hyposalinity in DT

[areeftank]

hello everyone,

I am currently seeing signs of ich in my 240g display tank. never QT'ed a fish before so im not supprised....:headwally: ....

today i got myself a QT :celeb1:

it is just a simple 3 foot 40 gallon tank with a heater and a high flow rate sponge filter.

after doing extensive reserch i have come come up with the best option for me [ i think ]

remove my corals/inverts from my dt and put them in my qt. my qt has never had copper used in it before( this would not be that hard). then i would go ahead and treat my main tank with hiposalinity.

my question is will my biological filter (live rock/sand) cope with the salinity drop.

i dont really care if my coraline algae dies off (it will come back), as long as this gets rid of the ich / any other parasites laying around


fish list

sohal tang 4 inch (very peaceful...FOR NOW!!! :spin1: ) hes got a home for when he gets mean

6 blue green chromis
10 sunburst antheis
2 yellow wrasses
coral beauty
lawnmower blenny
2 long nosed hawk fish (pair)
twin spot hog fish
bi-color blenny

water par..

ph 8.4
kh 10.0 dkh
salinity 1.024
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 0
phosphate .05
silicate .25
magnesium 1350
calcium 550

will this work or would i be better putting all the fish in the qt and treating them with copper while the display becomes ich/parasite free

the only problem with not treating the display tank with hypo is that if for example some other type of bactirial infection eg.. black spot, fin rot and so on were to be in my dt. i think the hypo would eradicate them aswell.




thanks in advance for any input...

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

You will have some dye off,but not totally.I am doing hypo now in my 240,the way I brought my salinity down was remove 5 gallons and add back 5 gallons of ro-di water.That helps keep ph from makeing drastics shifts and helps reduce ammonia from dye off of the sandbed and liverocks.Trust me it takes awhile to bring it down this way,it took a week to go from 1.0026 to 1.009.If possible raise the water depth in your sump to keep the skimmer working. HTH

 

[b0bab0ey]

Hypo will eventually kill off all (or most of) the bacteria living in your rock/sand. Tank will be unable to handle your bioload, you'll go thru mini-cycles and the fluctuating ammonia will become more lethal to your fish than the Ich. Best option is to remove all the fish to your QT, treat with hypo/copper in there, and leave your corals/inverts in the DT and go fallow for 8-9 weeks to starve out the Ich in the DT.

 

[areeftank]

thanks for the fast response guys,

bobaboey, what you are saying is true but I believe I will have allot less issues with ammonia if I leave the fish in the 240 gallons of water with my skimmer, uv, carbon ect... what you have stated is actually one of the main floors in my original plan to qt the fish. (keeping the ammonia down in the qt with IMO240 gallons worth of fish would be very hard) if the ammonia did rise in the DT I would just use some alpha by sachem to lock it up.......I will be doing a massive water change after treatment anyway.

@snakemanvet.
happens to the best of us...... I knew it was only a matter of time before soothing came in. luckily I spend far to much time watching my fish so I did notice when they started to get the trace signs ( slight jitters and scratch dives across the sand. hope your treatment goes well. love to hear how it turns out..

 

[areeftank]

ow and just one more question... how long should I treat for.

 

[jjk_reef00]

Hypo will eventually kill off all (or most of) the bacteria living in your rock/sand. Tank will be unable to handle your bioload, you'll go thru mini-cycles and the fluctuating ammonia will become more lethal to your fish than the Ich. Best option is to remove all the fish to your QT, treat with hypo/copper in there, and leave your corals/inverts in the DT and go fallow for 8-9 weeks to starve out the Ich in the DT.

While I agree that removing all the fish is the best bet. Maybe I am wrong but I didn't think that hypo killed the biological filter. I know there are others who have hypoed their display tank without loosing all their fish.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

From what I have read you don't lose all biological bacteria.Another reason I hypo my dt
was the crushed corals in my sandbed helps keep ph up.I an doing the hypo treatment for 6 weeks. salinity 1.008, Ammonia is at o, and ph is 8.1.

 

[areeftank]

yer,

the stress involved in just simply catching all my fish points me towards QTing the corals and hypoing the tank. will hypo remove all parasites or just ich

jjk reef, thanks for your response, any reason you prefer to remove the fish?

snakemanvet, thanks for your response, how long do you plan to treat for

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

I am looking at 6 weeks.

