Marine Ich in several fish

[JimmyM]

Well, I've got my first outbreak. All three tangs (yellow, purple and bristletooth) have it and it looks like my lionfish has it, too. I am leaning towards hyposalinity to cure it, and I'm wondering if I shouldn't go ahead and do it in the display tank (it's FOWLR, no inverts) since so many fish have it and I only have one 10 gallon and one 29 gallon tank I can use as hospital tanks. I see that hyposalinity can kill the stuff on live rock and sand (does it kill the biological filter to where it has to completely recycle?), but with so many sick fish, it seems impractical to go and buy several hospital tanks. I mean I'll do it if I have to, but it means spending about $300 that I don't have. So what would you do if you were me? Will adding Prime to their water stave off the ill effects of recycling and allow a new cycle to restart?

Also, I saw a website advertising a product called Ich Be Gone. Lee, is this the stuff you refer to in your MI FAQ that kills the host fish and builds up immunity in the rest? Considering 4 fish have it, that would really suck to lose all of them.

[JimmyM]

Never mind. After catching the Picasso trigger and lunar wrasse flashing (making 6 fish likely infected), I decided to go ahead and hyposalinize the entire tank. I'm going slow with it, having just replaced about 17 gallons out of my 92 with fresh water. After reading 3 or 4 other websites about hyposalinization, it looks like it's OK to do it in the main tank since I have no inverts, nor enough QT tanks to pull it off. So far the fish look fine other than their ich. I would have deleted my first post but I don't know how to do it on here.

So hopefully this will end up working after a couple months. Sure seems to have a good success rate according to what I've read. Man, thank God I didn't try to keep a tank before the internet...I would have had no clue what to do! It's a drag, though...I've been keeping freshwater fish for years and haven't had a disease outbreak in about 4 years, and now I get ich in the marine tank I've had up just a few months. Well, I learned a good lesson...QUARANTINE!

[leebca]

I believe you are making a significant error caused by an oversight.

Your live rock is teaming with invertebrates. All those pods and worms will die. This will usually send the tank into a potentially catastrophic nitrogen cycle and if the fish manage to survive the poisoning and the disease, it will be a miracle.

Do you have a substrate in your tank? Any lifeforms in there will also die and add to the decomposition and decay.

After treating live rock with a hyposalinity treatment, you will be turning that rock into base rock. It will be dead. It will be worthless as live rock and if you want to have a FOWLR tank, you'll have to buy new LR after the treatment is over and the salinity is returned to normal. One advantage is that keeping a FO aquarium doesn't require LR so the choice to use LR in the future will be an option.

[JimmyM]

Ya, I figured you would say that. Meanwhile, I found other websites and the owners of two fish stores I go to and trust that said hyposalinity treatment won't harm your live rock. No offense but I'm going with the majority on this one. I have too many sick fish and not enough money to buy hospital tanks for every single one.

[rjs5134]

BIG mistake Jimmy, and I'm sure the majority vote will go in the opposite direction real soon. I'd be shocked if nearly every regular here didn't post exactly what Lee said. If your going to punish your already sick fish by making them go through a complete nitrogen cycle, you might as well euthanize them "humanely" and start over. It will probably be cheaper in the long run. I predict several fish, if not all, won't survive the disease, the elevated nitrogen levels and the hypo conditions at the same time; nor will anything on the live rock and you will be replacing the live rock and most or all of the fish anyway. I've been down that road.

Good luck.

[JimmyM]

Here's an update...after 5 days of hyposalinity, the ich is finally starting to subside, though I did lose the bristletooth tang (he had a sore on him long before the ich that ruptured), and I returned the lionfish to the LFS that sold him to me, and he's being treated with copper there. I'm not going to take him back if he makes it, though. He is too freaked out by the other fish, and they're too freaked out by him. The other fish are finally starting to clear up, and the flashing has pretty well stopped as far as I can tell. All the fish are eating well, too.

I just ran tests, and here are the results after 5 days:

Ammonia---0 ppm
Nitrite---0 ppm
Nitrate---5 ppm
pH---8.0 (I am slowly adding buffer to get it up some more)

So the only conclusion I can draw is that the biological filter is still in place, and will more than likely remain if it hasn't gotten killed off after 5 days. I could be wrong but I will continue testing daily just to make sure. So even though I lost one fish, it's not because of poor water conditions. Thank you all for your concern, but it looks like it's working out. It's not an ideal situation, I know, but it's all I can do without going broke.

