Hospital tank set up advice, please comment on plan

[Delphinus]

Well, the time has come that I have to admit that I need to treat some fish I have. Quick summary: in January I moved most of the fish out of my 115g cube into my new tank. I left behind two butterfly fish. The stress of the chasing of fish seemed to give the butterflies themselves a case of ich. 3-4 months later now, it is clear that it is not going to go away and it's bad enough that I think they need to be specifically treated.

It's very frustrating. They eat like pigs, which must be a good sign, but the spots are just getting worse every week.

So .. I have a 20g tank that I have kept for just this scenario. I've just never had cause to actually set up a hospital tank (I did once try on some newly purchased fish, I tried to QT them, then I tried to hyposalinity them but they all died. So I've been very gun shy to try this again.)

Anyhow.

I also have an Aquaclear 300. I will put the Aquaclear with sponge on the 115g tank tonight and let it run to cycle the sponge.

How long should I let it seed on the main tank? 24 hours? Or longer?

When the Aquaclear is seeded well enough, I will fill the 20g with 100% tank water from the main tank and move the Aquaclear over.

Once I begin treatment (and I haven't quite decided if I should do hyposalinity or Cupramine, any thoughts on this?), do I need to do daily water changes to keep the ammonia in check?

I don't have an ammonia test kit. Should I get one? Or just do daily water changes?

How big of water changes once treatment begins? 100%? 50%? 25%? Every day? Every 2nd day?

Any advice appreciated, thank you!

[Gooly001]

Hi Tony,

I wouldn't recommend using the aquaclear because the intake is quite strong and any weak fish will get stuck to it; further stressing it out and doing more harm then good. Also, even if you had a biological colony culture on the foam, most medications that you use to treat for disease will kill of the culture, rendering it useless as filteration.

I'd recommend to do regular water changes every other day to keep the ammonia and nitrite levels down instead.

In our experience, tangs and butterflies do not take well to fresh water dips and extremely low levels of hypo.

We use a combination of low level salinity of 1.018 and chelated copper to attack the ich. With chelated copper (Cupramine) we use half the dosage recommended as the tangs are butterflies are very sensitive to copper. You can use API copper test kits to monitor the levels.

As long at the fish are eating during this process, I find that they kick the ick within a few days to a week of treatment. However, due to the life cycle a few weeks in quarintine would be recommended where by the salinity can be raised slowly to reflect the DP tanks parameters.

HTH,

Paul

[Gooly001]

Also, forgot to mention that if the ich wounds are very aggressive; you might encounter secondary infections that are even more lethal then the ich themselves. Find some Methylene Blue to treat as an antiseptic; however MB robs the water of oxygen so make sure you airate heavily.

Paul

[Delphinus]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the replies.

So no to the Aquaclear then? Just water changes every 2 days in an otherwise filterless tank? Should I add a small powerhead for water movement or find an air pump and air stone?

Do I understand correctly that you recommend both SG down to 1.018 and cupramine at half-dosage for butterflies?

And potentially methylene blue? How do I know if this is needed?

Man .. I am totally out of my depth here.

Here is the the thing: they really don't act as if they have ich. No scratching, no loss of appetite. But they are covered with white dots, they look like they have been salted. This comes and goes. I have a UV on the tank as well but it must be completely ineffective (the lamp needs replacing and it's not one I can get locally - it's an AquaUV 57w). It must be ich .. if it was something else wouldn't they be more affected?

They are in the tank by themselves, maybe 2 or 3 snails and a golden dwarf eel. I have been meaning to move the 3 into a new FOWLR I've been setting up but it's nowhere near ready. Once the new tank is cycled I can move the eel over, he's not affected by spots at all. I'm assuming maybe eels have more tolerance/immunity against ich?

[Delphinus]

Also how much water do you change out every 2 days? 50%? Just bring in water from the DT, or use brand new SW for these changes?

[abcha0s]

Hi Tony

I'm certainly not an expert on qt, so take my comments with a grain of thought. I have thought a lot about it and have also been trying to figure out how to avoid transferring ich from my old to my new tank.

Edit: That's was supposed to say a grain of salt, but really a grain of thought seems more appropriate

Paul makes some good points. In particular, each fish species has unique tolerances to copper and hyposalinity. The ideal treatment might depend more on the fish than anything else.

If you are only treating ich, I personally would try to go the hyposalinity route (as long as your fish can tolerate it). This also means that you could potentially move some live rock into the qt tank as hypo won't necessarily kill the bacteria. I found many references on WetWebMedia that suggest hyposalinity doesn't always work, but it seems that many aquarists’ have had success.

There's also the Daily Water Change approach which I really like (in theory).

Fish are put into a quarantine/hospital tank and then everyday for two weeks the tank is completely cleaned and a 50% water change is performed. ... This method helps to remove the tomites, tomonts, and theronts from the tank and lessens the chance of reinfection. - Source

When I move my tangs between the two tanks, I am planning to try a combination of these two methods. The idea would be to perform 50% water changes daily using tank water diluted to 1.009 SG. In performing the water change, the bottom of the qt tank is thoroughly vacuumed.

I do believe that ammonia accumulates rapidly in qt without substantial live rock. When I attempted qt in the past, I measured large amounts of ammonia and nitrite. I almost lost my fish, but instead abandoned the qt and subsequently introduced ich into my tank. I knew it was there, I just couldn't sacrifice the fish.

It is because of the requirement for frequent water changes that I think a combination of the hyposalinity and daily water changes is what I will try.

If you’re going to use cleated copper (Cupramine), I don't think there is much point in trying to run any biological filtration. In my experience, and in most of my reading, I think the copper all but destroys the bacterial colonies. Manage your parameters through water changes. Add the copper to the make up water, not the qt tank. As always, stability is the key.

