Ich, what to do for the best ? Please Help - With pictures.

[jabba]

Sorry if I confused you. I was asking if you had any power heads in the main tank for water circulation. Oxygenation of the water occurs mostly at the surface. The surface water should be agitated (think ocean surface) not still. A marine tank should have water flow of 10x - 20x water capacity per hour. In your main tank the output of all water pumps and power heads should be at least 1500 UK gallons /hour. When you decide to add corals you will probably want to increase that.

Do you get a lot of salt creep on the underside of the wood lid?

Dropping the SG .002 - .004 per day should be fine. I shoot for a drop of .003 per day to go from 1.26 to 1.009 over the course of a week. You need to do the same in reverse after treatment, bringing the SG up slowly.

What are you using to measure the SG?

Keep a close on the pH of the main tank during hypo. There is less buffer in the water and it tends to drop quickly. I keep enough s/w mis on had to do a 10% - 20% daily water change. Of course when I did it I had all my fish in a 30 gallon tank so it was a lot easier to do the water changes. Also, the smaller volume of water allows parameters to change much quicker.

So far so good, I am now at 1.012 and everything still seems to be very happy and eating well, I would say that the fish are in really bad shape though, being absolutely covered in ich and over their eyes as well. Any idea when this cycle will finish (its been about a week now) ?

I dont have any powerheads but I do have three powerfilters with their returns near the surface 2 x eheim 2028 and a 2026 plus the airstones.

I dont get much saltcreep under the lid but I do get it on the lighting tubes etc

This is what I am measuring the SG with :

 

[cmor1701d]

Great! You have an ATC (automatic temperature calibration) refractometer for measuring salinity. If it's calibrated to pure (RODI) water then your readings are good.

You can try feeding the fish some garlic soaked food to help with their immune system, but that's just anecdotal. There is no hard science to prove that garlic actually helps.

The parasites will start to fall off, drop to the bottom and encyst to reproduce. It is at this stage that the hypo treatment will kill Ich.

Check out these two articles on Ich and Hypo

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/marineich.html
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/hyposalinity.html

 

[traveling]

These fishes are very beautiful. I am fond of them.

 

[cmor1701d]

Jabba,

How's it going with the hypo treatment. You should be down to 1.009 by now. Have you had any losses?
Are you starting to see less spots on the fish?
Keep an eye on ammonia and pH as these can get out of hand quickly. Be ready with 10% daily water changes to keep the water parameters in check.

Let us know how it's going, and good luck.

 

[jabba]

Jabba,

How's it going with the hypo treatment. You should be down to 1.009 by now. Have you had any losses?
Are you starting to see less spots on the fish?
Keep an eye on ammonia and pH as these can get out of hand quickly. Be ready with 10% daily water changes to keep the water parameters in check.

Let us know how it's going, and good luck.

Hi

Good news and Bad news.

That yellow tang that I have had for the last eight years with the damaged fins sadly past away. The Angel that is a similar age is about 50/50 I would say, he doesnt look too bad but has sadly stopped eating, at least I am in with a chance though, and he is very fat anyway so hopefully that will keep him going for a little while. I am also soaking all the food in garlic guard now.

The good news is that amazingly most of the white spots have now vanished off the regals and remaining 5 yellow tangs, the regals still have some parasites on their eyes though and they seem a bit cloudy, will that improve or have they now gone permanently blind ?

The water changes are going much better and easier now, since I managed to get a 120 litre barrel that I can position outside my window to pump back in what I have removed (about 100 litres a day) I also have an air pump in the barrel and heater where I mix it up with the salt and ph buffer (trying to match it to the temp etc of the aquarium water).

You will see from my SG readings that I am about 1.009-1.010'ish (if anything it needs to come down just a little more, maybe about 20 litres of RO water would do it) how critical is the final reading between those figures ? would the parasites when they hatch survive 1.010 and not 1.009 ?

Thanks for all your help and continued interest.

Jab

 

[cmor1701d]

Sorry to hear about your loss, but it is minimal for now, so that's a good sign.
1.009 -1.010 is where you want to keep it for 4 weeks. That low SG causes the cysts to rupture so the parasite can't reproduce. All the parasites need to drop off the host fish which could take a week.

If the fish is blind I doubt it will heal. If the eye is cloudy it may heal. Time will tell. Usually, cloudy eye is a bacterial condition that comes secondary to poor water conditions. If it does not get better in the next day or two you may want to start treating the tank with a broad spectrum antibiotic. This will also kill beneficial bacteria so you will need to stay on top of the water conditions with more frequent partial water changes. Possibly 10% pwc twice a day if you start to see any increase in ammonia, etc.

 

[jabba]

Sorry to hear about your loss, but it is minimal for now, so that's a good sign.
1.009 -1.010 is where you want to keep it for 4 weeks. That low SG causes the cysts to rupture so the parasite can't reproduce. All the parasites need to drop off the host fish which could take a week.

If the fish is blind I doubt it will heal. If the eye is cloudy it may heal. Time will tell. Usually, cloudy eye is a bacterial condition that comes secondary to poor water conditions. If it does not get better in the next day or two you may want to start treating the tank with a broad spectrum antibiotic. This will also kill beneficial bacteria so you will need to stay on top of the water conditions with more frequent partial water changes. Possibly 10% pwc twice a day if you start to see any increase in ammonia, etc.

Just a quick update :

I lost that big fat Angel that I have had for the last eight years (I really did think that fish was indestructible).

Everything else though is doing really well and in tip top condition now, 5 x yellow tangs, 2 x regal and the fox face and just one damsel left.

I am still doing 120 litre daily water changes and keeping SG to 1.009-1.010 (tricky when you are swapping that much water out everyday, but I think it cant be avoided when I have had so many deaths in the tank)

 

[roka64]

You may want to slow down the PWCs to every other day and give you water time to premix, so the new SW isn't as caustic.

 

[cmor1701d]

I don't think you need to continue with that large of a daily pwc if your water parameters are staying at 0. Hypo get's trickier when you are just adding RODI water to make up for evaporation. The evaporation can easily boost you over the 1.010 mark. If your PWC water is mixed to 1.009 it shouldn't be hard to maintain the SG.

Are you treating the tank with any antibiotics?