Tank transfer Method for VELVET

[Reefnation.Jon]

I was hoping to get thoughts on a tank transfer method for velvet. I do tank transfer on every new fish I buy.

Based on the life cycle of velvet being as little as 36 hrs from the time it leaves the fish till the time it can re-infect the fish , traditional tank transfer will not work.

Based on the numbers ( time ) you should be able to eradicate velvet by doing tank transfer every day for 5 days. The parasite is only on the fish for 12hrs to 4 days. It then encysts from 24hrs to 28 days. By transfering every day for 5 days you are allowing the parasite to leave the fish but not re-infect.

Thoughts from the pros?

 

[accordsirh22]

i like the idea of this, you could knock out two birds with 1 stone. transfer every day for 5-6 days, then resume normal ich TT schedule. no meds = good

 

[GroktheCube]

My understanding was that the increased variability in velvet's life cycle makes it more tricky. I've wondered about combing a fresh water dip with transfer, give velvet tends to be shallow enough for FWD to actually work. In other words, Tank 1 --> FWD--> Tank 2 (wait 24 hrs)--> FWD--> Tank 3 (wait 24 hrs)-->FWD-->Tank 4. Based on my understanding of velvet's lifecycle, I'd think that this method would be a near 100% guarantee. The fourth FWD might even be overkill. The concern Id have is how well the fish could handle the osmotic shock of repeated FWDs.

Then again, the standard treatment for velvet otherwise is "nuke it with copper and hope the fish makes it" since the speed at which velvet kills makes increasing dose slowly difficult. I'm not sure if repeated FWD would be more or less stressful.

 

[triggreef]

I think only one fw dip would be good. You will get the ones you can with the first dip. The rest I would not think would work. My thinking is once you start transferring your not going to have any re infect the fish, and the parasite is certainly not going to go from being embedded too much to be affected by fw, to a more vulnerable spot. If anything they will get deeper into the fish making the 2nd, 3rd, 4th fw dip less affective. I have nothing to back that up and zero experience with velvet.

That said I think its not common enough to worry about

 

[Reefnation.Jon]

I usually do a formalin bath with quick cure or use prazipro depending on species in addition to TT. Mainly for flukes.

 

[MrTuskfish]

A FW dip can provide some immediate, temporary relief. But, I wouldn't trust anything but copper to eliminate it.