Hyposalinity for Ich in Display

[OdinPrime]

I went through hell with Ich last year in my 90gal. 45 day fallow, reintroduced all fish and had another ich breakout within a day. Did another 45 day fallow, returned the fish, and ich again...

At this point, I honestly believe Ich management is the best way to go. Even with perfect quarantine practice, people are still getting ich. I just try to keep the stress low with consistent water parameters, try to keep my hands out of the tank, and borderline overfeed with selcron and vitachem daily. I also have a UV steralizer rated for a 200gal tank on my 90. Not sure if it actually helps with the ich at all, but I know for sure I have it in my tank and havent seen a spot in over 6 months. I wish you the best of luck.

 

[305]

I went through hell with Ich last year in my 90gal. 45 day fallow, reintroduced all fish and had another ich breakout within a day. Did another 45 day fallow, returned the fish, and ich again...

At this point, I honestly believe Ich management is the best way to go. Even with perfect quarantine practice, people are still getting ich. I just try to keep the stress low with consistent water parameters, try to keep my hands out of the tank, and borderline overfeed with selcron and vitachem daily. I also have a UV steralizer rated for a 200gal tank on my 90. Not sure if it actually helps with the ich at all, but I know for sure I have it in my tank and havent seen a spot in over 6 months. I wish you the best of luck.

Uv doesnt do anything for icke..
U do have the right mindset.
Happy fish and well fed fish will tend to fight off anything!
45 days was too little time.. 70+ days and if u got sand u gotta remove it
And thats not even full proof but it is the best method.
Humble.fish wich in my opinion is a g when it comes go fish disease has done a lot of research and proven methods.
Op will have worse results with all this up and down no sense hes doing in the longrun and get frustrated.
I hung up my gloves a long time ago when it comes to icke
Most people do the same and manage it..
Its not hard given your following the guidelines
1. Dont over pop
2. Feed vita enriched foods
3. A lot of praying
Good luck yall

 

[Max93]

January 6, 2022

zero signs of ich
No ammonia
Sg 1.009

did not see hippo tang scratch a single time today. All fish look very happy, very fat. Kole tang spine that started to show due to weight loss has started to disappear again. Slowly, but it’s going.

my skimmer is getting filled up to the top weekly.
I’m currently feeding:
3/4 sheet of nori per day
Reef frenzy a bit over a cube size a day.

 

[mehaffydr]

Good to hear things are looking up for you. I started lowering Salinity in my tank yesterday as I am going the same route.

 

[Max93]

Good to hear things are looking up for you. I started lowering Salinity in my tank yesterday as I am going the same route.

You can do it! With this process, I have been able to enjoy my tank. “Leaving it alone” really comes in to play with hypo.

January 9 2022

Sg 1.009
No ammonia
Skimmer is skimming very well.

today I am going to move around some sand, to eliminate potential spots underneath the sand that are holding higher SG. I don’t know if this is possible but won’t hurt to do it anyways. I have a very thin sand bed, less than an inch.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

You can do it! With this process, I have been able to enjoy my tank. “Leaving it alone” really comes in to play with hypo.

January 9 2022

Sg 1.009
No ammonia
Skimmer is skimming very well.

today I am going to move around some sand, to eliminate potential spots underneath the sand that are holding higher SG. I don’t know if this is possible but won’t hurt to do it anyways. I have a very thin sand bed, less than an inch.

Gently siphoning the surface of the sand after stirring it is also a good way to remove ich tomonts that may be lurking there. They are lighter than the sand, so if you are careful, you can remove them as you take water out of the tank.

Jay

 

[Max93]

01/15/2022

SG 1.009
Ammonia 0

I did some slight aquascaping by adding an arch that I made. Looks great really, I put this in to help provide more caves for the fish and more coral space.

