Hyposalinity question - QT tank - how fast can you lower SG?

[Delphinus]

I've got 3 fish in a QT tank right now (newcomers). I can see ich on them, enough so that I'm a little worried.

So .. dumb question here. I've never actually run a QT tank before and I've never ran a hyposalinity treatment.

I'm doing some reading but one piece of information I don't seem to see touched on in great detail (I might be overlooking so I'll keep reading but I'll ask it here anyhow), is how fast can you safely lower SG in a QT tank? There's nothing else in the tank (ie. no snails or inverts .. just some live rock and an aquaclear), so no worries there - it's just the fish.

And wow, SG at 1.008 for the target SG. Did I say "wow" yet? Yikes.

How much of a drop is too much for one day?

[Red Coral Aquariums]

If they are in a Q-Tank why not use medication?? I found it to be hit and miss with hypo treatment.

To answer your question though drip FW slowly.

Kevin

[Delphinus]

I'm reading opinions all over the map on hyposalinity versus medications. On the one hand I read things like "copper or hyposalinity are the only things that work" others are like "product X worked for me".

Comes down to this for me right now: I can start hyposalinity right now at midnight, if I wanted to meds I can't start until at least tomorrow. I have live rock in the tank and was sorta hoping to not use copper in it, if it can be avoided at all, but .. I want whatever's best for the fish. Today is the first day the spots really showed up, so I don't know when to press the panic button. Now? Later? Yesterday?

What meds do you recommend?

Also any opinions on how fast the SG can be lowered? This article (wetwebmedia.com) (http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume_4/V4I4/hyposalinity/OST.htm) seems to suggest it can be done over the course of several hours, but using several water changes (with a rest period in between, I presume, although it's not touched upon).

It's a 30gal tank so if I take out 3 gallons and replace with FW, it lowers it about 0.002. Ie., 1.023 to 1.021. When can I do my next changeout, in a couple hours or is it better to wait until tomorrow?

[PuffLuv]

I went from 1.025 to about 1.008 in about 3.5 days and it didn't seem to bother the fish at all. I've read people have dropped it faster without any problems as well. From what I've read, increasing the salinity at a slower rate (ie. 7 days) is more important. Here's a link I found helpful:
http://atj.net.au/marineaquaria/hyposalinity.html
Best of luck!:biggrin:

[Delphinus]

FWIW, the fish are all eating everything up as fast I can give it to them. Flake, pellet, nori, mysis. In fact, one of them is a butterfly (pyramid) and even he is chasing down flake and eating it like no tomorrow (first butterfly to eat flake for me). But they all have spots, including the butterfly. So definitely I need to do "something", hopefully I don't need to panic or despair that I'm "starting this too late" at this point, but .. argh, I dunno.

[marie]

Every time I've used hyposalinity in the quarantine tank I've taken 48hrs as the guide line to lower SG from 1.026 to 1.009 . The fish aren't too affected by lowering the SG, it's the climb back up that takes forever

[Delphinus]

Perfect, thanks all. Just the info (and reassurance in a way) that I was looking for! So I've done my first change, taking it down to 1.021 from 1.023, I'll wait until the morning to do the next one. And then after work for the one after that. And so on, and so on ("and they told two friends, and they told two friends, ...")

Anyhow thanks once again..

[Red Coral Aquariums]

What is your salinity at now??

If it is around the 1.021 mark I would take out about 10 gallons of water out of your tank and and using an old 10 gal you have sitting around (I"m sure you do) do a drip of fresh water into your tank. When you wake up tomorrow it should be around the 1.015 mark. Repeat the procedure and go to work when you come home it should be at the mark where you need to keep an eye on it.

I would take the Rock out as how alive is the rock going to be with a salinity of 1.008 which might cause a mini cycle stressing your fish out worse.

Medication: To effectively kill marine ich you will need medication that will kill ALL single celled organisms hence you should take your live rock out of that tank.

So really whether you use Hyposalinity or medication you are not effectively battling ich till late tomorrow anyways.

Call me at work tomorrow if you want Tony.
Best of luck
Kevin

[bulletsworld]

Tony, what kind of fish are you treating? Are they scale-less fish? It helps for treatment advice.

