Treatment of fish

R.W.

New member
I have an outbreak in my 180 display. All my fish are covered in small white dots and they look like they have a glaze over their bodies. I believe it's either ich or brooklynella. The question is, can I treat my DT containing LR, few snails and crabs, and sand. Or should Transfer everything to hospital tank? I have a spare 90g tank I am debating setting up. The current fish are: Naso Tang, Yellow Tang, Majestic Angel, 2 Flame Angels, Yellow Watchman Goby, Chromis, Clown, and Emperor Angel.

I am just worried about ruining the rock and sand for future tanks. Losing a few snails isn't a big deal.

What should I treat with?


Your help is greatly appreciated.

R.W.
 
You do not sound very experienced so I think your best chance is first see if you can treat the DT.

If you have very little growth other than bacteria on the LR, you can treat the DT with copper.

If you go this route, the greatest present danger is die-offs of invert lives in the tank, anywhere in the tank, caused by the copper that could lead to ammonia surge.

The long term consideration is that you may well have a tough time using the tank for a reef setup. If you don't care for a reef setup for this tank, your concern will be with the first only.

Copper treatment does not harm nitrification bacteria, but the ammonia from die-off, if enough, will overwhelm an ever healthy unimpaired biological filter.

You have to remove all inverts before copper treatment.

You may not have much time to consider. You may have to decide within a hour or two if you want to prevent losses. You have to treat nearly at once.
 
You may not care about the snails, but the decay of their bodies can cause problems. You should remove as many of them as you can find.

Remove as many inverts of all kinds that you can before copper treatment in DT.

If you are not experienced, treating all fish a QT may be outside your capability. So you may opt for treating the DT from a practical standpoint; practically, this may be your only chance of escape from a possible wipeout.
 
I have only used a Qt once. This is a FOWLR set up with some inverts. I am more concerned with the effects of treating with copper and future invert issues.
 
I have only used a Qt once. This is a FOWLR set up with some inverts. I am more concerned with the effects of treating with copper and future invert issues.

If you do not have a QT that already has robustly cycled medium, it will be very difficult for you to treat so many fish at once.

The LR after treatment with copper may be invert issues, not the rest of the tank. Crabs and shrimps may return to the DT after the copper in solution is gone.

An ich outbreak with so many fish is basically a calamity.

You are at risk of a wipeout of most if not all your fish now, since you said most are already covered with white dots. This is a very acute situation.

You should never have allowed this to happen, but now it is a fact.
 
Posts of your type is very common.

See "another lesson learned" close by.

The same old thing. People do not want the trouble of QT and eradication of ich.
 
Yes, I am aware of the mistake I made. I have decided to set up my QT permanently but I wanted to advice on how I should approach the treatment.
I appreciate your guidance wooden_reefer. What medications would you recommend?

R.W.
 
If it were me, I'd set up the 90 ASAP - like as soon as you are done reading this post. Do you have a local fish store you can get some bioballs or established media from? You can sustain your fish initially through the beginning with water changes.

I'm not going to lecture you on the necessity of quarantine because that doesn't help you at the moment.

I didn't see any information on what type of filtration you have, is it just live rock and a sump/fuge, or is there some established media you could set up on the 90 gallon. Usually you can find small wet dry filters used for not a lot of money if you have a good LFS nearby - they may even loan it to you if you are in good standing with them. The cultured bioballs will deal with the Ammonia and Nitrite while you are treating.

AS far as treatment goes, I cannot recommend Seachem's Cupramine treatment enough for C. Irritans. If applied properly, it has always worked very well for me. It is Imperative that you have a good copper test kit to measure the effective dose of the copper in your tank.

If you set up the 90 gallon for the purpose of a QT, you might consider just leaving it up and running when you are done with it and throw a couple damsels in to keep the biological filter running.

It's not going to be easy, but with proper water testing, I think the QT is the best way to go.
 
That's a lot of fish even for the 90, but its the best choice you have.