I’m having a bacterial bloom, water is a little cloudy. I feel that it has to do with my carbon, I need to replace it as I’ve had the same carbon in there for 2 months.

no signs of ich on the fish. I did see the hippo tang scratch three days ago, just one time versus his usual 2 to 3 constant scratches. We’re getting closer to day 30 since entering hypo.

sitting back and doing this treatment has helped me appreciate my tank more. I’m working on setting up a 25g custom made frag tank in the basement that will replicate the display. Here I will house my acropora and whatever new inverts for 76 days. No. More. Ich.

 

[Max93]

1/16

SG 1.009
Ammonia 0

January 25 will be day 30.
Cloudy water has gone down, I added microbacter 7, seems to have helped. I have not replaced my bag of carbon.

plan for raising salinity:

I am in zero rush to bring this tank back to reef levels as my frags are in fallow for 76 days.

I am going to make a “brine” for top off water, with very high SG for the reservoir. Reserve tank holds about 23 gallons, which will take a while to bring up the SG. Now, I will also do water changes with water that is at 1.026 SG as well, but without a rush. I imagine this will take me about 2 weeks to get back to normal levels.

I am going to make a custom frag tank (why are stands so expensive?) because I can buy two cheap stands from petco and have 1 tank on top of two stands to reduce cost. Stand will cost me $100 total and the frag tank about $300.

Once established, I can begin adding corals to the quarantine tank/frag tank along with inverts and let them hang out in there for 76 days.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

1/16

SG 1.009
Ammonia 0

January 25 will be day 30.
Cloudy water has gone down, I added microbacter 7, seems to have helped. I have not replaced my bag of carbon.

plan for raising salinity:

I am in zero rush to bring this tank back to reef levels as my frags are in fallow for 76 days.

I am going to make a “brine” for top off water, with very high SG for the reservoir. Reserve tank holds about 23 gallons, which will take a while to bring up the SG. Now, I will also do water changes with water that is at 1.026 SG as well, but without a rush. I imagine this will take me about 2 weeks to get back to normal levels.

I am going to make a custom frag tank (why are stands so expensive?) because I can buy two cheap stands from petco and have 1 tank on top of two stands to reduce cost. Stand will cost me $100 total and the frag tank about $300.

Once established, I can begin adding corals to the quarantine tank/frag tank along with inverts and let them hang out in there for 76 days.

Don't make a brine solution stronger than about 70 ppt or around 1.050 SG. At some point, you'll see precipitation occur, and those materials may not go back into solution properly when that material is added to the tank. The reason for this is that the different salts in sea mixes have different rates of solubility.

Jay

 

[Max93]

1/22

woop woop!! We are almost at January 25th (day 30 since seeing no spots and entering hypo).
Jay - I am thinking of going to end of January, 5 extra days won’t hurt anything, right?

SG 1.009
Ammonia 0

all fish are alive, zero signs of ich.

 

[Max93]

Day 31!

We made it.

I hope this detailed thread helps others out there, ich is nasty.

I almost quit the hobby because of this. I did research, asked questions, and received very detailed and great support. Thank you Jay and everyone that chimed in. Thank you Jay for walking me through this step by step and being very responsive in all this. My fish and I thank you, this was not easy.

Fish lost: 2
I lost my purple fire fish (swam directly into the pump blades, wasn’t sucked in).

I think we lost the carpenter flashers wrasse not sure if to ich, pump blades, or if he is in the overflow somewhere. We lost him AFTER entering hypo and I never found a body. Although; I did have an ammonia spike of .25 after the mysterious disappearance during hypo. He did have quite the amount of ich dots, and was probably a really young wrasse. Every fish is different, but maybe this one just couldn’t fight it and disappeared from one day to the next.

All other fish survived and regained weight. My convict tang looks amazing. Hippo tang looks better than ever and I have not seen it scratch for over two weeks. Kole tang regained weight although not all of it. But I also did reduce my feedings for this to help prevent ammonia spikes. Foxface had very cloudy eyes, and I always thought this was Normal. I can now see both his eyes clear as day!

steps and background:

220g mixed reef

Removed all corals/inverts to quarantine tank. They will remain here for another 45 days.