Hyposalinity I like better than Copper any day. More natural is better. However I would use the darkness & transfer method also with Hyposalinity treatment to be the most effective. Let me know if you want more info on how I do that.

to answer your question on Hyposalinity....here's steps

In Hyposalinity the normal salt content of the tank is reduced by over half, that is from normal 35 ppt to 16 ppt, which corresponds to a specific gravity of 1.009. The treatment is done in stages. On day one RO/DI is used to replace hospital tank water till specific gravity falls to 1.022, day two it is reduced to 1.018, day three 1.014, day four to 1.009.

I will warn you, once you hit 1.018, you might see a nitrate/ammonia spike. That's why its important to adjust the salinity down slowly. Also by lowering the salinity this way it will prevent your fish going into osmosic shock. Like a invert would do if you didn't match the salinity when first introducing it to your system. I have dropped it faster with no shown effects to the fish.

Hope that helps. :mrgreen:

[bulletsworld]

http://atj.net.au/marineaquaria/hyposalinity.html


I was looking for this website too! This is an excellent link and a must all bookmark.

[bulletsworld]

I would take the Rock out as how alive is the rock going to be with a salinity of 1.008 which might cause a mini cycle stressing your fish out worse.

+1 :mrgreen:

[howdy20012002]

i have dropped salinity over a very short period of time without any problems..(over a 1 hour period.)
i have been told that going down in salinity isn't a problem.
going back up is should be down much slower. (i myself have done it over a few hours without a problem)
just what I have heard and praticed.
for medications, I swear that I have lost more fish trying to treat ich with meds that the ich itself would have killed.
from the reading that I have done, Hyposalinity is the recommended way for quarantining fish and is proven to reduce death and stress on the fish

hope this helps
Neal

[Bob]

I pesonally have taken mine down in two days...in a 70 gallon tank
I did the medications first....for over two months...nothing worked for me
lowering the salinity did.....just to let you know...one of the lfs here actually kept there tanks at a very low salinity.....very low...

[Delphinus]

Ok thanks all. The water is now down to 1.020. I guess I'll take the rock when I get home. Although it's there mainly just for aesthetics and to give the fish some caves and whatnot to hang out in. Just thought it would be nicer than plant pots and PVC, or empty, the usual look of a QT tank. It's also rock out of a cooking tank anyhow so it's all white to begin with. I don't mind to reseed it down the road. BUt yeah if it's gonna be a problem then I guess it has to come out.

The QT tank is a 30g and the only other filtration on there is an aquaclear 110 which I don't think is enough on its own so I guess I have to find something bigger and get it going before going much further.

Lee, the fish are 2 small tangs and a butterfly.

[bulletsworld]

Lee, the fish are 2 small tangs and a butterfly.

They will be fine in Hyposalintiy. Just checking they are not scale less fish.



I guess I'll take the rock when I get home. Although it's there mainly just for aesthetics and to give the fish some caves and whatnot to hang out in. Just thought it would be nicer than plant pots and PVC, or empty, the usual look of a QT tank. It's also rock out of a cooking tank anyhow so it's all white to begin with. I don't mind to reseed it down the road. BUt yeah if it's gonna be a problem then I guess it has to come out.

You know… I assumed you wanted to use live rock. Then it would spike for sure once it dropped to low. However, I’ve never tried using completely cooked rock, if its white, with no algae or anything on it. It might be o.k. Hmm…. I wonder myself actually. Has anyone ever tried it? If in doubt, take it out, use PVC for tunnels and caves.

Just to note… Hyposalinity doesn’t always work. I have read cases of ick being able to live in low salinity. But it still hands down beats using chemicals to treat. If it doesn’t work I will give you my recipe for Transfer & Darkness Method. I warn you though, it’s a lot of work, but it’s completely natural and has worked for me every time with treating marine velvet and ich.

[Delphinus]

Doing QT is new ground for me. You'd think after 12 years of SW maybe a guy would know better. I've always just rolled the dice and yeah, fish (and tangs in particular) always got spots in the first few weeks, but they always got over it. One bout, that was it, never to return. I figure sooner or later that gig will be up. Now that I have an Acanthurus in my care I thought I should step it up and yeah, for sure, he's looking pretty spotty. He eats with great gusto though, so I'm really hoping I'm doing the right thing here.