A. remove sand, rock, inverts from the 180 and treat via cupramine.

B. Move fish to the 90 asap. Just moving to a sterile tank will offer relief. I'd say that with 2 large power filters or two large sponge filters and 2 bottles of instant ocean bio spira you be good in the 90. It will make quick work of ammonia but may take several for nitrites.

I'd suggest using cupramine and a salifert cooper test kit. .35ppm should be minimum. .5ppm maximum, ammonia alert badge is also wise.


Posted from ReefCentral.com App for Android
 
Would u suggest doing hypo instead?

Hypo has the advantage of retaining the option for a reef tank with the LR you have.

The disadvantage of hypo are that it is less certain cure and also may not be effective against other protozoans other than ich.

It is debateable if hypo causes less or more serious die offs to cause ammonia surge.

Hypo also has no impact on nitrification bacteria; if the downward movement of salinity does not kill the fish, it won't harm the bacteria. Sudden 1.025 to 1.009 may have impact on bacteria, however.

If you are going to treat in QT, I suggest copper over hypo.
 
Posts of your type is very common.

See "another lesson learned" close by.

The same old thing. People do not want the trouble of QT and eradication of ich.

Read this thread for insights.

The two cases are similar.

I also suggest that you do not aim for eradication at once.

You should aim for prevention of death from protozoan diseases. Accept massive WC as needed for a few days with optimal copper treatment so that the fish are no longer at risk of death. Return them to DT and recognize that the disease agent has not been eradicated.

At the same time, ASAP, start a cycle in a separate container.

You may have to repeat treatment once before the cycle is advanced sufficiently so that the medium can be used in QT. As i said, you need only to see that nitrite has peaked to use the medium if you are pressed on time. Nitrite, even toxic, is much less so than ammonia. You have to rinse the medium with clean salt water of the same salinity to remove nearly all the cycling water, of course.
 
Last edited:
Your description sounds more like velvet than ich or brooklynella. ("All my fish are covered in small white dots and they look like they have a glaze over their bodies.")

Velvet is a very fast killer and the only way I would treat it is in a QT with copper. I think you'll lose all of these fish soon if you don't get treatment started ASAP.
 
If you set up the 90 gallon for the purpose of a QT, you might consider just leaving it up and running when you are done with it and throw a couple damsels in to keep the biological filter running.

For future reference, to maintain a biological filter readiness, it is best to feed with artificial source of ammonia rather than using damsels.

Damsels does not work in this case because in the long run the population of nitritification bacteria will be just enough to support the damsels.

Even if you remove the damsels and let them suffer , the nitrification bacteria will only support the same bioload as the damsels.

Completely forget about using livestock to maintain the readiness of any biological filter or to cycle a medium. This approach is entirely ineffective from many perspectives.

Cycle with seeds and artificial pulses of ammonia and maintain readiness with artificial ammonia source as well.
 
For future reference, to maintain a biological filter readiness, it is best to feed with artificial source of ammonia rather than using damsels.

Damsels does not work in this case because in the long run the population of nitritification bacteria will be just enough to support the damsels.

Even if you remove the damsels and let them suffer , the nitrification bacteria will only support the same bioload as the damsels.

Completely forget about using livestock to maintain the readiness of any biological filter or to cycle a medium. This approach is entirely ineffective from many perspectives.

Cycle with seeds and artificial pulses of ammonia and maintain readiness with artificial ammonia source as well.

This is a bit of digression but I want to point out one thing.

Cycling with damsels is actually more effective than long term maintaining nitrification after cycle with a couple of damsels. Needless to day, a couple of damsles in a QT for months and months is pointless, unless you ghost feed excessive food all the time.

In cycling, at least by the damsels suffering, there will a an ACCUMULATION of ammonia because bacteria cannot catch up. This accumulation has some of the same effect of artificial ammonia pulse. Therefore, at the end of the cycle with damsels, there will be more bacteria than long term balance.

The same cannot be said of having a couple of damsels in a QT for months and months.
 
