Hyposalinity, how long main tank fishless? forgetting anything?

[ScubaSteve777]

Ok so to make sure I'm doing things right, I put all the fish in a 30 gallon today. 3 of the 5 fish were showing signs of itch with white spots. For the next two days I will slowly lower the salinity to 11-12 ppt or 1.008-1.009 salinity.

In the tank:
-2 hang on the backs with nothing in them but some mechanical on the sucker part (to keep the firefish from going up there). I change this every few days?
-heater
-bubbler
-4 pieces of dry rock. (will help keep ph stable, and keep the fish relaxed)

When I put them in the plastic tank, I can't see any of the white spots from the top down view. What would be a safe number of weeks to hyposalinity? 6-8 weeks? From their I would slowly raise the salinity back up to 1.026 over the course of 5 days? Then how long does the main tank need to remain fishless? I read from 8 to 12 weeks.

 

[Newsmyrna80]

Read the stickies on ich at the top of this forum. What kind of fish do you have?

 

[Chargers]

Dang, ok I read those first and all the info got messed around when I researched it with 10 other threads. Snorvich doesn't say anything about how long it should take to lower the level, or how long it should take to raise the salinity. He says something about lower the heat for more oxygen, what temp is good?(lower temp should mean a calmer fish). What's a good amount of time in hypo if I can't see the white spots right after they went in the tank? One thing I picked up after reading that article again is to take out the rocks, because the itch can attach itself to it, but doesn't attach itself to the bottom of the tank?

fish:
pair of clowns: showed signs of itch
blue/green chromis: showed signs of itch
bangaii cardinal
purple firefish

fish loss:
lost a midas blenny in the main tank
lost a flame angel showed signs of itch, had him in hyposalinity byhimself and died shortly after. A few days later the clowns showed signs of itch.

 

[snorvich]

Tank should remain without fish for 9 weeks minimum, 12 weeks ideally. Going down in SG is not stressful for fish, you can do so from 1.026 to 1.009 over a days time. Going up is stressful, so going up should be at 0.002 per day over a weeks time.

 

[Chargers]

cool, thanks for clearing that up