I'd suggest somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% total volume daily for water changes.

Just my thoughts... I'm going to have to attempt this sometime soon as well.

You might also consider adding PraziPro to your qt strategy. Not for ich, but for various other parasites that are not necessarily visible. As the saying goes, most healthy fish can fight off ich. If they are busy fighting off other parasites, I would speculate that they become more susceptible to ich.

One last thought about Ammonia test kits

Q: I'm using Cupramine™ and my ammonia test kit is showing ammonia off the scale. What is going on?
A: Ammonia test kits can not distinguish ammonia from the amine based complex present in Cupramine™ and will therefore give a false high reading for ammonia while using Cupramine™. Our Ammonia Alert™ and MultiTest: Free & Total Ammonia™ test kit do not suffer from this problem as they utilize a gas exchange technology that can distinguish ammonia from amines. - Source

Food for thought...

- Brad

[Gooly001]

Hi Tony,

This is my regement for treating ich once I detect it.

-90 gallon QT with Prizm Skimmer (crappy skimmer but works ok for QT)
-IO salt mixed with fresh RO water at 1.018
-Cupramin dosed according to directions for Angels and halfed for -Tangs/Bflies
-Koralia 1050 power head for water movement and aeration
-2" PVC cut to length. PVC is easy to sanitize after the QT period. Don't waste money on LR for QT because most meds will make the LR die and add nutrients to the QT system.
-Mark water level on the QT tank so that you know how much to top off on salinity daily
-If you notice red wound marks on the fish after/during the copper treatment it may be an infection so Methelyene Blue can be added to disinfect. MB is very difficult to overdose so you can use it generously. Just make sure you run an air stone and discontinue skimmer usage
-Temperature should be around 78 degress. Most people recommend upping the temp to make the ich cycle faster but my opinion is to stabilize the fish in the QT before stressing them out by forcing the ich to multiply
-Salinity at 1.018 does not kill the ich but allows the fish to reserve energy from having to work on osmosis. The cupramine will kill the ich over the course of the treatment.
-Getting the fish to eat is the most important thing here. If the fish eat during QT they can battle the disease. If they don't eat after 4-5 days then I find that their chances of survival are greatly diminished. Feed lots and keep water changes up if you do.

Paul

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the replies.

So no to the Aquaclear then? Just water changes every 2 days in an otherwise filterless tank? Should I add a small powerhead for water movement or find an air pump and air stone?

Do I understand correctly that you recommend both SG down to 1.018 and cupramine at half-dosage for butterflies?

And potentially methylene blue? How do I know if this is needed?

Man .. I am totally out of my depth here.

Here is the the thing: they really don't act as if they have ich. No scratching, no loss of appetite. But they are covered with white dots, they look like they have been salted. This comes and goes. I have a UV on the tank as well but it must be completely ineffective (the lamp needs replacing and it's not one I can get locally - it's an AquaUV 57w). It must be ich .. if it was something else wouldn't they be more affected?

They are in the tank by themselves, maybe 2 or 3 snails and a golden dwarf eel. I have been meaning to move the 3 into a new FOWLR I've been setting up but it's nowhere near ready. Once the new tank is cycled I can move the eel over, he's not affected by spots at all. I'm assuming maybe eels have more tolerance/immunity against ich?

[Gooly001]

Oh yah and I remember vaguely reading somewhere that smooth scaled fish are almost immune to the ich parasites. We rarely encounter ich on wrasses and smooth scaled fish.

Paul

[ScubaSteve]

Hi Tony,

Bummer dude. I recently lost my butterfly to ich. Butterflies are weird with ich. They don't act like they have it and it comes and goes, like you said. But each time it comes back it comes back a little worse until one day they take a dramatic turn for the worse. Mine went from ich-y but happy and healthy to dead in less than 48 hours.

And I agree with Paul on the comment about secondary infections. My butterfly, in his dramatic down turn, contracted a secondary infection that lead to symptoms like red spots on the skin (bleeding) and the tell-tale signs of popeye. It is the secondary infection that I believe got passed around to everyone else in my tank. A day and a bit after my buttlerfly kicked the bucket, my mandarin followed. No idea what killed the mandarin but he had all sorts of weird symptoms that were all over the map. As Paul said, ich isn't likelt to attack smooth skinned fish (like mandarins). Who knows... Just be prepared for this.

Change 50% every second day and don't bother with cycling the sponge. It'll do nothing at this point and meds will kill anything useful. The butterflies are finicky as all heck. Even though you CAN drop salinity fast, try not to as this seems to just irritate the butterflies, who then get stressed, which makes things worse. I never tried the copper meds but I agree with the half dose idea. As long as you can keep them eating like pigs you're golden. Oh, and don't for a second think they'll fight it off like tangs do... once a butterfly gets ich they just start cycling through it and progressively get worse.

Have fun and good luck! Tell those butterflies to stop getting their knickers in a twist and getting sick.

[fishoholic]

In my experience hypo has been much easier on fish then cupramine treatment, and with ich (IME) hypo has been 100% effective, that being said though my CBB was my only fish that was fine during the cupramine treatment when I had velvet, but he was one of the only ones who never showed symptoms of velvet either. FYI cupramine treatment will normally cause a loss of appetite, where I find hypo doesn't. With hypo I went from 1.024 down to 1.010 over 4 days and after 2 weeks at 1.010 I raised it back up slowly over 7 days, up by 2 points a day.

I have a 110g QT tank (which I've used to do hypo and I used it for cupramine treatment) and in both cases I used fresh saltwater (no point in introducing more of the disease from using display tank water etc.) and I did 50% water changes every other day. In both cases I also had 2 koraila 4's running and 5 bubbliers. In your case I would run a small power head and a bubblier.