Hypo in DT to treat ich?

[Lion-o]

So we definitely now are seeing ich bloom in our 300g FOWLR display tank. Last added was 3 raccoon butterflies (5") (you may remember them from an earlier post) nearly a month ago which were in QT for 8 weeks. The ich never bloomed in QT so we thought we were OK. Thought wrong, but anyway that's all behind us now. Only other fish in the tank is a large blue & gold rabbitfish (9"). All fish are eating fine and behaviour is mostly normal (some flashing now and some showings of dominance between the butterflies).

I know some say the best option to treat ich is the tank transfer method, but time (pretty much daily) and money involved doesn't really work for us (have a 40 gal and 25 gal QT). So that leaves hypo, formalin dip, and copper. Right now I'm thinking the least stressful option for the fish (and for us) would be to do hypo right in the DT. That way we don't have to worry as much about spikes in water quality and topping off a QT. The only thing in the tank besides the fish is liverock, livesand, and (visibly) some pink polychaete worms, white baby snails (?), clear flatworms and feather dusters (actually the butterflies pretty much decimated that population already). We don't have a cleaning crew or anything like that. Should we still be concerned with ammonia spikes from the hypo treatment?

It's my understanding that some of the rock/sand will "survive" the treatment and be able to re-seed when done. However, my main concern is our fish as we've always been "fish people" rather than corals or what have you.

I also read that a skimmer should be turned off if treating with hypo in DT - why is that? I feel like a skimmer would help!

thanks in advance; sorry about the wall of text,
danny

 

[Spar]

in your situation, i'd go with Hypo as you are saying - with FOWLR's it is an easy way. there are hypo-resistant strains of Ich, but you could at least try it and if the Ich returns then figure out a Plan B - no real time or effort wasted.

correct that some of the living organisms will die with hypo, and yes you will get some ammonia spike, but the already-present bacteria will help. just keep up with water changes for a while and add Prime/AmQuel as needed. Get one of those seachem ammonia badges too.

i have a friend that often runs his 400g FOWLR through Hypo. So much easier when you don't have coral and CUC!

be sure to do TTM on any new fish down the road. And any non-fish run fallow in a separate QT for 11-12 weeks, so that you don't reintroduce Ich.

 

[Lion-o]

Thanks Spar. We do have an ammonia badge already, so got that covered

Not sure what you meant by Prime/AmQuel though ?

For these fish we struggled getting them to initially eat but finally got them into bloodworms. We now have them eating much healthier (no bloodworms, selcon soaked varieties, plus nori!) - but the ich is blooming. We saw some symptoms of possible ich (dot here or there, possible flashing) but never anything similar to the bloom we are seeing now, even after 8 weeks in QT. My wife is still convinced by all the conspiracy theories that maybe ich was lying dormant in our sand or something or other - but I don't buy it.

 

[Spar]

Thanks Spar. We do have an ammonia badge already, so got that covered

Not sure what you meant by Prime/AmQuel though ?

For these fish we struggled getting them to initially eat but finally got them into bloodworms. We now have them eating much healthier (no bloodworms, selcon soaked varieties, plus nori!) - but the ich is blooming. We saw some symptoms of possible ich (dot here or there, possible flashing) but never anything similar to the bloom we are seeing now, even after 8 weeks in QT. My wife is still convinced by all the conspiracy theories that maybe ich was lying dormant in our sand or something or other - but I don't buy it.

Prime or AmQuel are just two of the most common ammonia detoxifier products. Will be your friend as the die-off begins.

Ich can and does stay dormant in the sandbeds and on the rocks while in the Tomite (cyst) stage. Can take up to 72 days for them to hatch. So your wife is on to something!

 

[Lion-o]

We are generally very careful which is part of why this is so annoying Our tank was running fishless with lights off for a good 6 months before we got our first fish!

 

[Spar]

We are generally very careful which is part of why this is so annoying Our tank was running fishless with lights off for a good 6 months before we got our first fish!

did yall add any new live rock, or anything else wet during that time? if not, ya 6 months is well more than enough time for any fish-dependent parasites/disease to die off.

 

[Lion-o]

No we did not. I apologize - I got our convo going a bit off topic and want to get back on the rails towards hypo in DT.

We'll start treatment tonight (probably get to final salinity over 3 changes in a 3 day period) and post updates. Any other gotchas we need to watch out for?

thanks!

 

[Lion-o]

also, i assume there are no easy tricks for lowering salinity - right? For raising salinity, I know I can simply replace evap with salt water and it will slowly raise over time. But for lowering, I assume it is very manual and we just have to be as careful as possible while draining water out and adding rodi back in.

