Dt hypo treatment

[Mike-fish]

Hi all

I'm considering dropping the 270g into hypo to treat the ich problem I have currently. I'm currently dosing herbtana day 3 but I have little faith in it after doing some reading. The plan would be transfer the corals and nems to a holding tank during the treatment rather than tear apart the dt to reduce the stress on the fish. Then start dropping the dt to a sg of 1.009 for 6-8 weeks then slowly bringing it back up to1.025 over 2 weeks.
The stocking list is:
1 purple tang
1 one spot fox face
1 valigmi tang
1 powder blue tang
1 sailfin tang
2 clowns
1 copper band butterfly
1 cleaner wrase
3 chromis
2 fire fish

The only ones without ich are the cleaner wrasse and the firefish.

So does this plan sound good or will it back fire. Any thing else I should know about.

[gregzz4]

Plan sounds good, but transfer your LR too or you'll lose a lot of life in it
Basically, everything except the fish, and you'll lose a lot of life in your sand, but I'd recommend leaving the sand, or replace it. Don't try to transfer it.
Leave the holding tank for the LR, corals et all fallow for 9-11 weeks
Take 3-4 days to drop the DT Sg, 4 weeks of 1.008-1.009 ( no higher ), up to one week to raise back to 1.025 ( or your preferred Sg ) with no more than .003 increases per day
From there, I like to watch the fish for another 3-4 weeks to ensure the MI is gone
Then everything can go back in the DT, given you've done the minimum 9 weeks fallow period for the MI to die off in the holding tank

Of course, you're going to need to feed the corals etc and a filter of some kind on the holding tank, with testing, is a good idea

Lots of testing for NH3, NO2 and NO3 is a good idea, in both tanks

Lastly, it can be difficult to keep Hypo pH close to 8.0. If it's close, leave it
If it drops below 7.8, buffer it with baking soda, and use lots of aeration to help keep it up

[Mike-fish]

I thought the rock would be fine.

[gregzz4]

Dropping your Sg with the LR in the tank will slow down the nitrifying bacteria, so no big deal, but it will possibly kill a lot of worms, and all starfish, pods etc

[Mike-fish]

I don't have many starfish if any. And getting rid of some bristle worms would actually be a nice plus they've caught on to the trap it seems

[asylumdown]

The most current scientific research on C. Irritans doesn't bode we'll for hypo as a treatment. That's a pretty massive, system re-setting intervention for something that's not guaranteed to work IMO.

There's lots of variants of ich in this trade. If your variant happens to be from a place like the NE coast of Australia, hypo probably won't work as variants from Australia can natively occur in natural "hypo" conditions. If you're lucky and your variant is from the Red Sea, it might work. If you have more than one variant though... Well, anyway it's a huge roll of the dice no matter what you do. I've done a near masters level of research on this parasite and I can say that I won't elbother with manipulating salinity as a control method again.

[gregzz4]

Have at 'er if you want to Hypo your rock
I did a small piece in the QT and it killed aiptasia
Plus all the big worms came out for capture, and it killed ugly palys, tube worms, feather dusters and the like

Just keep in mind that all the die-off in it will add to any potential ammonia issues, and slow down your DT's recovery after you re-introduce the fishies

Up to you, but I wouldn't hypo my rock
It's like starting over, but without any bacterial filtration

[gregzz4]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

The most current scientific research on C. Irritans doesn't bode we'll for hypo as a treatment

Don't go scaring him from trying it Adam

If, after 4 weeks of Hypo and another 4 weeks of regular Sg, he doesn't see any MI, he'll be fine
If he has to go beyond that and use some kind of copper, at least his fish will be in an environment that it can be used, and his other critters will be in a fallow situation

[gregzz4]

By the way, I can't stress enough the need to keep the Sg below 1.009
All the reading I did showed enough proof that above 1.009, and as much as 1.010, allowed MI to live

I kept my round of Hypo @ 1.008

[George]

I wouldn't do hypo in that large of a tank. First of all, you still have to take out a lot of salt water to replace it with fresh water. It's not that much more work to just drain the tank enough to catch all the fish.
Second, there will be a lot of die-off's in your DT if you have live rock, live sand in there with hypo. You skimmer won't work in hypo. A lot of organic. Ammonia will be a problem. Dosing ammonia binding thingy will get expensive in that large of a tank.
Also there are some researches showing that a certain strain of marine ich can survive below hypo salinity. Your chance of getting that strain may be low, but still a chance...
good luck with whatever you decide to do.