"ICH FREE TANK" Quest Begins

[markcasto]

Nice one tjay and triggerfish.Its a ***** having to battle with ammonia and do all those water changes no doubt but the plus side is I get to arrange stuff in my main tank with out freaking out my tangs and being attacked by my two yellow tailed damsel fish. I have been using Amquel+ to treat any ammonia peeks along with water changes.I bought one of those seachem badges as well but its not doing anything rather rely on my test kit.


I had an invasion of tiny fanworms a month ago when I uped the calcium with kakwasser drip that I made from an old milk bottle.The copper band munched on them all day long.Sad to have lost them both. From now on I will always have some filter foam in my main tank ready for instant biological filter for my QT tanks.Oh well back to work...

 

[markcasto]

mmm. dying a slow starving death yes indeed I hope everyone of the little buggers dies.

 

[markcasto]

Progress so far...
The 52 gallon QT is now down to .09 first week up on this one and the ich is not showing.The two large regal tangs and chromis are all feeding well and ammonia levels are ok.
The 22 gallon QT has just had water changes no treatment utill I see ich on any of the fish one flame angel 4 clowns.
The refuguim holding the other fish 2 cardinals 1 cleaner wrasse mandarin and yellow tang has been raised to 80 and after 3 days the madarin is clear of it.
So far so good and the hyposalinity treatment seems to be doing the job in the 52 gallon,great because I really love my big regal tangs and I want them back in my main tank ich free.

 

[markcasto]

Heres what it was like with fish...

 

[plaz]

Sounds great! Just one more word of caution, because I love the Regal tangs too. I lost one doing hypo after I was 3 weeks in and thought everything was safe. I knew part of the cycle was broken (I battled traces of NO 1, 2 and 3 with 2 25% water changes daily). I had 1 medium Regal in a 20 gallon long with 2 small Chromis. Everyone ate and looked great. One day (3 weeks into .09), I had company and didn't do the test that afternoon as I always had. In the morning I delayed th water change. Figured they would be okay until night since everyone looked good. The Chromis were, the Regal wasn't. I came home that same afternoon and he looked cramped and was swimming funny. I immediately started a series of water changes. However, the ammonia poisoning from the one time spike was not reversable. I saved the Chromis but not that wonderful Regal. Sorry for the long story, but I don't want it to happen to you. I have done a lot of reading since, unless you had loads of bacteria to start with it is almost impossible to maintain a cycle when doing hypo. If you are seeing traces of ammonia and/or nitrite, you want to be very careful and do the water changes and testing at least once a day (probably twice). Another thing you could do is to add more filter media (ceramic is good) and get bio-spira marine. It will bring up the cycle quickly.

Good luck once again!

 

[markcasto]

Thanks for the advice plaz I would hate to lose one of the tangs. I have added some more filter material as well as the cannister filter and I bunged in some sand from my main tank before I started all this I am testing every day twice for ammonia peaks and using amquel if I detect anything as well as water changes.

I have done the hypo very slowly over a 4 day period to be safe.One of the tangs is a real pig and eats loads but I am a bit worried about the other one his stomach is a bit pinched and his not as fat and active as the other one. Its a real job to get him to eat as well.

I have been tempting him with some julian sprungs sea veggies green seaweed but he only takes a little. Any suggestions on what else might get him to feed better?

 

[markcasto]

Yikes I just did another test and my ammonia level was 1.5 put some amquel in pronto and did a water change. Thats scary, why does the biological filter not hold up when your doing hypo treatment?

 

[markcasto]

Oh no one of the tangs is freaking out and spinning around the tank I changed some water about 2 buckets and sat it out his now calmed down and hiding in his tube. Should I bring the salinity back up slowly or do you think it was the ammonia spike doing it??? This is worse then sitting in a dentist chair am on edge with my eyes glued to the fish...

 

[Triggerfish]

damn,,i better watch the NH3 levels more myself..thanks for the alert notice.
nice tank markcasto- hopefully your tang will settle down now that the water quality has improved.

 

[markcasto]

He is sitting in the corner now looks a lot calmer grief that was worrying.I am pretty sure it was the amquel that I added he was fine before I put that in then he went mad spinning around and gasping at the surface I will add it very very slowly next time.Yes whatch the ammonia it creeps up on you I will test twice a day from now on.

 

[Triggerfish]

i will test in the am and pm daily myself, as basically besides a major ph drop, the NH3 increase is the only other issue that could result in a quick death.

