Hyposalinity Method for New MDT as a ick preventative for adding new fish

[Kuwait Reef]

Hi, I currently have a 264 gallon tank holding a (purple tang, fox, yellow angel, 2 gobies, 3 blennies, 2 chromis, 2 clowns) the tank is a month old and I have this many fish because I bought the tank used which came with these fishes. I previously had a 34g reef tank and with 13 fishes which died due to the dreaded white spot (typical nubby) currently the small tank is filled with coral and a couple of shrimps. I will get to the point of this post it's just I want explain what it is I have first.
Eventually I do plan on transferring my coral to the big tank but i first want to fill it with all fishes on my wish list.
To avoid the hole quarantine procedure which would take a long time with the amount of fish i plan to buy i want to use hypo salinity. So basically I buy all the fish I want (2 yellow tangs, 2 blue tangs, 1 powder blue tang, flame angel, 2antheas, 2 BW clowns and 2 snowflakes, ) put them in the big tank with hypo make sure I don't have any ick and they are all healthy and eating and then I transfer my coral from the small tank.
So here's the issue: In Kuwait there are only a few fish stores and they don't always have the fish I want sometimes it takes a month before they get a new shipment plus it would cost me a lot to get all these fishes in one go. I reckon I could afford and be able to get all these fishes over a period of three to four months.
My question is would the fish be able to live with hypo that long? And also lets say I find a fish I want two months after ive added the new fish would this start the hole process over? How long can the fish go on hypo? The reason I want to do this is I want to be sure that I don't have ick in my DT
I plan to use seneye reef monitor to watch the sg and ph constantly along with an ATO.
Your advice and experience is deeply appreciated and a big thanks from Kuwait to fellow reefers

 

[gone fishin]

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2388428

Are you familiar with the tank transfer method. If not see the link. I think you would have better success with TTM than hyposalinity. You can do a couple fish at a time and not worry about getting them all at once.

Also, there has been some anecdotal evidence that some ich strains are resistant to hypo. good luck.

 

[dkeller_nc]

Well, you've a couple of potential issues. The first is that your display tank already has a population of fish that may or may not be ich-free. There are many examples of ich being present in an established tank where the fishes in the tank have developed a certain degree of immunity to the parasite and don't display obvious symptoms. However, when a new fish is added, they've no such immunity, and die rapidly from an acute ich infestation.

The second issue is that your desired fish list, when added to the population of your existing inhabitants, will result in a tank that's quite crowded. Moreover, some of the fish that you've noted can be quite aggressive to each other when immediately placed together.

To answer your question, however, if the salinity in the tank is very precisely maintained so that it doesn't drop below 1.009 sp. gr., most marine fish can tolerate these conditions for quite a long time - at least a few weeks. However, getting to these conditions must be done relatively slowly; at least a few days is necessary to go from full-strength salinity to ich-killing hyposalinity. So the issue you have is that purchasing a new fish and trying to rapidly adjust it from the store's salinity to your tank's salinity in an hour or so might result in quite a few casualties.

A much better plan would be to set up a 30 gallon quarantine tank and simply follow the normal hyposalinity procedures and build your display tank's population slowly.