Thinking about Hyposalinity in my new 400 Gallon display

[vetteguy53081]

Hippo

Dots on hippo appear large to be ich and may be lymphocystis which is viral

 

[Eric R.]

In a 400g display I doubt it would be successful.
Polylab has an ich medicine that is basically hydrogen peroxide salts.
That does not work even at extremely high doses and for extended periods of time

If it depends on tank size, what's the maximum tank size where you think H2O2 would be successful?

Not a fan of peroxide treatment. They take longer IF they work
I prefer to medicate followed by hypo

There's evidence to show that peroxide treatments do work, at least for the circumstances where it has been documented to be successful. Are there situations where you feel that hypo definitely has the edge over peroxide, and why? Or if you think hypo is better in all situations, why? Thanks!

 

[Ashish Patel]

As for the op. Now is absolutely the best time to go hyposalinity.
Move the old liverock to a seperate container with airstones and ghost feed a little food each week to help support any life on and in the rock.
I'd keep it seperate for at least 90 days.
Drop the salinity in the display, but have extra hyposalinity water on hand for water changes in case you have some die off of pods ect that foul the water.
Since you are going hypo, I'd go for as close to 76 days, and add as many of your planned fish during the hypo, then over a month slowly increase your salinity back to your chosen level.

Given my situation, would you also do hyposalinity if this was your system?

Below are my reasons for doing Hypo:

- Dont have to catch the fish.
- Dont have to put them in a small tank or tub (which i don't have)
- They will pollute the water in QT in few days.
- They may die from stress or poor water quality in separate QT
- They will certainly fight with each other.
- dont have to setup a large holding tub while i wait for fallow period.
- Dont have to wait 76 days fallow in the display as i would if i did the outside QT.
- Dont have to expose them to copper again
- Dont have anything living on my dry rock or LR (besides hair algae) Personally i think whatever died already died and is yet to come back until i seed it anyways.
-Give me the time to establish sump LR in separate container with sponges.
- Give me time to QT my Inverts, which I was actually not planning on QT in the first place.

- I have a UV plumbed into my display tank.
- I can easily drain the tank water directly to sewer and maintain water quality.
-

 

[Ashish Patel]

Dots on hippo appear large to be ich and may be lymphocystis which is viral

Whats the best way to confirm if its ich?

 

[Ashish Patel]

I first noticed the spots on friday on achilles, Today it seems there are less spots on him so that a good sign for me that it is infact ich. Last few days I did notice erratic swimming from some of the fish which tells me this is the parasite trying to find its host (theront phase). I think the tank has millions of parasites swimming in the water colum . Fish are staying active and eating and maybe putting their immune system to the test. I think the UV in the display is helping but whatever is on the fish is doing its thing and I just have to wait for it to fall off. I believe hypo will work on the Promont and Tomont phase.

Correct me if i am wrong

 

[vetteguy53081]

Whats the best way to confirm if its ich?

You will see salt like grains which you can count, rapid breathing, loss of diet, scratching itself on solid objects

 

[Ashish Patel]

Here is a link that might help:

Hyposalinity

Hyposalinity Jay Hemdal 2024 This term refers to a long-term bath treatment for marine fishes in which the salt content of the water is lowered and held below the point that certain parasites can survive. The salt level reached, and the time of the treatment are the two variables...

www.reef2reef.com

A couple of comments:

Are you positive it is ich? With all those tangs it likely is....
As said, the nitrifiers won't have any real difficulty adapting to lower salinity.
Hypo will also control Neobenedenia flukes.
What is the history of the one YT with HLLE and the other one not having it?


Jay

Excellent write up Jay. I read it twice and realized you mention refractometer won't be accurate enough. Do you recommend I buy something inexpensive on Amazon like the $50 small hand held ones? Ideally I would get the Milwaukee one but expensive and figure I can cross check with refractometer

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Excellent write up Jay. I read it twice and realized you mention refractometer won't be accurate enough. Do you recommend I buy something inexpensive on Amazon like the $50 small hand held ones? Ideally I would get the Milwaukee one but expensive and figure I can cross check with refractometer

Getting a good salinity reading is tough. I use a laboratory grade hydrometer to standardize other devices. My coral aquarist swears by his refract, I just don't think they are precise enough. If you can clearly see the difference between 1.009 and 1.010 on yours, then that will work.