[midgetwaiter]

What you are worried about when dropping the salinity in a QT is the bio filter, the fish don't mind. You can move fish into hypo without acclimation provided the pH is steady.

Watch for bacterial blooms and ammonia levels, have some prime handy, etc. 72 hours would be a good time frame although 48 is possible.

Going back up plan to take at least a week.

[Delphinus]

What do people use for adjusting pH if necessary?

QT tank is now down to 1.017. I guess I need to keep going, the spots are worse than ever and quickly approaching among the worst I've ever seen for ich. Certainly the worst for any fish in my care anyhow.

Water is starting to get a slight cloudy look to it, too. I wish I had a bigger aquaclear. I'm torn between continuing to lower the salinity or holding it here for a couple days while I go out and buy a bigger aquaclear. (Bearing in mind I'm not sure how best to to adjust pH, if need be, and that I'm not sure my aquaclear is adequately keeping up with the cycle - I don't have an ammonia test kit but I do have a nitrite test kit and it is measuring 0.1 --- however for what it's worth, anytime I've used it, it's always told me 0.1 so I'm not sure what to make of that).

I feel really bad for these fish. I'm not sure whether I've done them a favour by putting them into QT first or not. I've always just let them go into the main tank and let it be, and while spots usually would appear, never quite so bad as this, and always went away after the first week.

These fish are at about 1.5 weeks in QT. I thought things were going really well as they ate with gusto and showed no signs of spots until this week.

Especially after the cuke nuke incident in my cube tank this week, the stress of this is starting to take its toll. Why do we do this again? This is fun, right? I'm really starting to wonder about this..

[BlueWorldAquatic]

Don't forget to raise the temp of your QT tank also for Ich.

Only time we use any meds or copper is if its a very severe case.

Either than that we add Immuno-Vital, and use Ich attack.

Ken - BWA

[marie]

I found hyposalinity a bit slow in killing ich on the fish, that's why I decided to go with cupramine instead when I treated my potters angels. I ended up doing 50% daily water changes to keep the ammonia levels down but the fish pulled through and I haven't seen ich on them since

[Delphinus]

Marie, so now that you've done both cupramine and hyposalinity on new fish, do you have a preference for which treatment?

[marie]

Marie, so now that you've done both cupramine and hyposalinity on new fish, do you have a preference for which treatment?

My preference would be cupramine if the fish has visible parasites, just hypo if they appear healthy... I have never lost a fish in quarantine though.
I have heard lots of people that have had problems with both kinds of treatment and I'm not sure what I do that makes the difference

[Delphinus]

Ohhhh .. hmmm, man that sounds like a good rule of thumb. :( Nuts to it all, I'm only halfway down on the salinity thing but I suppose that's far enough along that I'm committed to completing it since you have to take forever to bring the salinity back up. Guess next time I'll have a hospital tank ready to go that I can copper up.

Have I mentioned lately how crazy of a hobby I think this is? Stress if fun right? Argh. Honestly, knitting sounds pretty good right now.

[Myka]

Well, IMO I don't use medications for Ich. Period. The last time I used medication in a QT was on a freshwater Piranha with Dropsy back in 2002 ish. Dropsy is a disease that is expected to be fatal, so the medication was really a last ditch effort. Surprisingly it worked, even after a secondary Ich infection. Tough fish! :lol: Oh ya, back to the topic...I'm going to start up a QT for my tank too when I get the jawfishes and wrasses. I will medicate these fish with Prazi-Pro since the Jawfish are often wormy...I would do the same with any Tangs, and a few other species. The Wrasses will just get hypo for a few weeks.

[Delphinus]

Day 6 of hyposalinity. Maybe hindsight is 20/20 and I should have medicated them like Kevin said to do. :( They looked fine a few hours ago but man when they let go, it's fast and hard. Gonna lose the butterfly for sure, the lieutenant tang is not looking that great either.

So, I dunno. Can't say hyposalinity is really blowing up my skirt so far.

Really not loving the hobby these days.

[kien]

I suppose there is more than one way to skin a cat as they say..

