Trey, Terry B and Beth

[dr. jay]

Hi.... Well... In my new setup 92 gallon with 40 lbs LR, and live sand, 2 shrimp (1 cleaner, 1 blood and a lobster. Fish = 1 flame angel, 1 blue velvet damsel, 1 royal gramma, clown fish, blue hippo tang. As you may or may not remember, I recently finished a 3 week QT of the hippo, where the copper level was kept at 0.2. The hippo did well in the QT although he didnt really seem happy there (it is 30 gallons and he was scared of all humans)..... Anyway the point is he has been in the 92 gallon for two weeks and sure enough.... white spots. It looks more like pimples and I am not 100% sure it is ick as some of them arent white, but I think the cleaner shrimp (Which everybody should have) has been very active. Oh BTW I also have a UV filter with nice low flow too. Anyway.... I cant remove the hippo (I dont think I could catch him anyway) because I am isolating a Queen Angel and another P. Fridmani. So I would like to go the hyposalinity route. I am currently mixing in my basement and heating about 30 gallons of fresh water buffered to the right ph. I am considering fresh water dipping him (If I could catch him). I know he isnt a "good candidate" for Freshwater dipping. Questions are
1)Should I Fresh water dip him (other than the white spots he is acting fine.
2)exactly how much water should I exchange daily (I was thinking of doing 5-10 gallons per day. Is that too much? or too little?
3) Over how long should it take to get the SG down to 1.007 (Is 1.007 what I should shoot for?)
4) MAIN QUESTION.... IS IT safe for the live rock and inverts?
I ask you guys because you are always helpful.

 

[dr. jay]

Terry.... I wish you could have elaborated. I dont want to kill my shrimp with this, much less my live rock. Please guys.... elaborate on this point. I am down to 1.015 now and dont want to go any further if I am going to kill the inverts and live rock.

 

[denisec]

I'm way way new but I have a few guys with a light case of ick and I'm trying the soaking the food in garlic method and after a few days/week of this mine are not scratching anymore and seem to be getting better. I understand that it has to be done for a month to kill off the badies that have fallen off the fish into the bed.

 

[davidcanupp]

Hyposalinity can be very harmful to inverts. Yes, it can, and in most cases will, kill them. You may want to consider bringing your salinity back up and possibly leaving it at 1.019, this can prevent disease while still remaining in a fairly safe range for your inverts. I have heard good things about Garlic but i think that it is more of a preventive method than a cure. Parasites are a common problem in tanks containing live rock and live sand and also very difficult to get rid of. Many fish stores carry "reef safe" parasite meds, but i have personally never tried one and they can be relatively expensive. I think that a Formalin Dip would be a good thing to try (if you can catch him) but not if you are going to have to place him back in the same parasite infested tank. If you do decide to go the route of he formalin, do a search in this forum and make sure you understand the correct procedure. However, i must say that i think it would be a waste of time without a QT. If you are treating other fish for the same problems in a QT, you might consider putting them in the same tank. But that too can be risky. Past the advice above, It is hard to offer a solution without the option of a hospital tank. Good Luck, maybe someone else will have a better solution. Let us know how it is going. David

 

[jimi]

This was not posted for me but here goes. A salinity of 1.015 will kill your shrimp and some inverts so I would go back up for their sake. The problem is now you have ich in the main tank so taking out the hippo treating him and putting him back is useless. I do believe some fish can fight off ich but the hippo is not one of them. So as painful as this might be your only choice is to remove the rock and inverts to another tank and leave them without a fish host for atleast 30 days while treating all of your fish with hypo in your main tank for at least that long. Hypo will kill your inverts! When doing hypo salinity use a refractometer or a hydrometer tested against a refractometer to increase your chances of success.

 

[coralbeauty]

How bad is the white spot outbreak? I have a regal blue, as well. I have had him for several years and one week out of four he has some type of white spots. Normally, he has no more than 3 or 4 at a time. They also look like little pimples.
I was gone on vacation for last week and when I returned he had about 6 to 8 spots. I feed him garlic for three days in a row and they all disappeared. I will continue to feed him garlic about once a week for the next several weeks. Earlier in the year I had a temp spike and my flame angel broke out with a few white spots as well as the tang. I used garlic daily for a couple of weeks and it all disappeared.
Like you I have a reef and a UV sterilizer. I am unclear how and why the garlic works - is really a topical treatment - the garlic comes off of the food as soon as the food hits the water, or if the fish ingests the garlic and it some how fights off the "ick" like a medication.
Regardless, I believe it works and why not give it a try. The only down side I have found is that the oil in the water knocks out our skimmer for a couple of days.
Good luck,
Connie