TTM Did Not Work for Me.

[ThRoewer]

In a real reef tank it will be impossible to remove the corals. My 100 gallon tank is not even half a year up and many corals have already fused themselves to the rocks.
And then there is all the other damage copper does to the micro and macro fauna of the tank.
Treating a reef tank with copper (or anything else to combat fish diseases) is just a very bad idea.

 

[cougareyes]

True but there are circumstances where it is a more practical choice. Yet I see the most prevalent advice to be a no no. And I'm reading here about people bleaching down their tanks.

 

[microlady]

The fallow period might have actually worked, but your fish brought ich back into the display after TTM. It is rare, but possible that an encysted form of the parasite was on one of the fish for longer than the two week TTM protocol. I always observe fish in a separate quarantine tank for at least three weeks after TTM. I begin adding display water and some substrate to the quarantine tank too. That way an outbreak would happen before they hit the display.

With newly acquired fish I perform a formalin bath, followed by TTM, and another formalin bath on first transfer, and Prazi on 2nd and 4th transfer. I don't use powerheads on TTM vessel. I merely run an airline hose through a piece of PVC for aeration and I throw the tubing away. I also sterilize the heaters and PVC between transfers. 48 hours is needed to be sure everything is dry. I use two Sterilite bins for the TTM vessels. After TTM, I move the fish to a 29 gallon with new heater and small Aquaclear filter with bio media. I don't medicate the quarantine tank.

Anything wet can bring ich into the display. I know it's frustrating! I've dealt with a couple of either velvet or Brook outbreaks over the past two years that most likely came in via snails or corals. Now I quarantine everything. Ich can still be in the display, but healthy fish can build up an immunity. Maybe that should be your approach. The strain you have could die out in about a year if you are lucky. I would never tear everything down and start over. I also would never poison fish continuously with copper. That's the worse choice in my opinion. Good luck!

 

[microlady]

It's not working if the fish get more spots with each wave. In that case I would switch to a more effective treatment.

I agree. Moving the fish to a clean tank will really help. Each wave of the life cycle allows thousands of parasites to reinfect the fish. The fallow period will really knock down parasite numbers in about a week. The trouble are those pesky encysted forms. In my experience, 10 weeks fallow worked for me.

 

[microlady]

This is what frustrates me the most in the this hobby. How can anyone be absolutely guaranteed to have a permanently disease-free tank?? If one bleached everything and started again, wouldn't you have to get the "live" stuff (Rock, macro algae, snail/crab packing water) somewhere? How could you guarantee the stuff you obtained from someone else wouldn't have some sort of lurking disease? Do you run everything through a 4 month (or longer) QT and just hope it rids everything?

I can see why people quit this hobby. I have had a 150g set up for years with 30 or so fish, many coral, with no issues (never quarantined). Then I set this 300g up and actually quarantine everything for 3 weeks and have (at least) 2 separate diseases take out about $1,000 worth of fish. Then I go through the whole fallow and QT (TTM, Prazi) method and STILL have disease present in the DT. I can't imagine how much grief I would feel if I had the tank totally stocked and some sort of parasite "woke up" after being in the water from a restocking of snails or coral and demolished my system.

I'm so sorry to hear that, but I learned the hard way that three weeks is not a long enough quarantine period. You need to double that to be sure the nasties are gone.

 

[ThRoewer]

QT period for new fish should ideally be 2 months. Even then some things can slip through, but it should catch the usual suspects.

As for bleaching down a reef tank - there are things I may consider it for, but surely not ich.

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[Badbrad8500]

Yeah QT-ing a bunch of fish in 2x 30-40g is tough. Throw in TTM for each batch, plus water changes and maybe ordering online isn't what I will do next time. Too much trouble. Especially if the QT needs 2 months or more of caretaking lol.

 

[Badbrad8500]

ThRoewer, how do you add new fish if you manage ich? I would think each new arrival, even if QT-ed, would be in danger of dying from the existing ich in the system. I'm very much on the verge of just starting over, bleaching everything, getting rid of the fish and then using very harsh (Formalin) chemicals to make sure everything is rid of parasites. The only thing that's stopping me is the month long process to do this. I don't know how the big tank boys have the darn time to accomplish all this stuff...

I'm still holding onto hope that someone (you) can manage ich successfully at least for awhile! Then I can at least hold out for a season or two before making the decision to empty the stupid tank : )

QT period for new fish should ideally be 2 months. Even then some things can slip through, but it should catch the usual suspects.

As for bleaching down a reef tank - there are things I may consider it for, but surely not ich.