 

[jjk_reef00]

I prefer to use copper on fish because IMO hypo needs to be very exact to work properly. If you have an ATO and measure salinity very closely then you can do it but I prefer not to. Many others have done it with success and with all those fish it sounds like it might be your best option.

 

[areeftank]

yer I think it will be my best option. during the hyposalinity can I use tri sulfa in the fishes food and run my u v steralizer or will it effect the results

 

[sandwi54]

hypo would not adversely affect biological filter. it will retard the bacteria's activities for a couple of days but should return to normal afterwards. what would happen is hypo would kill all the critters in your live rocks, causing possible ammonia/nitrite spikes. skimmer also doesn't work as well in hypo and you'd have to skim wetter to be able to do a decent skim.

hypo will kill only ich, nothing else.

 

[Haffs09]

I had an ich outbreak in my system (~500 gallons total) this past May. It is a new system and in April, I added 7 tangs and a foxface to the DT. All fish went through QT except a hippo and yellow tang whsich I already had. Needless to say, the hippo was carrying ich (came down with it a couple of years ago but appeared clean since) and it took 6 weeks before it finally broke out and infected the tank. I moved 150-200lbs of liverock into to a 75 gal tank that I took offline. That tank remained fallow for 3 months. I left the 150lbs of rock in the DT (it was recently cooked) and took 12 days to lower my s.g. to 1.009. I kept it at this level for 6 weeks or so before returning to 1.020. During that time, I religiously changed 40 or 50 gallons every 2nd or 3rd day to stay ahead of ammonia. There were 5 days in the beginning when I changed water everyday. Of course with a s.g. of 1.009, your salt lasts you much longer so I didn't mind all the water changes. Also, I don't have a sandbed, so that may or may not impact spikes in ammonia. Good luck!

 

[areeftank]

thanks for everyone who had input,

treatment is currently going well with no livestock losses.

will update when treatment is finished and if ich comes back.

treatment has about 4 weeks to go...

also thanks to snakemanvet,

i removed 5 gallon buckets to drop the salinity and i think as a result of this i didnt have an ammonia spike


haffs 09

thanks, i did remove some of my choice live rock pieces with the purple stuff, hope it lives

ow, and i have no idea what cooking live rock is... care to elabrate or a good link would be great

thanks again guys

 

[sandwi54]

Keep in mind that the 4-week clock starts counting after the LAST spot disappears. If any spot reappears during the 4 week countdown, the clock resets after that spot disappears. After the 4 week period ends, raise the salinity very slowly (no more than 0.002 per day) and observe for another 4 weeks.

 

[fender4string]

I've treated hypo in my DT, an 85 gallon, twice with no ill effects. The duration of treatment I used was 12 weeks (the maximum recommended). My last treatment was about 2 years ago and I haven't seen any ich since or lost any fish.

Good luck with your treatment!

 

[Haffs09]

Here's the link:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1914426

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

Hey Hafs09, How is the treatment going.

 

[areeftank]

Thanks for everyone’s input, sorry I have been a little busy the last couple months.


I thought I would do one last update to wrap up, the treatment went very well and the tank suffered no losses,
If you do attempt to try this treatment, I recommend you keep a bottle of prime or alpha handy for the duration of the treatment and when you test copper you should also test for ammonia (every day) as the biological filtration gets a little bit shaken.
Once again a big thanks to everyone’s input and I hope people can learn from this…
QT EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!

 

[MrTuskfish]

Thanks for everyone's input, sorry I have been a little busy the last couple months.


I thought I would do one last update to wrap up, the treatment went very well and the tank suffered no losses,
If you do attempt to try this treatment, I recommend you keep a bottle of prime or alpha handy for the duration of the treatment and when you test copper you should also test for ammonia (every day) as the biological filtration gets a little bit shaken.
Once again a big thanks to everyone's input and I hope people can learn from this"¦
QT EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!

Glad to hear it!!! Amen to the QT endorsement, I'm convinced its the #1 reason our hobby has such a high turnover rate. A lot of hobbyists, hopefully, will learn from your experience. Thanks for posting the follow-up; its really helpful. BTW, don't mix Prime (or similar products) with Cupramine copper---it can be deadly.