hyposalinity in display tank vs. QT tank

[hook]

would it be bad to lower the salinity in my 125 gallon display tank? I have ich. It killed my dog face puffer, and 3 damsels. Used copper like the lfs suggested (didnt have internet access at home to look on here

) The lfs said they'll reimburse me because I am sure the black dogface brought it... wasnt more than a couple days after i bought it that he started showing signs... pH is 8.5 now, salinity is 1.020, ammonia and nitrites are 0. In the future i'll be buying a QT tank prior to buying fish. But for now, would it hurt my tank to lower salinity? I have cc for substrate, and 70 lbs of lr, and wet/dry filter. Comments? Suggestions? I really hope i dont lose my trigger, he's got such a cool personality. And the blue devil damsel i have looks even more beautiful then when i first bought him, lol. Those are the only two fish i have alive now.

 

[sepulatian]

Originally Posted by Hook
would it be bad to lower the salinity in my 125 gallon display tank? I have ich. It killed my dog face puffer, and 3 damsels. Used copper like the lfs suggested (didnt have internet access at home to look on here

) The lfs said they'll reimburse me because I am sure the black dogface brought it... wasnt more than a couple days after i bought it that he started showing signs... pH is 8.5 now, salinity is 1.020, ammonia and nitrites are 0. In the future i'll be buying a QT tank prior to buying fish. But for now, would it hurt my tank to lower salinity? I have cc for substrate, and 70 lbs of lr, and wet/dry filter. Comments? Suggestions? I really hope i dont lose my trigger, he's got such a cool personality. And the blue devil damsel i have looks even more beautiful then when i first bought him, lol. Those are the only two fish i have alive now.
Your LFS recomended copper? Is your LR still Live? You can't do hypo with any live rock or inverts in your tank. These need to be removed. If the ich was in your display, you need to remove all of your inverts including rock to a temporary tank. After they are all removed bring the salinity of your tank down to 1.009 in the course of 48 hrs. After there are no signs of ich left, count 3 weeks to be sure ich is gone. If you have nowhere to move your rock and inverts to, you will need a reef safe treatment. There is alot of controversy on this site as to how well they work. Stop parasite is a good one, but does not work for everyone. Hypo is the best way to go. You will need a refractometer to be certain of correct readings. Another option, being you only have two fish left is to move them to another tank and let your display run without fish for 6 weeks. Good luck with everything!

 

[hook]

how would i know the live rock is still alive? they said if it died off that after the copper was gone it'd come back to life? lol.... yeah i took out the snails and such..... if i took water from my tank and put it in a qt tank without any substrate would that be ok or would it still have to cycle?

 

[mbrennan]

My vote is for hyposalinity ... if you are prepared for it. Must have: Refractometer, cycled quarantine/hospital tank. Never was able to reduce or eliminate the side effects of copper treatments. Last time I tried hyposalinity in my main tank ... what a pain. Thought it would be better to remove my inverts to a quarantine tank and lower the salinity of the display tank. Thought corraling the inverts would be easier ... was I wrong! Not only that, to lower salinity on 130+ gallons from 1.026 to 1.009 takes about 100 gallons of RO/DI water. With (4) 7 gallon jugs that is 6+ trips to the local RO/DI dispensing machine. Really wish I had done it the other way round.

 

[hook]

Originally Posted by mbrennan
My vote is for hyposalinity ... if you are prepared for it. Must have: Refractometer, cycled quarantine/hospital tank. Never was able to reduce or eliminate the side effects of copper treatments. Last time I tried hyposalinity in my main tank ... what a pain. Thought it would be better to remove my inverts to a quarantine tank and lower the salinity of the display tank. Thought corraling the inverts would be easier ... was I wrong! Not only that, to lower salinity on 130+ gallons from 1.026 to 1.009 takes about 100 gallons of RO/DI water. With (4) 7 gallon jugs that is 6+ trips to the local RO/DI dispensing machine. Really wish I had done it the other way round.
that sounds like it sucked!

 

[aw2x3]

You DO NOT need to remove any of your live rock, to preform hypo.
Some of the life on the rocks might die, but it's very, very minute and not a cause for concern.
I've ran hypo in display tanks on many occasions, including in my own 200gal. tank, that contained over 300lb. of live rock and never had a problem.
As others have said tho...you will need to remove any inverts in the tank.

 

[mbrennan]

On top of hauling water back and forth the hyposalinity killed every invert in my rock and sand. In addition, because I had no invert cleanup crew after 4 weeks my tank looked like crap. Many of the inverts I put in quarantine didn't make it beacause there wasn't enough detrius and microrganisims for them to eat ... never more! I keep quarantine/hospital going 24/7 and have it rigged for rapid expansion in case I have to remove all the fish from the DT to QT. Doing hypo on 25 is a lot easier than 130 or larger.

 

[torno]

You do have a valid point, mbrennan. Doing hypo on a display tank that big would be a major pain in the butt. I just finished a 6 week hypo period in my display tank, but because it was only 55 gallons, it wasn't that much work and I didn't have to move my lionfish and boxfish to a small hospital tank.

 

[sepulatian]

hook, your best bet is to remove your two remaining fish and let the tank run fishless or "fallow" for 6 weeks. Ich doesn't live on inverts or rock, by that time all ich will have died.

 

[lion_crazz]

I am with Sepulation on this one. Her suggestion sounds like your best bet. You could set up a cheat quarantine tank to keep the damsel and trigger in and then run your display fallow.