not sure what to do?

[arteaction]

Hi I tend to be detailed so bear with me...I received an exquisite wrasse Thursday.

I have it in a 5.5 gal QT. Bubble stone glass lid, heater, 3 pvc pipes in for protection and no light. I have lowered the salinity to .014 which has been done since arrival and as of this afternoon at this level.

I did this as precautionary since this is an online purchase and traveld overnight from Fl to Mass. I read wrasses are hard shippers also. Before this I havent needed to QT I purchased at a Ls that is reliable and QT its arrivals for weeks before considering selling.

The Wrasse surprisingly seems adjusted with out substrate.
It stays in the PVC switching from one to another. It is taking frozen brine and mysis at feeding. Though it is in the pipes which are 3" wide it still moves around in them a bit and seems fine.

I planned on hypo for 5 weeks then slowly bring it up to level for intro to my main tank.

My question: I noticed white spots on just the tail but is uniform and actually looks like maybe scales are see through or missing. There are a few spots on its head but off and on and arent always there. Since it is so new The color isnt up to what it is supposed to be. There are times it is almost transparent like the spots. Then colors perk up. It is colorful but not vibrant as it should be. I expect this is stress but with so many colors on it I am not sure if the spots aren't just the way it is supposed to look.

It sounds like ich from what I have been reading but also a "white spot disease"????

Should I do anything else besides hypo?

I have two new arrivals from the same place coming tuesday. I was planning on putting them in there as well for the duration. They need a QT as well
Jester goby and a hi fin goby.
Can I place them in there too and just treat the tank. I dont think I can put them off for 4 weeks. I really cant do another QT Unless I put them into my other 5.5 which is growing pods?
Thanks
Ill try and get picks up if I need to. And have a merry xmas!

 

[stevensun]

I am no expert but do have some experience with ich treatments so hopefully my 2 cents would be helpful to you.

Hypo used to be my first choice when it comes to treating ich but after several practices, I switched to cupramine now. According to my research and observation, hypo works best when the salinity is lower than 1.010 and usually people shoot for 1.009 because the 0.001 is like a cushion for daily water evaporation. I got it as low as 1.008 with no ill effects. A cycle of 6 to 8 weeks is recommended to fully kill the ich and I also tended to keep the water warmer at 80F to 82F since higher temp will shorten the parasite's life cycle.

The shortcomings of hypo are, first, it's an extensive amount of time for it to work. Second, newly bought fish sometimes carry more than one kind of parasites and hypo is only effective on ich. Many times during the hypo treatment, my fish showed symptoms of other diseases such as fluke, which is quiet common nowadays or velvet. These two parasites require different medications which are not recommended to be conducted in hypo. Also, it's not uncommon for gobies to have internal parasites and hypo can't do anything about it.

IME, cupramine is not as hard on fish as ordinary coper and very effective towards both ich and velvet. For fluke and internal parasites, Prazipro is most people's first choice. I dosed both simultaneously w/o any problems on tangs, goby, and wrasse and the whole treatment took only 4 weeks and another 1-2 weeks for post-treatment observation.

I would also try to seperate the two gobies with a divider or something like that in case of any aggression.

 

[arteaction]

Thanks
I noticed a big glop of slime on the wrasse today mucus like when I moved the pvc the wrasse moved and the blob didnt stay on him. I saw it before but wasnt sure what it was. I read about body slime? is that velvet?
There are so many darn diseases trying to scroll through the internet has taken up my time with just confusing results.

Do you dose for both just in case?
I think the LFS has a divider that will fit the 5.5 so that will be a good idea. Didnt think about
Thanks

 

[stevensun]

I think that's very likely the cocoon they produce and sleep in. I usually dose prazipro as a preventive treatment cause fluke doesn't have much visible symptoms other than rapid respiration but when you notice the fish has succumbed to fluke the damage has been done and it's likely too late at that point of time. Besides Prazipro won't affect your biological filteration nor stay in the system. I only dose cupramine when I see ich on the fish though.