I have had good luck with "rally" u can use that in the display .. didnt affect my bio filter... says its reef safe...

good luck saving your fish !!

JD
 
This is a bit of digression but I want to point out one thing.

Cycling with damsels is actually more effective than long term maintaining nitrification after cycle with a couple of damsels. Needless to day, a couple of damsles in a QT for months and months is pointless, unless you ghost feed excessive food all the time.

In cycling, at least by the damsels suffering, there will a an ACCUMULATION of ammonia because bacteria cannot catch up. This accumulation has some of the same effect of artificial ammonia pulse. Therefore, at the end of the cycle with damsels, there will be more bacteria than long term balance.

The same cannot be said of having a couple of damsels in a QT for months and months.
Couple things here.

One, as it sounds like we're not sure what we're treating, can we get a picture R.W. I will be up front in saying that most of my experience is in treating C. Irritans or "generic flukes", so if it is neither of those, I may not be of much help. If it is C. Irritans, I agree completely with Mr. Scribbled's advice, Cupramine has been a very effective and safe medication for me.

In regards to opinions on quarantine set ups. My advice to you is to do what best suits your needs and what you are most comfortable with. If you are building your fish population as I am/was, it may make sense for you to keep a cycled stable quarantine tank with a couple damsels - stable being the key here.

I have successfully quarantined two purple tilefish, a powder blue tang, a semilarvatus butterfly fish, a mitratus butterfly fish, a borbonius anthias, a black dog face pufferfish, and a potters angelfish doing this, thus my recommendation. Your call, but i've had good luck with this method and not lost any fish doing it this way - and there was no small sum of cash wrapped up in that group. I used a blue reef chromis and a sunshine chromis. I was never adding more than one or two fish at a time to be quarantined, so there was no ammonia spike.

I realized we've hijacked your thread now, and I apologize for that, but i'm not sure I agree regarding the use of artificial ammonia. If you are in fact "inexperienced" as Wooden Reefer assumed, balancing ammonia doses and measuring ammonia and nitrite on a daily basis may not be the most appealing chore for you and may be outside the scope of your abilities - though I personally doubt that as you have a decent collection of fish.

If you have a local fish store at your disposal, see if they'll loan or sell you a couple gallons of cycled bioballs and set up the wet dry. That will be more than enough nitrifying bacteria to handle the bioload. Monitor the ammonia and if for some reason it's not, just reduce feeding and supplement with water changes.

Lastly, regarding the pulse effect of dosing artificial ammonia. While it may be true that there will be a larger population initially, surely the bacterial colonies will regulate themselves to the available ammonia and nitrite and thus, any initial population surge will be reduced over a short amount of time rendering any initial benefit obsolete.

Food for thought.
 
Honestly, i think its important to understand that these things happen. Its a risk taken when maintaining a marine aquarium. I believe that ich can come and go in even an established aquarium. I have had run ins with ich in the past. To prevent it I run a UV on my return. Haven't had any negative effects from this yet so I'll keep doing it. My philosophy is to let the ich run its course. I dose with garlic and run my UV if a fish shows symptoms. Not much else I'm interested in doing. I don't believe in dosing any chemicals into my reef. I would rather risk losing a fish to ich versus potentially harming my corals and established ecosystem.
 
anticarp said:
Honestly, i think its important to understand that these things happen. Its a risk taken when maintaining a marine aquarium. I believe that ich can come and go in even an established aquarium. I have had run ins with ich in the past. To prevent it I run a UV on my return. Haven't had any negative effects from this yet so I'll keep doing it. My philosophy is to let the ich run its course. I dose with garlic and run my UV if a fish shows symptoms. Not much else I'm interested in doing. I don't believe in dosing any chemicals into my reef. I would rather risk losing a fish to ich versus potentially harming my corals and established ecosystem.




Posted from ReefCentral.com App for Android
 
Ich can come and go? Does it fly? News to me. I wonder why none of my 36 fish haven't had it come at all?


Posted from ReefCentral.com App for Android
 
Back
Top