Longish Story : Advice appreciated

[WuHT]

There are many helpful FAQs about ich, and so i just want to see if i've read the right ones ..here goes :

1) Tank has been running for over 1/2 a year since my last "reset".
It is a crushed coral, FO (no live rock) 90 gallon aquarium

2) My most susceptible fish to ich is a clown tang, which has scratched itself against rocks very rarely, but only months ago and is feeding very well now with 0 white spots on the body

3) My only fish that scratches against rocks now is my royal gramma, which was never a strong feeder in my aquarium (but still eating) There are 0 detectable white spots anywhere on the body

4)My 3 larger (3-4 inch) fish (a bluechin trigger, emperor angel, punctato butterfly) all have mild blotching/specks on their dorsal fin (concern) but are eating like crazy as well, and do not scratch <-- at least a 1.5 months of this. My emperor is beginning to change colours, and has blotches and a few white spots that appear on this body. Not sure if the blotches are the beginning of the adult stripes, and not sure if the white spots means ich.

5)My lazy cleaner shrimps have been visited a LOT by my larger fish, and gives services about 1/10 times.

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So should i even treat my fish if they "appear" healthy/eating well..or is that the best time for a FW dip + quarantine ?

Now the thing is i plan on upgrading to a new system (i already have live rock curing seperately) without using any of the older equipment (cept heater) , and using new sand (bye bye crushed coral!)

In this situation would you recommend adding cupramine directly to the main tank ? <-- AFTER removing my cleaner shrimp/snails to a qt. Or even running hyposalinty in the main tank ?

My possible qt tanks are 5,10 gallons, and a 20 gallon bucket, and i believe inverts can do better in tighter spaces than my fish.

_____
Thanks in advance!!

 

[odyssey1]

You can put your tank into hypo for 4-6 weeks if you think that it is ich. This will get rid of the parasites.

as for the one that is rubbing the tank he might have the flukes can you get a magnifying glass and see any specks by the gills. Just because you cant see the ich dosent mean that it isnt there either. By putting your tank into hypo you can kill both ich and flukes.

Make sure that you take out the cleaner shrimp first though they cant take the hypo.

Other alternative that I like to try first is to feed with pure garlic along with the cleaner shrimp should help boost immune in fish and then the cleaning from the shrimp and they should come around.

Do NOT introduce the new sand and rock until the problem is gone or you will create more stress on the fish and there immune will suffer and will take longer to cure.

This is all up in the air thinking that your fish has ich for sure. I havent seen any pics or heard of and swimming or eating habbits. So if the fish DO have ich this is the method that I use. If ich is realllllly bad you may have to alter to meds.

 

[paulamrein]

The only thing I would add is FW dip is good for identification of flukes a dip is really stressful for the fish, I wouldn't do it unless things get really bad and if you do dip ph and temp has to match exactly. I would however follow the above advice and see where that takes you. Buckets are good for dips but it's best to do long periods of quarantines in a tank or tank like containers even for just inverts. You would have to set up some sort of filtration and heaters that aren't conducive in a bucket. Probably your best bet is to wait until your new tank is set up and cured than moving everything over except fish than QT the fish that are in the current tank. You seem to have more time to wait than most people considering everything is in check for now. But don't introduce the fish to your new system until what ever it is that is effecting the fish is eradicated.

 

[WuHT]

thank you so much for the good advice.

Last night only my royal gramma stop eating (rather swim up and scratch itself) .. so i dipped it and it looked overly stressed (trying to swim out) so i let it out (by gradually adding salt-water) over a minute and back into the main tank.

Now if i were to remove my inverts..and turn my main tank into a big HYPO hospital ...this would be best done by adding 30% freshwater as a replacement to a water change..or the salinty should lower more gradually ? I was under the impression that it's was hypo osmatic "shock" that would help.

 

[julianp]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12094195#post12094195 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by WuHT
...
Now if i were to remove my inverts..and turn my main tank into a big HYPO hospital ...this would be best done by adding 30% freshwater as a replacement to a water change..or the salinty should lower more gradually ? I was under the impression that it's was hypo osmatic "shock" that would help.

Osmotic shock is definitely more of a danger when returning to normal salinity from hypo, but lowering the salinity can shock the fish as well.

I would lower it fairly gradually (15% water changes or so) over the course of 24-48 hours. Definitely don't do it all in one go.

When it comes time to return the tank to normal salinity, go much slower. Raise it over the course of 3 or 4 days at a minimum.

Also, if you can, I would do hypo for a full 6 weeks (starting from the day you get down to 1.009 until the day you begin raising back up to standard level. A lot of people will say 4 weeks is fine, but I've experienced a return of cryptocaryon irritans/ich after a 4 week hypo. Basically, the life cycle is about 4 weeks, but it's better to be cautious and give it a bit longer.

The bacteria in your sandbed/rocks shouldn't die off due to hypo, but one thing to be aware of during this time is protein skimmers don't really work at 1.009, so if you have one it will pretty much be useless. Because of that sudden drop in the tank's ability to export waste, watch the ammonia levels and do water changes more frequently.

Finally, make sure to use a refractometer rather than a hydrometer to do the readings -- as hydrometers are very iffy at the low range and you want it to be dead-on 1.008-1.009. A little lower and the fish could die... a little higher and crypto will live (it's been shown to survive around 1.012 or higher)

Sorry for the long rambling post. Just trying to make sure others don't make the mistakes I did when I first did hypo (and ended up having to do it all over again at the end of the treatment).

Good luck!
Julian

 

[WuHT]

Thanks a lot :, especially for the advice on protein skimmers .