Major FOWLR ich outbreak!

[GigaFish]

Well, it must have come in on a piece of live rock that I added because nothing else had been put in there. This is probably the worst outbreak of ich I have ever seen in any of my tanks, and it is replicating faster than fast. So I have decided to try hyposalinity to rid my tank of it since I meet all the requirements as far as no inverts and such. My question is, does anyone have any bad experiences with hyposalinity and lion and puffer?

 

[mattsilvester]

If you are runnign a FOWLR and are relying on the LR for waste management, then the hypo is going to kill all the pods and worms and little critters in the rock....... this mass die off could, and probably will cause an ammonia problem, whioch depending on how much life is in the rock (your be surprised!) could be deadly to your fish..... not to mention making your LR pretty much Dead Rock.....

Solution - take the rock out........

Do you have a DSB? If so, then hypo in the display tank is not an option in my view......

If you have little of no sand, you could look at removing the rock, putting it in a barrel or something for 6-8 weeks with a heater and power head, and doing the hypo in the display.....

What fish are you lloking to treat, how big are they, what size is your display......

I have done this very thing recently in my 8x2x2.....

 

[danorth]

Here is a thread I had about this just within the past 2 weeks:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1348067

btw, mattsilvester I didn't put a heater in the can full of rock, just the power head. When would you need a heater?

 

[mattsilvester]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12226402#post12226402 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by danorth

btw, mattsilvester I didn't put a heater in the can full of rock, just the power head. When would you need a heater?

If the water is likely to go cold....... personally I would prefer to see the water kept in the high 70's..... maximises the survival of "life"....... also speeds up the life cycle of ich cysts that are on the rock, hastening their demise......

 

[danorth]

Sounds good, I will drop the heater in the can when I get home.

 

[paulamrein]

Obviously you know that it will kill all inverts, but if you are asking about a lion and a puffer my guess is you don't have many in there. I would go with the suggestion above. And I have no experience with lions or puffers so I can't say if they are different. But from my research all fish do ok in hypo with the exception of sharks and rays. But like I said, you may want to further your research, the stickies explain hypo to the "t" and I'm sure it covers it.

 

[reefer334]

Can we say QT tank.
Your tank will never be the same if you go hypo in your main system, trust me I have experience with this.
All of the stuff diying off will put your fish over the edge and they will die.
This happned to me , I lost $2000 in fish,by doing this.
Do not be an idiot like me!!!!!
I feel for the fish I lost it just makes me sick!!!!
So ,please use a qt tank,if you live close to me I will give you one to use.



Chris

 

[Big E]

Your tank will never be the same if you go hypo in your main system, trust me I have experience with this.
All of the stuff diying off will put your fish over the edge and they will die.

There are a lot of variables invlolved here & not all cases will end up the way yours did. I took out a few rocks & all the corals & did hypo on the main tank. There were no problems whatsoever.
My rock had nothing on it but a little macro algae & coralline. Sure the pods died but that was no big deal to the bio system. My system was lightly stocked..........tang,cbb,damsel & a few anthias.

I QT all my fish & still had ich get into the system. You have to QT everything new, including rock, snails, ect. There is always the likelyhood of an ich cyst or free swimmer hitchiking on/with almost anything.

 

[Freed]

If you have sand in there as well you can just siphon the sand out of the tank into a barrel or trash can and then do hypo on the main tank, of course without the live rock in there as well. You should be fine then. Run the hypo for at least 4-6 weeks after the last spot of ich is seen and all should be good. Any ich on the rock or in the sand should die off as well but you need to act fast and drop the salinity over at least a day or two to 1.009SG with a refractometer.

 

[danorth]

Regarding hypo, I just don't understand why my flame angel and clown trig looked swollen after going to 1.009 though, that is what made me raise the spg and use copper. (not saying you need copper with your fish, but it saved my clown and purple tang). The flame ended up dying because I didn't get it in copper soon enough. But the bloat did go away. It looked like it was going to pop. The clown trig went back to normal as well.

 

[Big E]

Some fish will bloat & also have swim bladder problems during the hypo process. It's usually happens near the end of the hypo treatment in my experiences.

Like you mentioned in those cases, you have no choice but to raise the sg back up & go with copper.

Btw, when I did hypo on my main system I had a bb tank.