Ich... Hypo in DT?

[DrBoxedWine]

I had a look at my tank before i left for work this morning, and I noticed that my Kole Tang looked like he was covered in grains of sugar and was just sitting on the bottom of the tank. I called my wife to have her give me an update, and she's the foxface doesn't look good either. I'm thinking of taking a half day here, and going home to do some emergency treatment.

Anyway, my DT is new, i only have 6 corals, and they're all still frags on the the little frag discs. What i'm wondering, is, could i take all the corals, cleaner shrimp, and snails, put them in my 20g QT and move one of my hydras over to that tank and run the DT at HYPO for the recommended time? I think i could get 80-90% of the snails over to the QT without a problem. This way i wouldn't have to break down all the rocks to get all the fish out and worry about ammonia problems in the QT. I could also use my existing QT, and now have to buy another.

I do have a bag of biorings in the DT sump that are cycled and ready to be put into my QT AC70 filter. It's a heavily stocked 75g tank tho, so i'd have to buy a used 55g if i move all the fish. No way the little bag of bio rings is going to handle the bioload of 8 fish tho.

 

[pyithar]

all the rocks in the DT will become base rocks(hiding pods, worms, snails etc won't survive hypo salinity). i think beneficial bacteria will survive though. because of die offs, there will be ammonia spike. if it were me, i would just use a quarantine tank to treat the fish with cupramine since hypo salinity does not work for some ich.

 

[DrBoxedWine]

Thanks! I'd really like to go with testing in the DT... I have an ATO on that tank, and I'd have to buy another 55g, and a bigger filter if I take all the fish out. I think the ammonia spike in the DT will be manageable, while in the qt they'll be really bad for a few weeks.

The tang is really bad, poor guy is covered in ich. I'm thinking a FW dip when I get home may be needed just to keep him alive through the night.

 

[DrBoxedWine]

I'm going to repost this in the Disease forum, feel free to close this post.

 

[ryansc]

i have to agree with pyithar on this one. i had a bout with ich twice. Put all fish in QT in hypo for 8 weeks. the DT was fallow during this time. It appeared the ich had gone away. But it came back two weeks after i reintroduced into DT. Only this time i lost all but two fish. Tank has been fallow for 4months now and am thinking of getting some new fish to add in. But now I'm worried.

next time i get ich, its copper treatment for my fish. Hypo takes so long to work. To do it properly w/o stressing your fish it takes almost 2 weeks to drop the water from 1.25>1.09

 

[gone fishin]

Tank transfer method is my preferred way to treat ich.

 

[DrBoxedWine]

I've been reading 48 hours is enough time for the drop, and that increasing back up is where you want to go slow...

 

[Spar]

I've been reading 48 hours is enough time for the drop, and that increasing back up is where you want to go slow...

Correct. Even quicker than 48 hours is fine for dropping the salinity, but it is always better to take it slow. Increasing should be as slow as you can offer it; 3 days bare minimum, a week preferred.

The reference from the person above has the risk reversed.