Dropped the specific gravity in display tank from 1.026 to 1.009 over four days. Most aggressively the last day, as the hippo tang didn’t look so good. He/She was LOSING IT with the scratching.

added brightwell microbacter7 every few days or whenever I remembered. At least 3x a week 1-2 capfuls.

I tested ammonia and SG almost every day.

ammonia only showed up once as stated above, .25. I helped control this by using Amguard. In addition, I ran my skimmer at all times. I cranked up the water volume in the skimmer so I could get a wet skimmate.
I changed my filter socks every 3 days as they would clog quickly.

I did no water changes, but I did stir the sandbed once. Followed by an immediate filter sock change.

I did some reaquascaping and added a nice arch I made out of shelf rock. I’ll post a picture below. May add another just not sure yet.

I fed nori twice a day on a clip or two clips. Just depended really on how hungry the fish looked. I also wanted to make sure they had as much food as possible.

I fed frozen twice a day.

Algae grows on my glass like normal, I would have to use the magnet 2-3x a week. Skimmer cup clean 1x a week. it would get full.
On day 35, I’ll start bringing salinity back to 1.026. I’m in no rush as the quarantine tank with coral and inverts is completely infected with ich. I’m actually in the works of setting up a 20g frag tank that I’m going to treat like a second display. This is the way.

 

[Max93]

Don’t mind the blown over sand, I’m adding more sand in a few days. I bought a heavier grain sand to place there as those bare spots have been a battle for a year now.

 

[mehaffydr]

hey how abut an update hows everything going? Have you been able to raise the salinity back up?

 

[Max93]

hey how abut an update hows everything going? Have you been able to raise the salinity back up?

Definitely! I was wanting to update earlier today and completely forgot!

I have been filling my reservoir with saltwater at 1.026 SG for the last two weeks. The SG is now 1.011.

I haven’t done any water changes.
I have not seen ich at all and all fish are good

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Definitely! I was wanting to update earlier today and completely forgot!

I have been filling my reservoir with saltwater at 1.026 SG for the last two weeks. The SG is now 1.011.

I haven’t done any water changes.
I have not seen ich at all and all fish are good

As you likely know, that is a much slower rise in salinity than you need to do, but it probably won't hurt. Besides, you need to leave your DT fallow else the fish will just get ich again, so you have lots of time....

Jay

 

[angelsandtangs]

As you likely know, that is a much slower rise in salinity than you need to do, but it probably won't hurt. Besides, you need to leave your DT fallow else the fish will just get ich again, so you have lots of time....

Jay

Didn’t he hypo his DT or did I read it wrong ?

 

[Max93]

Didn’t he hypo his DT or did I read it wrong ?

Didn’t he hypo his DT or did I read it wrong ?

yes! He means leaving my quarantine fallow that’s currently housing all my corals.
I did hypo my DT. The quarantine tank is running fallow with a bunch of coral and inverts.

 

[Max93]

As you likely know, that is a much slower rise in salinity than you need to do, but it probably won't hurt. Besides, you need to leave your DT fallow else the fish will just get ich again, so you have lots of time....

Jay

Definitely super slow. Since I have to wait another 68 days (I added more coral and inverts to my quarantine tank so I restarted the 76 days there) I have plenty of time to take it slow.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Definitely super slow. Since I have to wait another 68 days (I added more coral and inverts to my quarantine tank so I restarted the 76 days there) I have plenty of time to take it slow.

Now, there is a risk to the fish during extended hypo. I prefer not to let fish stay below 1.013 longer than 45 days. Once you get above around 1.015, any long term effects of the hypo will go away. Fish can be maintained indefinitely at around 10.18

Jay

 

[Max93]

Now, there is a risk to the fish during extended hypo. I prefer not to let fish stay below 1.013 longer than 45 days. Once you get above around 1.015, any long term effects of the hypo will go away. Fish can be maintained indefinitely at around 10.18

Jay

Got it. I’m actually going to do a good 30gallon change today to be safe.