Hiposalinity issues????

[Midway]

Hi there, i got some fish from the store yesterday (couple of claener wrasse) and I my quanranteen is already in hypo (1.010) cause i already have a fish in there and he's doing fine in hypo. I lowered the salinity on those guys very slowly. I lowered it from 1.028 or close to a 1.010 in something like 5 hours. They looked ok when i finally put them in the tank. This morning one of them was dead and this evenning when i came from work, now the other one is dying. I checked the parameters and everything looks good. This is the first time i treat my fish in hyppo. Am i doing something wrong here?

[fishytime]

Originally Posted by Midway

Hi there, i got some fish from the store yesterday (couple of claener wrasse) and I my quanranteen is already in hypo (1.010) cause i already have a fish in there and he's doing fine in hypo. I lowered the salinity on those guys very slowly. I lowered it from 1.028 or close to a 1.010 in something like 5 hours. They looked ok when i finally put them in the tank. This morning one of them was dead and this evenning when i came from work, now the other one is dying. I checked the parameters and everything looks good. This is the first time i treat my fish in hyppo. Am i doing something wrong here?

did you slowly acclimate the fish form the QT from the lower salinity to the higher salinity?

[e46er]

Ive never done a hypo treatment but I am under the impression you're suposed to drop the SG over a couple days not 5 hours...........

[Midway]

No is the other way around, fish from the store came in with higher salinity, my QT is already with hyposalinity(1.010). So i did make sure i acclamated them slowly. It 5 hours from 1.028 to 1.010. Was that too fast? I read that lowering the salinity can be very fast, without any damage to th fish but raising salinity should be done very slowly in a matter of days.

[Reefie]

Originally Posted by Midway

No is the other way around, fish from the store came in with higher salinity, my QT is already with hyposalinity(1.010). So i did make sure i acclamated them slowly. It 5 hours from 1.028 to 1.010. Was that too fast? I read that lowering the salinity can be very fast, without any damage to th fish but raising salinity should be done very slowly in a matter of days.

You are 100% correct on Lowering Salinity can be done quickly, Raising Salinity MUST be done over DAYS not hours.

I did the Hypo thing and found that some Wrasses cannot handle Hypo very well.

Hypo is very DELICATE, I went through a couple Mystery Wrasses. One was lost to the lower salinity, while the other was lost to an Ammonia spike.

I gave up on Hypo, I'm sticking to what works for me. QT with 1.025 Salinity and treating with Paraguard. WC's are done every 2 days to keep Ammonia in check. I'm using the cheapest Salt I can find, IO at $40 a bucket. I was using Reefer's Best, not realizing how quickly you can burn through a box with WC's that often. A 5 Gal bucket of IO Salt will last 1 month, I'm ok with that.

[Midway]

I'm thinking about it now. I'm bringing more fish in on the weekend and i don't wanna loose more fish to hypo. Maybe i'll just stick with 1.025 + quemicals like paragard like you mentioned on your reply.

[TimT]

Couple questions first:
What is the other fish?
Is there places for the cleaner wrasse to hide from the other fish?
What is the alkalinity of the hypo tank?
Are you sure the stores salinity was 1.028? How did you test it?

IME Cleaner wrasse do poorly in shipping. Especially if they come from the Philippines or Indonesia as they pack them with almost no water in a small bag. How long had the store had the fishes before you bought them?

It is almost impossible to determine the exact cause of mortality on a fish.

Cheers,
Tim

[daplatapus]

One thing I found when trying to do hypo on a fish with ich is that past 1.015 I had a heck of a time keeping the pH stable. I'd bet if you tested your pH it'll be below 7 and your regular SW will be 8.2 or so. I don't believe fish can take pH that low.

[Midway]

The other fish is a copperband butterfly. Yep i have two pieces of black pvc so the fish can hide. Alkalinity? You got me there, got it test that out then. I have a refractometer so i can measure my salinity on the spot.

[George]

I''ll say the warsses were not healthy to begin with. Cleaner wrasses usually don't accept prepared food. Not sure how long the wrasses were in your LFS. They may not eat anything from the time they got caught in the ocean to the time you brought them home. With the change in enviroment (hypo), the wrasses gave up.
For future reference, hypo only cures marine ich, nothing else. Wrasses are less likely to get ich. So my standard procedure to QT wrasses is to use standard salinty and treat wrasses with internal parasites.