Hyposalinity or fallow

Bluerrpilot · Oct 27, 2020

7 fish died in 2 weeks with1 fish left, no corals or inverts. Since I cannot remove rock or catch fish, will hypo at 1.009 for 4-6 weeks kill off ich?

If the fish were to die, then I would just go fallow but at this time that is the last option

Marc2952 · Oct 27, 2020

Running hypo on the main tank will kill much more then just the ich. You will basically have to redo your tank again. I will just try to catch the fish and put in a QT. Go fallow for atleast 76 days.

Jay Hemdal · Oct 27, 2020

If you plan to have a fish-only display, why not sterilize the tank and start over using quarantined fish? I just had a problem with Mycobacterium in a seahorse exhibit, lying fallow wasn't going to work, so I sterilized the tank and reset it using a starter bacteria culture from a solid healthy tank and ammonium chloride. I got fish back into it in 4 weeks (its a public aquarium exhibit, so I needed to minimize downtime).

Jay

Bluerrpilot · Oct 27, 2020

The tank will not be fish only. Hypo will kill the beneficial bacteria ?

Jay Hemdal · Oct 27, 2020

No, the bacteria is impacted a little, but not too much. Hypo kills much of the rest of what is termed the microbiome: algae, worms, tiny crustaceans, etc. this matters very little in a fish only tank, but is more detrimental if the tank will later be converted to a reef. Sterilizing of course destroys the microbiome.

Jay