another ich question

[carsgirlsnfish]

i have a dog face puffer, pork puffer, blk and wht heniochus, and niger trigger in a 55 gal. i have had these fish for about 6 months and they have been very healthy and i have had no problems till now. all but the trigger have ich and it is looking very bad. they still eat like pigs, but they look horrible. unfortunately, this is the only tank i have. i do have about 20 lbs. live rock too. my question is would it be possible to take out my live rock and treat my tank with coppersafe? or is there something else i am not considering? i may be wrong, but i have heard it's not too good of an idea to do hypo with a tank this size. i am just saying that in my case it looks like the only hope i have is to use copper. if anyone could help i would really appreciate it, i feel so bad for my fish.

 

[carsgirlsnfish]

i started hypo this morning and right now my swing arm and hydrometer agree at 1.017. can i trust this? i am sure you know more than me, but is my tank really overstocked? it looks bare as a bone to me. none of my fish are over 4 in., although i know they would outgrow the tank eventually. before this happened, i had started thinking about keeping just the trigger and adding some perc clownfish. how many do you think i can keep in my 55?

 

[beth]

You should find new homes for the lareger fish eventually, and then keep smaller fish.
Is LR all you had in the tank. No inverts, crabs, starfish, etc?? As long as all you had is the LR, hyposalinity will be fine. However, you need to either get a refractometer, or go with a quality hydrometer to test specific gravity. Swing arms just will not do at all.