support enough of the crypt to allow enough of them to complete their life cycle that when you put new fish in you will probably see a new outbreak. This can be true even if you don't see any visible signs of the crypt on the eel. Fish are most likely to develop ich in their gills, where we cannot see the parasite.

I would not chance leaving him in the tank even though it will be a pain to catch him. I would pull him out and treat him in the QT with hyposalinity. I have never heard that eels cannot be treated this way, but I am not positive.