Jay

 

[Ashish Patel]

Getting a good salinity reading is tough. I use a laboratory grade hydrometer to standardize other devices. My coral aquarist swears by his refract, I just don't think they are precise enough. If you can clearly see the difference between 1.009 and 1.010 on yours, then that will work.

Jay

I just checked my refractometer. I think I can tell the difference between the 2 but id feel more confident with 2 devices. My current salinity is 1.024

 

[Ashish Patel]

76 day clock starts today on this liverock

 

[Ashish Patel]

Made first adjustment from sump. About 50gallons. Down to 1.021. Next adjustment going straight to sewer.

Here's my setup. Notice I forgot about the siphon. Nice to have a basement sump

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

76 day clock starts today on this liverock

I misunderstood - running the live rock through hypo is no worse for it than holding it in a bucket for 76 days. The beneficial bacteria will survive hypo just fine and you’ll lose many of the cryptic inverts on the rock either in the bucket or in hypo.
Jay

 

[Ashish Patel]

I misunderstood - running the live rock through hypo is no worse for it than holding it in a bucket for 76 days. The beneficial bacteria will survive hypo just fine and you’ll lose many of the cryptic inverts on the rock either in the bucket or in hypo.
Jay

Hmm,, I am still at 1.022 - so wouldn't be difficult to put it back in sump.
However, I know things wilI die in bucket (bc they already did for the 1+ year i held it) so just figured I may move everything to a 45 gallon tank and proper flow. maybe add some pods, sponges, more rock and coralline algae. This will be a SPS dominant so i want it growing sps withing 6 months, not 1-2 years like my last tank.

 

[Shooter6]

Thanks, Today i am going to remove the LR and add to small rimless tank that i have in the garage, Once the 5 turbo and 1 urchin arrive, i will just add them to this tank and let it run for 80+ days with the rock. I dont have any pods, fan worms, sponges, - all died off when I bought the rock 15 months ago and nutrients went through the roof first few months from the die off. I may seed this LR with some sponge I currently have in QT that way after the 80+ days I will have good LR to put back in the system, I was in planning stage to setup a coral QT so maybe just use this setup for fish less coral QT. only issue is i have to restart the clock everytime i put corals in so may just scratch that thought until more time passes.

The coral qt as well as a fish qt is the only way to go on big systems.
I myself have a 400g display 300g sump 2 frag tanks and a 320gal that's not lit yet on one system. 2 40g and a 90g fish qt and a 40g coral qt as well.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I misunderstood - running the live rock through hypo is no worse for it than holding it in a bucket for 76 days. The beneficial bacteria will survive hypo just fine and you’ll lose many of the cryptic inverts on the rock either in the bucket or in hypo.
Jay

Thinking to set this tank up for the Rock

Just need to plug the 2 holes

 

[Ashish Patel]

I did another adjustment last night. Not doing to much water volume bc all my heaters are in use so using cold water. I did about 45 gallons and got salinity 1.020.

 

[DeniseAndy]

I would have done the treatment in the display also. Getting all those guys into nay kind of qt would be a nightmare. Since it was basically a Fish Only (some live rock and the few inverts you can move) it is a smart move to me.

I never use copper/coppersafe, so no help there. If you could get chloroquine phosphate it is a good med. However, I believe it is no possible currently.

Good luck!

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I did another adjustment last night. Not doing to much water volume bc all my heaters are in use so using cold water. I did about 45 gallons and got salinity 1.020.

This is tricky - dropping salinity too slowly can let the disease get the upper hand and then hypo may fail.
How are the spots, are they increasing in number?
I understand you are limited by how much warm freshwater you can produce, but you could use warm tap water to speed up the process. I prefer to get to full hypo within 48 hours, 72 at the latest, with at least 3 proportional steps per 24 hours. So something like this:
Starting at 1.025;
First day-
1.021
1.019
1.016
Second day -
1.014
1.011
1.010
Third day -
1.009

Jay

 

[Ashish Patel]

Hi Jay, Spots are going down on the fish. I can only see spots on Hippo and Achilles. I just took a video.

I got the salinity down 1.024 to 1.020 in 12 hours. I think i will ramp it up today and heat up 65 gallons with one of the heater from the sump. I dont have a ATO on this tank so have to remove one from my other system and use that. I think I can the salinity down earliest tomorrow night or friday

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[Ashish Patel]

I think my increments are similar to your suggestion. However i maybe just have to do increase water volume. I can make enough water its just the heating up part. temperate dropped from 77 to 75 degrees with these adjustments. I probably will just put one of heaters from sump in the water bucket and heat it up some.