 

[Spar]

Ya I was thinking about that considering 300 gallons! Going down in salinity is quite easy on fish. What I used to do when running hypo QT is just drip acclimate my new fish to 1.009. Never lost a fish doing that. That friend I mentioned with a 400g drips both down and up and has always been successful. As such, if I were in your position I would remove the fish, drain the water to where refilling with RO/DI will bring you to 1.009, then drip acclimate the fish back in. Or just refill very slowly (over 2 hours) and you don't even have to take the fish out (a little dangerous though IMO, unless watching salinity closely over the refill period).

This will save you from doing hundreds on hundreds of gallons water changing trying to slowly decrease salinity.

Going up I would do what you are recommending. I used to just add a cup of salt at a time throughout the day to the sump, over a 5 day period.

 

[Lion-o]

I think what I plan to do is drain out 25g of salt water, and then slowly drip 25g of pure RODI water in - measuring periodically. I can stop adding RODI if it's dropping too fast and put salt water back in.

I could drain out and drip in at the same time, but I'm going to use a lot more water that way as i'll be pulling some of the water out that is supposed to be help lower the salinity.

Water changes are definitely a pain point for a tank this big

 

[Lion-o]

Got delayed a bit, right now our biggest concern is how much the ph is going to drop. Have been reading a lot about soda ash and baking soda, but let me know if you guys have any idea!

thanks~

 

[Spar]

Don't worry about pH, especially if doing just 25g's at a time. Wouldn't hurt to maintain KH at around 6 or 7dKH. Just add baking soda or soda ash. You can use the calculators at BRS to assist. By the time you get to 1.009 your KH will be quite low otherwise.

 

[Lion-o]

Thanks, I did find this post by disc1 whom I've read a lot of fancy chemistry things from, so I'm going to concur

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2368439&highlight=hypo+ph

 

[Lion-o]

I know alkalinity affects corals (and coralline) but does it affect fish as well?

 

[Lion-o]

Progress update: just finished our first water change where we took out ~25g of water and then added in ~25g of RODI water. This dropped the salinity from 35ppt to 30ppt (~1.026->~1.022). If the ratio holds constant for future changes it will be about 3 days and change till we hit 11ppt. Will be running ph, ammonia, salinity and alkalinity tests throughout the day to make sure nothing spikes.

 

[Spar]

I know alkalinity affects corals (and coralline) but does it affect fish as well?

KH is extremely important to most things aquatic. Sensitives to alkaline/basic vs acidic conditions are larger driven by the KH value. All pH is is a formula result that consists of the cross section of KH and acids. Acids are difficult to measure and for our purposes really just comprises atmospheric co2. KH is the other variable and is luckily easily measurable. Hence why you will see a lot of people saying to ignore pH completely and solely focus on your KH value.

You don't need KH high but if you maintain around 6-7 with hypo then everyone should be happy. Just make sure you are dosing frequently to stabilize it. pH drops exponentially as KH gets lower.

 

[Lion-o]

Bit irritated/stressed out right now. The brand new replacement DI resin I just got Friday is already used up and my RODI unit is producing water over 10 TDS, so i have it stopped until I can get additional resin.

This is in tandem with a brand new RO membrane, a brand new 5 micron carbon block, and 1 month old GE ROSave Sediment pre filter. I only got to produce about 50g of water, (and an additional 50 waste). Normally these last me several months, I don't know if it's just the product from BRS or what...

grrr...

 

[Spar]

odd. i get my RO supplies from BRS and they seem to provide great results for much longer than would have expected.

i produce a TON on water with my 450g, and my first membrane lasted 2.5 years even. DI never seems to run out.

Keep in mind that your local water source plays a big part in it. Albeit, I have very hard water here, but I know other people have insanely hard water in their areas. could just be wearing it out quickly?

curious though, you said 50g produced water and 50g's waste. that is a 1:1 ratio? generally the ratio is intended to be around 1:3 (produced:waste) or much more toward waste (1:5 even). you may want to try reducing the speed of the produced water to see if that helps.

 

[Lion-o]

Correct, 1:1 ratio I have the vertex puratek and love it. Was brand newish when I got into the hobby. It also self purges every startup and then after 2 hours of running - so I don't need to worry about my membrane.

http://www.vertexaquaristik.com/Pro...100RODI/tabid/202/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Anyway, I do live in Arizona so there are some water implications there but usually I get much longer life out of my DI filters. I buy the color changing and pulled it out and it was all yellow already. So I don't know if it was just a bad batch or what.

 

[Lion-o]

After 3 separate water changes of 25g a pop we are down from 1.026 to 1.017. Kind of common sense (though I didn't think of it earlier), is that as you keep going the water is more diluted so it's harder to continue dropping the salinity.

Tonight we're going to try upping from 25g to 50g at once to make some more progress. At least the fish seem to be enjoying it - all the butterflies are up swimming around in the freshwater as it's pouring in ... cuties