I Give Up!!!!

[nemeth27]

Hey everyone.

I'm almost in the 6th week of ich hyposalinity treatment and now I have lost 3 of my 5 fish. Everything was going well till last week. I have checked the salinity with a refractometer every day (It been between 1.08-1.09, never over and mostly at 1.8!) All of the sudden last week my watchman goby died with no warning. Then 4 days ago I noticed my 6-line and coral beauty started to get white spots again. I checked and the salinity was still 1.085. The 6-line disappeared a day later and my coral beauty died today (I also found the 6-line dead today).

Now my last 2 fish are true perculas and one is starting to get white spots (but he still looks fine). Any suggestions? Should I just raise the salinity over the next couple of days and do copper treatment? Could this not be Ich? Sorry that I have so many questions, but here is my last one. If I treat my quarrantine tank with copper, does that mean I can never put an invert/coral in there again?

FYI...my main tank has never looked better!

[olsaltybastard]

Please double check your numbers. I keep my main tank at 1.026 and hypo at 1.009.

1.08-1.09 would be quite salty!! I just want to make sure we have the right numbers before going on.


Also, 5 fish may be a lot inside a QT tank. How big is that tank? A dead fish can cause an ammonia spike which may quickly snowball out of control. This is why I QT one fish at a time (besides chromis.)

[nemeth27]

Sorry, my dumb mistake..I meant 1.008-1.009. It's only a 10 gal tank and I have been checking Ammonia & trites. I also made a lot of water changes in the beginning until the quarrantine tank cycled. You are probably right that my 10 gal QT is small, but they were fine until it looks like ich attacked them.

Either way I only have 2 clowns left, so I hope I can at least save them. Sorry about the mix up!

[olsaltybastard]

No worries; I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page.


Anyhow, since it's too late to save the dead fish, let's see what we can do with the live ones. With a 10g QT tank, 2 fish maximum; preferably 1, but since you have 2 clowns, leave them in the QT tank. Now, test kits are pretty darned useless for QT tanks. By the time you can detect ammonia, the damage is already being done. The trick is to never let it have the opportunity to build to levels anywhere close to toxic. With a 10g tank, this is quite difficult; doable, but difficult. I recommend a 2 gallon per day water change at the least. Measure the salinity daily and adjust accordingly. Yes this is a pain in the rear!! It's still much easier than dealing with ich inside the tank, so keep your chin up.

It is also very possible that what is killing your fish is not ich.

[ChuckG]

I suspect something other than ich in the QT at this point. Hypo would have taken care of the ich in about a week. You are at the 6 week mark?

At six weeks your tank should be free of ich as well.

[nemeth27]

So what does everyone think? Should I wait longer at 1.0085 or should I raise the salinity and use cooper, or should I just put them back in the main tank? Hopefully they will survive.

[DaveK]

I would continue the treatment.

It may also be desirable to treat with copper, but if you do this, you'll need the med and a test kit. I would treat with copper and hyposalinity.

What happens is that the parasites you see are not the important ones. The problem ones are the parasites that get into the gills. They grow there and choke the fish.

Of course, putting them back in the main tank will not solve anything. You need to let the disease run it's course there also.

[ReefSilly]

How are your fish doing?

[nemeth27]

The two clowns are hanging in there. I figured it has been over 6 weeks, so I'm in the process of raising the salinity back to what the main tank is. The one clown that was showing sign of distress (not sure if it was ich or not) is looking better. I figured that if it still looks like it may have ich, I may just do a copper treatment. If it looks okay then I'll put both of them back in the tank.

I hope it worked. I miss seeing fish in my tank!

[nemeth27]

I finally decided to put the clowns back in the main tank. It's been almost a week and they look great! Although I think the cleaner shrimp freaked them out at first, since they weren't there when they left the tank.