ICH hyposalinity 12ppt or 16ppt?

[Poopapotamus]

Hello,
My fish have come down with ICH after purchasing a new fish and not properly quarantining it...I know Bad Ron, Bad! I have all the fish out of the main display and in a separate tank where I have been slowly reducing the salt concentration. I am getting it down to the point where I need to make a decision to go down to 16ppt or down to 12ppt. There is a lot of conflicting information out there, and it is difficult to sort through. Even on this site there are two different, but official looking opinions... One by WaterKeeper: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1500214&highlight=ich

and one by snorvich: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1992196

It would be great to know what the general consensus is these days, since both these posts are relatively old.
Your help is appreciated
Ron

 

[Dmorty217]

1.009

 

[Poopapotamus]

Thanks DMorty... You are the first reply... I was starting to get worried that nobody would get back to me on this. I have you down as a 12 vote then, but at this point as the only responder it doesn't really matter LOL.
Appreciated
Ron

 

[Poopapotamus]

1.009

Ok, DMorty... Because you answered in specific gravity... it made me realize something... I had just ignored the specific gravity numbers in the articles because I normally work in ppt, but I see now that both articles are recommending 1.009 sg, but the article by WaterKeeper has miss identified that as 16ppt instead of 12ppt.
Problem solved... i will continue to drop the salinity down to 12ppt.
Thanks again for your answer.
Cheers
Ron

 

[lagatbezan]

agreed with above at 1.009.
You want to make sure you are using a correctly calibrated refractometer to measure and need to keep that concentration stable through out the whole 30 days. If it goes up even slightly above that, the clock resets and you need to restart the whole process over again.
Also keep in mind that there have been instances of hypo resistant ich making it not a 100% full proof method.
you can drop the salinity slowly within about 2 days. going up should be done in a much slower pace taking about 5-7 days.

 

[Poopapotamus]

agreed with above at 1.009.
You want to make sure you are using a correctly calibrated refractometer to measure and need to keep that concentration stable through out the whole 30 days. If it goes up even slightly above that, the clock resets and you need to restart the whole process over again.
Also keep in mind that there have been instances of hypo resistant ich making it not a 100% full proof method.
you can drop the salinity slowly within about 2 days. going up should be done in a much slower pace taking about 5-7 days.

Thanks for the details Lagatbezan. I have been dropping the salinity slowly over the last few days using a drip acclimator to slowly drip in diH2O. I am almost there now, but I figured the fish have been through a lot so why bother dropping the salinity quickly... whats another 2 days over the course of a 6 week quarantine. I have made up a large drum of 12ppt water (1.009sg) so it should be pretty easy to keep my water stable with my water changes, but I will be sure to check it daily. I will probably continue to use the acclimator to slowly drip in dIH2O during the day to combat evaporation in my quarantine.

Thanks Again
Ron

 

[pfan151]

Dropping it slowly doesn’t matter. You can go from 1.026 to 1.009 in the same day.