 

[plaz]

I hope your Tang is okay! I don't know why it is so hard to keep the cycle - but for me the experience was certainly not a good one! If I understood Steven Pro correctly, he maintains that if you had a really good cycle and enough media and did the drop really slowly, you would not loose the cycle. However, I e-mailed WetWebMedia after my Tang died and Bob Fenner said he no longer recommends hypo because it happens so often.

If you decide to stop the hypo - remember to bring up the salinity really slowly. Also remember that the cycle won't come back on it's own - so prepare to keep changing a lot of water. If you can find bio-spira marine, I would go ahead and get it. It is refrigerated, so only the big pet stores carry it. It is the only thing I know of that will give you an almost "instant" cycle. The petstore here sells enough for 55 gallons for $20 (some stores charge $30). I used it for my Yellow Tang that was in a separate 20 gallon (as soon as I slowly rose the salinity - with several days of water changes). In my opinion it was the best money I ever spent on this hobby. I was hoping it was just my experience with hypo (because I didn't have enough cycled media) - but for me it was a total nightmare! Death from ammonia poisoning is really hard to watch - and 2 really big water changes each day on the yellow's tank almost put me over the edge before I found the bio-spira.

I will keep you in my thoughts and hope that everything turns out okay!

 

[tjay]

Well I am following with the greatest of interest.
I have good news to report here.
My bio filter must have kicked in, amonia is at 0 since setting up the QT.

and the yellow tang ate both flakes and nori today like he was really hungry.

Now to just do monitoring and wait. I want to add another cole I just wonder if now would be a good time to add it to the QT tank and let it go through hypo while I am waiting.

 

[markcasto]

Well its getting late and I have been watching my tang all evening he is looking better now thank goodness. I bought a seachem ammonia alert badge but its about as much use as a broken leg so I am testing with my normal kit.

I too got a reply from Bob Fenner when I asked him why he didnt favour hypo as a treatment said much the same.Well I am going to persevere with it now I have come this far might as well go the distance. I like it better then using copper and it saves on having to mix up so much salt with the water changes as well.

I put an acrylic sheet in the 52 gallon to seperate the tangs from each other as the fat one is picking on the thin one should ease the stress on him a bit. Cant get my hands on the bio-spira marine the shops round here are dire but thanks for the tip plaz, I will look out for some on the net. Good luck tjay glad your ammonia levels are steady its a pain doing all those tests for sure. Right I'm off to bed now will check out the news on your progress in the morning and hopefully my tang will have some breakfast with me...

 

[Triggerfish]

i have had this q-tank going since around 5/7. the sg was never over 1018 so perhaps that has helped since it has been lowered to 1009.
amm/nit still coming in at zero.
when a moved all the fish i added a whisper 3 power filter that came off my main tank.
i think that if your qtank is large enough and you have a couple of seeded filters to throw on,,then perhaps you will not be so in danger of NH3 spikes??
i plan on running this tank constantly now as i will be stocking heavy throughout this year and will be quarantining everything for 6 weeks.

6 days and still no sign of the parasite on any fish undergoing hypo..clean as can be.

 

[tjay]

yeah having a filter that was already running seems to be the ticket
We seem to be on the same course again.

Keep me posted on your progress

 

[markcasto]

All well this morning, regal tang eating and sitting in his tube, good.Yes I agree totally, having sponge filters ready for the QT at all times is the key.If I had thought ahead and done that I would not be battling with the ammonia also stocking up on salt and RO ready water would be a wise move.

So far so good no itch on any of the fish and the mandarin is clear of it now for 4 days after I raised the tem to 82 in the fuge.

 

[Triggerfish]

yes,,i always have RO/DI water available that i keep in a large containter..i only add salt to it 3 days prior to doing water changes, so i always have regular water available for top off.

only problem is now, with the weekly changes i will be doing for the q-tank the sg of the makeup water will obviously be much lower than normal..so i need to adjust the plan accordingly to accommodate for the difference in the two systems.
a bit of more work but should not be an issue if planned for.

 

[markcasto]

I Have a large water container outside which I keep full of RO water the only real exspense here is the salt. I am using a new refractometer made by deltic got it the other day I will never use a swing hydrometer again this thing is spot on and a must for doing the hypo treatment.

I take a bucket of my ro water and heat 2litres of it in the microwave then add some buffer and slowly add it to my tank,I then test with my refractometer an hour later its slow but it works. I think we have all found out forward planning is the key to this.

 

[Triggerfish]

just curious,,what were you using b/f to measure sg and how off was the reading + or - to the refract?