Pterois miles Lionfish Illness

hawkie · Sep 30, 2021

So I’m a bit stumped at the moment. I have several predators in my tank and this weekend I was sent to the ER. When I got home about 48 hours later my tank was hit with Ich. The only one who seems to be affected was my lionfish. I am not a fan of chemicals and am aware of the harm that can be caused with copper so I decided to go a more natural route. I am currently doing a hyposalinity and have done a freshwater dip on him as well. I brought my temps up to 89.7 the first day and dropping it 1 degree every day after. I’m down to 85.5 and going to keep it here for the next 3 days but then will keep going to i go back to my normal temp of 77. and my salinity is 1.016 which is still high in my opinion for a hypo but is down from my normal 1.024. The good news is he seems to look much better than a few days ago and is more active. However he doesn’t seem interested in food which can be due to a variety of reason such as the stress or hopefully not my could be from internal parasites but the big thing I noticed this morning is one of his eyes has become quite cloudy. All my parameters meet my standard and have taken it to my shop for a second test to double check. I haven’t moved him to a quarantine tank because I new the ich would still live within my tank and could still infect the rest of the tank and would rather starve it’s source out. I tried taking pictures but with my bowtank it doesn’t look like anything is wrong with him. Any ideas weather it be a secondary parasite or maybe just the start to a shedding cycle?

ammonia 0
NO2 0
NO3 0.17
PH 8.1

Jay Hemdal · Sep 30, 2021

hawkie said:
So I’m a bit stumped at the moment. I have several predators in my tank and this weekend I was sent to the ER. When I got home about 48 hours later my tank was hit with Ich. The only one who seems to be affected was my lionfish. I am not a fan of chemicals and am aware of the harm that can be caused with copper so I decided to go a more natural route. I am currently doing a hyposalinity and have done a freshwater dip on him as well. I brought my temps up to 89.7 the first day and dropping it 1 degree every day after. I’m down to 85.5 and going to keep it here for the next 3 days but then will keep going to i go back to my normal temp of 77. and my salinity is 1.016 which is still high in my opinion for a hypo but is down from my normal 1.024. The good news is he seems to look much better than a few days ago and is more active. However he doesn’t seem interested in food which can be due to a variety of reason such as the stress or hopefully not my could be from internal parasites but the big thing I noticed this morning is one of his eyes has become quite cloudy. All my parameters meet my standard and have taken it to my shop for a second test to double check. I haven’t moved him to a quarantine tank because I new the ich would still live within my tank and could still infect the rest of the tank and would rather starve it’s source out. I tried taking pictures but with my bowtank it doesn’t look like anything is wrong with him. Any ideas weather it be a secondary parasite or maybe just the start to a shedding cycle?

ammonia 0
NO2 0
NO3 0.17
PH 8.1

Just a couple of quick observations, I’m heading to a meeting; never raise the temp for marine ich, 86 f is its best temperature, you’ll just make it multiply faster. This is old info that only applies to FW ich. The proper hyposalinity specific gravity for marine ich is 1.009 to 1.010, measured with a very accurate device, as many fish cannot tolerate 1.008 and 1.011 can allow some tomonts to survive.
Jay