HELP PLEASE!!: Treating Crypto (ICH)

oscarinw

oscarinw

New member
Before you lose your patience with me, you must know I have read all stickies regarding ich treatment. My questions are a little specific to my situation. PLEASE READ ON:
Long story short, I have an outbreak of ich in my DT. Don't know how it got there, I quarantine but don't have a QT coral setup so I'm guessing that's my fallout. Anyway, I have 5 wrasses: 1 4-inch solorensis, 2 medium Lubbocki, 1 small McCosker's, 1 medium McCosker's, 1 3-inch Paracanthurus Hepatus (Blue Hippo who is really the one suffering), 1 Gramma basslet, and 2 younger b/w ocellaris clowns (3 & 2 1/2 inches). They all live in my 100 gal. DT. Now for the treatment I have a 30 gal tall ready to go with about 20 pounds of rock, bare bottom a 55gal rated power filter and a pretty strong powerhead aimed to the surface... I am considering hyposalinity but came across a site that says that the wrasses don't do well with hyposalinity. Only my tang is now showing spots (maybe 60-80, pretty bad). Maybe 1 small dot on the tail of one of the McCoskers. All of them are still eating well. However, I have a couple of questions for you:
1. Is there anything regarding wrasses and hyposalinity that you know about that might suggest copper over hypo in my case?
2. Will all my fish be ok in the 30gal QT given it's a several-months old system or should I consider adding a 3rd system.
3. Should I move all of them to the treatment tank given that mostly none but the Tang are showing the infection?

Any help will be highly appreciated by my poor Hippo!
 
I don' t, re the wrasses. I've not kept that species.
I don't cycle a quarantine. Definitely not a hospital tank that's going to use copper:it will kill all the rock straight off and add that bioload to the stress level. If it were mine, honestly, I'd be tempted to leave all the wrasses where they are, since they don't seem to be bad off, re your report. I'd treat the hippo for the full course, stop the treatment on time, but leave him in qt for a full 12 weeks after the LAST appearance of ich in your DT to avoid him running into the parasite in your DT. It's not orthodox, and risks having it go worse, but if you keep the water quality immaculate (my params are good, in my sig line) in both tanks, 24/7, and the ich stops manifesting, 12 weeks will assure it's clean enough to put your hippo back in. The problem is, if treatment can make a fish worse, and even kill it, your percentage is greater just leaving them in the tank and hoping the pest runs out of steam, as it can if it doesn't find hosts. If the cases of ich in the DT start getting worse instead of better, then you're hosed, and everybody needs to go into treatment, maybe 2 hospital tanks, hypo for one and copper for the rest. Frankly I suspect this pest didn't come in on your corals, but in the gills of one fish, and it failed to infest until maybe the tank had a few days of less than perfect water, and zing. It found a way in. Tangs and angels are the most susceptible. Rabbits are the worst.

Good luck.
 
I would do Cupramine for all inhabitants, personally. Hypo is difficult to pull off successfully, and there are numerous reports on this forum from aquarists who had ich make a comeback after attempting hypo.
 
@ Sk8r. Thanks.
Here's the plan: I have just caught my hippo and moved her to the QT. Tomorrow I will take the rock back to the DT and will put a few pieces of PVC there. Will get some ammonia detoxing chem such as Prime... I have never used these. Any recommendations here?, then I will follow Deinon's suggestion and will go with copper. (Thanks for that!)
Will keep the community informed as how this evolves.
Any further recommendations or advice will be welcomed and appreciated.

-Oscar
 
Don't use Prime in conjunction with Cupramine. It will reduce the amine-bound copper into solution and make it extremely toxic to your fish. Better bet is to pick up some Bio-Spira and dose the aquarium with nitrifying bacteria and manage the ammonia with water changes until the biofilter is established. I put Fluval ceramic rings in a media bag and place them in my HOB filter. The rings provide additional surface area for the bacteria to populate. I saw another suggestion today that involves using eggcrate to section off a portion of the tank and filling with bioballs (again, using Bio-Spira to populate the bacteria).
 
Here's the post with picture. Good luck...hope all your fish pull through! I love my McCosker's wrasse and would be bummed if I lost him. I'm in the middle of a fallow period myself -- caused by an ich-carrying coral, no less.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=21891322&postcount=8

One last suggestion on the Cupramine...don't follow the dosing instructions on the bottle. You want to dose very slowly - over 4-5 days. I calculate the amount I need using this calculator and divide by five to get the daily dosage amount. I then measure out the correct amount with a small syringe. I have found that the dosing instructions on the bottle are too aggressive and cause a negative reaction from fish. You might want to shoot for a 0.40 mg/l dosage and do it for 4 weeks - the 2 week duration is not long enough.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2284605
 
Last edited:
If your going with copper, is there any sponges etc you could pull from your display to put into the hospital tank to help with bio load. Anything not calcium could help.

Also too late now, but I have had good results with TTM and would have suggested that and the last transfer putting them into your almost established hospital tank until your display has gone fallow.

I have been using TTM again reccently because I am an impulsive buyer and my QT's were already full of treated fish. lol but TTM works and works well. I dose prazi on each transfer as well to get any flukes or worms that the standard TTM wouldn't work on.
 
Thanks triggreef! I am planning on swinging by the LFS today to pick up the cupramine. So not really late. I will look at the tank transfer method again. Everything's worth the try...
Is there a recommended TTM thread to go with?
-Oscar
 
I am glad I decided to review the TTM method. I ended up going with it. Basically I rescued a 15 gal decommissioned tank, put in a small plastic bucket with bioballs, an HOB filter, a powerhead and a heater and left it overnight with newly mixed saltwater... I did not find biospira at my local retailers so I went with API Quickstart. This morning the water checked good for both ammonia and nitrates and in went the 2 guys that ended up being moved from my DT: The Blue tang and the Lubbocki wrasse. Threw out all water from the QT cleaned, rinsed and left to dry everything in it.
Couple of points I could use advice on:
1. Has anyone used Quickstart before? Any dosing or general recommendations on it?
2. How often should I test to act on any presence of Ammonia or Nitrite? Could I use conditioner in those cases or water change is the only acceptable move?
I'll put up some pictures to make this more interesting but thanks for the advice and please keep it coming.
 
I haven't used Quickstart, but most of the bacteria-in-a-bottle products work similarly. You can't really overdose it IME. However, since the fish are only going to be in each tank for 3 days max, you really don't need the bacteria. 3 days isn't long enough for a biofilter to be established, and unless you have a heavy fish load you aren't going to be generating a ton of waste. Just feed lightly, monitor ammonia and your fish will be fine.

As far as ammonia goes, I dose Prime once a day when doing TTM. If available, the Seachem ammonia badges are great for monitoring ammonia in semi-real time.
 
The hippo died today, a day before the second move. She developed a bacterial infection I guess from all the sores of the crypto attack and subsequent stress from the moves. She ate well yesterday but today her skin was in terrible shape... Sad day needless to say. Thanks to all for your help!
-Oscar
 
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