[bguile]

Just a forward thinking question...what will you do if the ammonia does begin to rise which it will if what you have is truly LIVE rock?
I don't recall you mentioning how much rock you do have. If you only have a few pounds depending on how much life is in them, a 92G may be able to handle it. If you have 75% of your tank with rock, then disaster is bound to happen.
Depending on how much rock you have, why not move the rock to another tank or a $35 Rubbermaid BRUTE until your hypo treatment is complete...that is if you haven't gone below 1.019 in your display.

[Ninong]

I found other websites and the owners of two fish stores I go to and trust that said hyposalinity treatment won't harm your live rock. No offense but I'm going with the majority on this one.

Hyposalinity doesn't harm the live rock. It doesn't even harm the beneficial bacteria. That's the end of the good news.

It most certainly will kill off any INVERTEBRATES living in your live rock or your sand bed, assuming you have a sand bed. I suppose it's possible that the live rock in your FOWLR tank really doesn't have anything other than bacteria anyway, in which case there won't be anything to die off. Most live rock would contain a wide diversity of microcrustaceans and polychaetes. It's possible that these have either died off in the past or been eaten by your fish... I suppose. And it's possible that your sand bed, if you have one, is devoid of infauna. I have seen many LFS tanks where the sand bed is devoid of life. Many of these places vacuum their sandbeds on a regular basis to remove detritus.

So maybe the two fish stores you trust have tanks like that? With live rock that has no life and sterile sand beds?

So the only conclusion I can draw is that the biological filter is still in place, and will more than likely remain if it hasn't gotten killed off after 5 days. I could be wrong but I will continue testing daily just to make sure. So even though I lost one fish, it's not because of poor water conditions.

There was no risk to your biological filter. The recommendation against using hyposalinity in a tank with live rock and a sand bed is based on concern for the invertebrates that inhabit the live rock and the sand bed in most tanks. I guess your tank didn't have any of those invertebrates to begin with, in which case you still have what you had before, live rock with no life other than bacteria.



P.S. -- Remember to monitor your specific gravity and pH daily. You will need to maintain the specific gravity at 1.009 for 4-6 weeks or at least four weeks after the last sighting of any parasites. Check out this review of the hyposalinity procedure. Note that you should be very careful when you get ready to return to normal salinity that you raise it very gradually over a period of 3-7 days. You don't want to rush it.

[JimmyM]

I've got about 70 lbs of live rock in there, which isn't a whole lot considering most tanks I see have more rock than water, but we don't like rocks all that much. And really, these live rocks weren't all that live to begin with and have only developed a little bit of life. I did see a couple dead worms when I went to dig out the dead bristletooth, but not that much. As for the sand, it wasn't live at all because I thought it was useless to spend extra money on live sand. I'm sure it became somewhat live, but it wasn't like seriously live sand.

[Ninong]

Your sand is alive in the sense that it contains beneficial bacteria. The same goes for your live rock. You probably had no infauna in your sand bed and very little in your live rock. Follow that link to Andrew Trevor-Jones' tips on running hyposalinity and you will see that he advises against doing this in the main tank for the same reasons leebca stated but he also goes on to say that if your live rock and sand bed have no invertebrates at all, then it would be safe to do it in the main tank. It's just that most people actually do have amphipods, copepods and various polychaete worms in their live rock even if they don't realize it.

I just didn't want other newbies to read this thread and think that there is no risk to running hyposalinity in any tank with live rock and a sand bed. It is certainly something to be avoided in most circumstances but possible if your live rock and sand bed really and truly do not contain any infauna other than bacteria.

Good luck!

[leebca]

Jimmy,

It seems we're not on common ground when we speak about 'live.' For instance, the 'live' sand sold in stores means live in the sense that the substrate minimally has bacteria already on the sand/substrate. It doesn't say anything about pods or other life forms. And I agree with you. That sort of substrate is not worth the money.

We have a disconnect when we write about the rock, too.

If the rock you have just has bacteria on it, then it is just like any rock, like base rock. (See: What is Live Rock, Anyway?). A system using that 'base' kind of rock that has not only bacteria and maybe some coralline algae on it, but additional bacteria and worms, etc. in tunnels, holes, and channels of the rock, is what I and most people refer to as 'live rock.' This rock does more than handle ammonia, it also handles nitrates (niTRATEs, not nitrites). This is the rock we call 'live.' It has more than bacteria on and in it. It has at least these minimum invertebrates -- some that can't be easily seen, others, like the pods, can be seen.

You didn't perform a hyposalinity on rock with invertebrates, or what we call live rock. My reply post to yours assumed you were properly describing the rock you have.