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[geniusloci]

I brought ich to a newly started aquarium and after a brief consideration went to DT Chloroquine phosphate addition. Had to remove the few corals I had, lost a small RBTA as I couldn't remove it. As long as fish are eating, I will keep the water at 10 mg/l CP even when administering water changes, and keep the level (or even slightly rise it the days I change water and skim because of leftover Chloroquine) Skimmer is on for aeration only (cup off), already lost the cleaner shrimps (the fire shrimps are still there, impossible to catch them so I'll accept the loss, I guess). I used the time to move my other fish in, and I will finish off any additions in two days, eliminating the risk of bringing in fish that have it in the future.

What I'm not sure is how would I be able to bring corals w/o risking more ich in the future, the LFS here have fish in the coral tanks and I'd not risk buying online as the seller will tell me they don't have fish in the same tank, but I can't check that.

Already considering finding some coral shops outside Bulgaria where I can travel to in less than a day and see for myself if they keep fish in the coral tanks.

A bit off/
There are few other chemicals able to kill the same stage that I'd add to a tank that has some life left in it but no fish (since IMO I can afford to lose corals, but not my fish - corals will grow again, fish stay dead):

ECGC (not green tea dust/extract because of caffeine in it, but the actual compound), L-DOPA (readily accessible in extract form in every bodybuilding shop), even Malachite Green (not safe and mostly not effective in my opinion). All of them deserve a try but people prefer to go after copper or TTM + fallow.

I really hate the bugger.

 

[ThRoewer]

My weapon of choice is hyposalinity and so far it never failed to clean the fish up within a week if it was actually ich.
TTM is good as a preventative measure, but not necessarily as a treatment for an outbreak when multiple fish are affected.

In my (and many other's) experience, fish can manage ich if they are well nourished and not stressed out. It requires some restraint in what and how many fish to add to a system, but it can work.
In general I only treat against ich if the infection escalates beyond a certain point.

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[Badbrad8500]

Geniusloci, will you keep us updated? I'm interested to know if the CP works in your tank with all the Rock and sand to absorb it. How big is your tank?

I brought ich to a newly started aquarium and after a brief consideration went to DT Chloroquine phosphate addition. Had to remove the few corals I had, lost a small RBTA as I couldn't remove it. As long as fish are eating, I will keep the water at 10 mg/l CP even when administering water changes, and keep the level (or even slightly rise it the days I change water and skim because of leftover Chloroquine) Skimmer is on for aeration only (cup off), already lost the cleaner shrimps (the fire shrimps are still there, impossible to catch them so I'll accept the loss, I guess). I used the time to move my other fish in, and I will finish off any additions in two days, eliminating the risk of bringing in fish that have it in the future.

What I'm not sure is how would I be able to bring corals w/o risking more ich in the future, the LFS here have fish in the coral tanks and I'd not risk buying online as the seller will tell me they don't have fish in the same tank, but I can't check that.

Already considering finding some coral shops outside Bulgaria where I can travel to in less than a day and see for myself if they keep fish in the coral tanks.

A bit off/
There are few other chemicals able to kill the same stage that I'd add to a tank that has some life left in it but no fish (since IMO I can afford to lose corals, but not my fish - corals will grow again, fish stay dead):

ECGC (not green tea dust/extract because of caffeine in it, but the actual compound), L-DOPA (readily accessible in extract form in every bodybuilding shop), even Malachite Green (not safe and mostly not effective in my opinion). All of them deserve a try but people prefer to go after copper or TTM + fallow.

I really hate the bugger.

 

[Badbrad8500]

Thanks ThRoewer, would you recommend hypo in a tank as large as a 300g? What kind of die off do you usually get when doing hypo in your display?

My weapon of choice is hyposalinity and so far it never failed to clean the fish up within a week if it was actually ich.
TTM is good as a preventative measure, but not necessarily as a treatment for an outbreak when multiple fish are affected.

In my (and many other's) experience, fish can manage ich if they are well nourished and not stressed out. It requires some restraint in what and how many fish to add to a system, but it can work.
In general I only treat against ich if the infection escalates beyond a certain point.

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[ThRoewer]

I've never done any treatment in the DT and would always strongly against it.
I do my hyposalinity treatments in 10 to 20 gallon tanks. I also do it usually in combination with a minimum of 2, better 3 tank transfers. The transfers are for additional safety (in the same way as hyposalinity adds a layer of safety to TTM).
As for the die-off - I would expect it to be large enough to kill your fish as well.

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