For as along as I've been in the hobby I have never used meds or hypo to battle ich. The first time I was ever exposed to ich years ago someone said to try cleaner shrimp, so I did and it worked beautifully. Ever since then I have always had an army of cleaner shrimp (presently 4 skunk cleaners and 2 fire shrimp [yes they clean too!]). I have 3 tangs presently and each of them (and sometimes one or two other fish) get ich as soon as they were put into the tank but a few days of cleaner shrimp loving and they are clean as a whistle. When they are not cleaning they readily eat anything I put in the tank, but they seem to enjoy cleaning a lot, even when I don't see signs of ich on any fish. Anyway, that's been my experience. Sorry to hear about your battle :(

[Delphinus]

The last time I bought a tang was 2001, my sailfin .. he got a few spots when I got him but it cleared up. I had cleaner shrimp at the time. I'm sure it helped but I always thought that when you had ich beyond maybe 10 spots that it was better to take proactive steps like QT, hospital, hypo, medication, etc.

Ever other fish I've bought either came from hobbyists (so were healthy) or just never got ich anyhow. So I never did QT before. I thought, sooner or later my luck will run out, and I couldn't live with myself if I introduced something that would compromise existing livestock. Especially the now 8 year old tang...

So .. I don't know. Maybe the old way I would do it (ie., hope for the best) was still better after all.

Too late now though. I mean .. even if I wanted to raise the salinity now, it would take a week to bring it back up. It remains to be seen whether they'll make it that far.

[marie]

The last time I bought a tang was 2001, my sailfin .. he got a few spots when I got him but it cleared up. I had cleaner shrimp at the time. I'm sure it helped but I always thought that when you had ich beyond maybe 10 spots that it was better to take proactive steps like QT, hospital, hypo, medication, etc.

Ever other fish I've bought either came from hobbyists (so were healthy) or just never got ich anyhow. So I never did QT before. I thought, sooner or later my luck will run out, and I couldn't live with myself if I introduced something that would compromise existing livestock. Especially the now 8 year old tang...

So .. I don't know. Maybe the old way I would do it (ie., hope for the best) was still better after all.

Too late now though. I mean .. even if I wanted to raise the salinity now, it would take a week to bring it back up. It remains to be seen whether they'll make it that far.

The nice thing about a quarantine tank is that you don't have to call it quits until you've tried everything. I would medicate immediately if they are that bad and while using copper, start raising the salinity back up.

*edit* I've noticed when treating with cupramine that all visible signs of ich are gone within half an hour and when I treated my achilles for marine velvet, within 10 min he was no longer scratching frantically and his breathing had returned to normal

Another option is a freshwater bath to relieve them of the worst of the parasites.

[Delphinus]

Well, to my astonishment, this morning the butterfly is swimming around. I'm surprised because last night he was opaque, listless and unresponsive to his surroundings. Usually with butterflys, at least IME so far, they go from "Oh, something looks off" to dead within a couple of hours. So to see him pull out of that funk is not something I expected. Remains to be seen where we go from here though, of course.

And .. well, I guess the lieutenant tang decided to take matter into his own hands and solved his own ich problem ... or rather, made the ich situation irrelevant. He jumped.

FML.

[Lance]

Well, to my astonishment, this morning the butterfly is swimming around. I'm surprised because last night he was opaque, listless and unresponsive to his surroundings. Usually with butterflys, at least IME so far, they go from "Oh, something looks off" to dead within a couple of hours. So to see him pull out of that funk is not something I expected. Remains to be seen where we go from here though, of course.

And .. well, I guess the lieutenant tang decided to take matter into his own hands and solved his own ich problem ... or rather, made the ich situation irrelevant. He jumped.

FML.


So sorry to hear this Tony. :sad:
Bloody Hobby! Sometimes you just can't win. Butterfly perks up and Tang jumps.

[christyf5]

Aww crap Tony, that sucks rocks. Stupid fish :confused:

[Delphinus]

Yeah. Unfortunately the butterfly didn't make it through the day, although I wasn't really expecting much on that. So it's down the last fish now, he's got the cloudy eyes like the others so I'm thinking it's a matter of time.

So, I'm sort of left wondering if this is an epic fail of a QT, or if I maybe dodged a bullet by not exposing my current livestock. I'm not sure. I feel very stunned and drained though, I'll say that. I never learn, I'm always optimistic.

Anyhow went and bought some cupramine. Taking Marie's point to heart in that it's never over until it's over, and this is something I can do different, so we'll see.

[sharuq1]

That sucks :( Darn thing must have had a death wish.