Most LFSs in my area have at least two systems running for marine life displays -- one devoted to fish and the other system devoted to everything else. One big reason for the separation is that they add copper to the fish system. This kills the non-fish marine life (invertebrates). So in the fish system, there aren't any worms, pods, or micro fauna. Doing a hyposalinity in that kind of system would be fine -- there is no invertebrate lifeforms to threaten or kill.

On a second and 'other' topic --

...but it means spending about $300 that I don't have.

It's unfortunate you don't have that kind of money, but after the loss and effort you've had to go through (and the considerable money you've already invested), it may turn out financially (if you're unwilling to consider the ethics) to be of greater benefit to start and use a quarantine procedure.

Good luck!

[JimmyM]

I don't think I was too inaccurate with the live rock description. There were a few small pods and worms on it. Just not very many. I think a better term would be "not very live rock." Like I said, I am a relative beginner with salt fish.

So as an update to this story, the tangs are even more clear today, and the trigger and wrasse haven't been flashing. And I went to the LFS where my lionfish is staying, and the owner was slammed and couldn't talk in detail but she said my lionfish is fine now and eating just like he was at the store. I guess he was freaked out by the wrasse and triggerfish, and probably didn't get ich.

I also found a price on him. She was slammed so I didn't get to talk to her but I hope she doesn't think I gave back a $50 fish to her without me getting a refund or at least a store credit.

As the salt level got lower, the protein skimmer started running clearer, and just produced black water. I turned it off. Should I still be running it, or is it a waste of electricity right now?

Hey, can I give you guys some advice? With beginners, I think you want to tone down the intensity. I got an ich outbreak because I put a fish in that didn't really belong and I freaked out my fish. Typical beginner mistake. I then had to make a quick decision about what to do based not on experience but a handful of articles on the net and the advice of a couple LFS owners. It was a really stressful thing for me as well as the fish. But though I lost one fish, it looks like everyone else is going to be OK. All the water tests are fine and the SG is at 1.011.

You guys don't do us beginners any favors in situations like this by telling us we're going to kill every fish in our tank and we'd be better off euthanizing them all. When I read that, I didn't know whether to s*** or go blind, and I seriously considered giving up saltwater fish altogether and filling their tank with cichlids. Once I got over the panic you all caused me, I remembered what a guy on a freshwater board once told me...take what your LFS says and what the hardcore fish forum people say, and split the difference. But you all scare off people from the hobby when you tell them their entire tank is going to die. It's just very unnecessary.

And Lee, point taken about the QT and my spare 29 will be my QT from now on, but in all seriousness, you shouldn't be questioning the ethics of someone you don't know. I didn't just jam a bunch of fish in a tank with no regard for anything. I did a good amount of research and asked for a lot of advice. Yeah, I feel they're just fish, but I want them to be happy and healthy and have spent a fortune to try to make them happy and healthy. Maybe you weren't really trying to question my ethics but it was an unfortunate choice of words at least.

[leebca]

Skimming is usually an option, but not recommended because of its erratic behavior dung hyposalinity. Your call.

Hope you get credit for the fish! Worse things have been 'misunderstood' between LFS and customers.

No, I didn't/wasn't questioning your ethics, just noticed in your post that only money was mentioned, so that is what I focused on.

With regards to communications and posting, remember that anyone can post in a forum. All you need to do is look closely at that person's qualifications. I disagree with the 'split the difference' concept because experience, education, knowledge, and integrity doesn't match the business perspectives. To the industry, a fish is a commodity, not a living thing. They are expendable. A retail $50. fish likely cost the wholesaler $2. and the LFS $10. Having been on both sides of that line, I can safely say that splitting the difference is not the way to go. A disappointingly large majority of LFSs don't know how to properly care for saltwater fishes in greater detail then, 'make sure the tank has cycled.'

So when you see posts that upset you or that you react to in a negative manner, please ask, 'Who is posting this?' and 'What experience, education, motivation, and knowledge they have?' then decided how much to weigh their comments.

The written word is hard to decipher regarding 'tone' and 'attitude.' This medium is not the easiest to deal in. For instance it is easy for someone to take your post:

Ya, I figured you would say that. Meanwhile, I found other websites and the owners of two fish stores I go to and trust that said hyposalinity treatment won't harm your live rock. No offense but I'm going with the majority on this one. I have too many sick fish and not enough money to buy hospital tanks for every single one.

to be synonymous with 'you don't know what you're talking about and all I care about is money' in an insulting sort of way. In my experience when someone begins a sentence, "No offense, but. . ." what usually follows in an offense. Others see this and often 'pick up the gauntlet.' Like I said, it's the medium. ;)

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