Upset Lion fish upside down near the surface?

[Ticketyboo]

Hi all, any input would be appreciated.

I swapped the contents from my 50 gallon FOWLR tank into a 180 gallon tank and added an extra 100 Lbs of cured live rock from my 90 gallon. I took 2 weeks doing water transfers, exchanging water from the 180 tank into the 50 gallon tank doing 75% water transfers daily.

All was fine and dandy until i started moving the live rock around and i stressed my lionfish out as i nearly started a rockslide down on him :sad:

Anyway, now i see what looks like ICH on both lions, a few white spots on its abdomen and more on its lower feeler fins. This morning i woke up to find one of them swimming upside down above the power head...... but as soon as they saw me, they both jumped back into shape and wanted fed.... they eat lots and i feed them a silverside a day or so....

... any thoughts? is it ill? stressed? p****d at me ? is it ICH? someone advised me that lions do on occasion have white spots on them, why the upside down circus act? why above the power head? its a pretty strong power head, rio 2100, but they are eating pretty healthy and i did add some garlic into the fish last night and this morning...
.
... thoughts?

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Lionfish sometimes rest upside down....so I wouldn't be concerned about that bit. I'd just watch the white spots and see what happens. If it worsens and appears to be ich, then you'll have to decide about treating it in a quarantine tank or just trying to de-stress them, feed them garlic-enriched food, or whatever else it is that people generally do!

Good luck.

[bubblepuffer]

maybe they just want a hug from ya :) less light and more rest for the fish.

[justinl]

yup i agree with the above. Lions rest upside down often. It's only a problem if they can't right themselves. Id imagine they are quite stressed so id leave lights off for at least 24hrs. maybe even 48hrs. Don't feed for the duration. Don't check up on them every five minutes. That will just stress them more.

keep an eye on the ich. Are both lions in the same tank? are there other fish that could be in risk? hope it all turns out okay.

[fishmaster]

If this is normal behavior for lions, maybe they didn't have the room to "spread out" and rest upsidown in the old tank? And now feel more comfortable in the larger space to behave in such a way?
Just a thought, I don't really know much about lions.

[Salmon King]

Garlic isn/t a treatment for ich.They had to retract that.I/m not sure its ich.I f it sreads I would buy a cleaner wrass or put them in a quarateen tank and use coppersafe.If its ich it will sread quikly.

[justinl]

unless you have inverts. if you have any inverts, don't use any copper based meds.

[Salmon King]

There is no treatment for ich in a reef tank besides a cleaner wrass or cleaner shrimp.Besides that your only choice is a quaratine tank with copper safe.

[justinl]

you forget about the easiest method of all SK. if you take out the fish and QT them (no meds or anything special) and leave the display fishless for a month or two, the ich parasites have nothing to host and will die off. It interrupts the life cycle of ich quite eeffectively.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

I wasn't trying to suggest that garlic is a great treatment for ich! I just know that many people believe it helps with the general overall health of a fish, and therefore helps the fish to rid itself of the parasite more quickly. But yeah, the only sure way of ridding your system of ich is to let it go fallow (as justinl said above).

And of course any copper-based medications wouldn't be reef safe.

[Kabong]

Cleaner wrasse'e and cleaner shrimps are not cure's for ich.
(not to mention the lions would eat both)
They may help treat the issue but will not cure it.
There is two scientificly proven treatments to kill ich.
Both require qt'ing the fish and leaveing the tank fishless for 6 to 8 weeks.
Your choices are hypo-salinity or copper based meds.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Hypo salinity, lower your SG slowly over a few days, research what the lowest SG lions can tolerate, each species may be different so be very carefull. I'd avoid copper itself it can be VERY hard on fish, I've used cuprimine by SeaChem and had good luck with it, it's ionically different than copper and apparently it's much easier on the fishes internal organs.

Fresh water parasites can't survive in Salt water and Salt water parasites can't survive in fresh water. IMO use a good Marine buffer as well so your pH doesn't go all over the place.

Doug

[Ticketyboo]

I got "NO-ICH" from my LFS and am trying that..... so the lions are looking healthy and still hungry... i have just kept my blue led strips on so as not to stress them out any and the other EEL's in the tank are doing good.... even though my snowflake tried to escape from crawling down my sump intake over the weekend.....