Hi Claudio,
I am currently treating all my fishes in a 55 gallon hospital tank with Quinine Sulphate and leaving my tank fallow for 6 weeks before re-introduction of my remaining fishes (PBT, Atlantic Blue Tang, Flame Angel, Clown Fairy Wrasse, Lubbock's Wrasse, and Cleaner Wrasse). You are one of the few people at RC who treats with QS! I'm glad that you are here because I've been posting on the "fish disease" side and have received some, how do I say... Anyways, what I wanted to ask you is:
1. How do YOU do your quarantine and for how long?
I was thinking of replacing my Kole tang upon re-introduction back to the DT and I'm planning that out but not sure if I should treat during quarantine or wait to see disease.
2. In your experience, how do you dose your QS and for how long do you treat? How long do you treat in QT?
I'm doing the 1/4 teaspoon per 10 gallon, water changes almost daily to rid ammonia as I did not have a seeded HT, and I'm planning on going for a full 10 days. I'm contemplating going for 14 but that may be over kill.
3. I already have a PBT and ABT, plan on adding KT, what do you think about an Achilles Tang in addition? Or am I pushing it too far? It's a 225 gallon reef tank.
Thanks!
Hi Blennielove,
I just finished reading this thread, I am sorry for your ich outbreak. Looking at the fish pictures it look like a very bad case of ich.
I understand your fish are in the 55g Hospital. They are getting better as far as ich is concerned, however the QT tank has not cycled yet. You should be at day 5 of the treatment.
The main problem you are facing at this point is water quality. Water from the DT at this point is not an option to you but you could have used it to fill the QT tank since your fish already have ich. This may have helped cycling the QT quicker rather than starting from freshly made water and clean filters.
Quinine Sulphate does not affect at all the nitrifying bacteria that will start growing on the filters so hopefully soon your ammonia will start going down.
You are doing right as far as the dosing regimen that unfortunately is dictated by the need of performing daily water changes. Dosing every 3 days with a 25% water changes works very well on a cycled tank. In your case you have to do water changes to keep your water quality reasonable but you have to redose quinine daily. If you change 30% of the water I would add instead of 1/3 of the full dose (that should have been 5.5 * 1/4 tsp) 1/2 of full dose in order to compensate for the quinidine from is natural decay.
I would treat for 10 days.
I would keep your DT fallow for as long as you can. Also I would not reintroduce the fish just before you leave. If there is still ich and they get reinfected while you are gone it is a problem.
The time you need to keep the DT fallow is very debatable. You know the life cycle of the parassite as you read it in the book, 5-6 weeks should be enough, however in a natural environment things always happen differently than in the lab. The average hatching time for the tomont (cyst phase) is reported at 3 to 28 days however this time can vary up to 72 days. No strictly speaking "dormant" phase exists, so at some point the tomonts have to hatch. Because this variable incubation time I would keep the DT fallow for as long as you can, at least 8 weeks, 10 if you can. You went through a lot of aggravation removing the rocks, catching and treating the fish that you probably don't want to go through this again.
Once you QT cycle you can use eggcrate to partition the tank and separate the fish in 2-3 groups so they don't fight.
As far as quarantining new fish this is what I do:
Prior to getting fish I place the filter pads of the QT in my sump so that water flows through them for about a week. I then use water from the DT to fill the QT. I drip acclimate the new fish to the DT water and then place in the QT for 3-4 days without any treatment, however if the fish show signs of ich I start treatment immediately.
Once the fish are acclimated and eating, even without signs of ich I treat them anyway. It is safe to assume that at the LFS they have been exposed to cryptocaryon. If their immune system is strong enough they will not show ich but probably are carriers and I like to kill the parassite alltogether if I can.
At this point i treat with quinine at 1/4 tsp x 10g, 25-30% water change after 3 days and then redose at full strength. I do this 3 times. Total of 9 days. As you have notice as you start quinine the ich spots disappear quickly and leave behind small pits. I believe (however I have never done any study on fish skin scraping to prove that) that quinine works differently from copper as it is systemically absorbed by the fish, build medication concentration in the fish tissue and kill the parassite attached to the fish itself. So it is effective on different phases of the parassite and not just on the free swimming trophont phase as copper does. This is why it is not necessary to treat for an extended period of time. I then do water changes and if the fish are fine without signs of disease at 15 days i dip them in FW with Methylene Blue and then introduce them on the DT.
From this point on you have to be prepared to quarantine everything you are going to place in the DT that has been in water. How long do you quarantine non fish animals is hard to say. There may be tomonts in the water or on the coral or maybe not. If I see a hippo tang or PBT swimming in the coral system at the LFS (and I have seen that) I would QT corals coming from that system longer. If the fish in the system are say mandarin dragonets that almost never get ich I would do a shorter period of time. This reasoning is convenient but flawed. If you assume that there is ich on the coral holding system, (and perhaps you should) the only 100% sure thing to do would be to keep those corals in a fallow system for the same time you are keeping your Dt fallow. This is where fishless frag tank not connected to your DT comes very handy.
