Canreef Aquatics Bulletin Board - Copper in quarantine?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by asylumdown (Post 785399)

I think the other main problem with hypo salinity is that it's not always a magic bullet cure. Whether it will work for you depends as much on what strain of C. irritans you're dealing with than the method itself. Red Sea variants of C. irritans are endemic to highly salty water, with the hypothesis being that because of that, they're easily damaged by reduced salinity environments. The early studies from the 70s and 80s on ich control where the idea of hypo as a treatment came from appear to have been done using variants that were innately susceptible to lowered salinity, likely due to where in the world they came from. Since then there's been several other strains of the parasite identified. The more people study it, the more plastic an resilient the parasite seems to be. Since the 90s there's been several other 'strains' of C. irritans identified - so far no one has gone far enough to classify them as different species - but the newer variants are showing up in places and conditions that people didn't previously think were possible. There's a strain from Australia that happily completes it's entire life cycle in brackish estuaries, and appears to have a genetic adaptation to an extremely broad range of salinities.

Later studies on ich have shown that reducing salinity to 'hypo' conditions was not sufficient to eradicate the parasite, and there's been a conversation in the literature that the conflicting results from one study to the next were possibly due to the specific strain the authors of the various studies were working with.

The problem for hobbyists, is that you have no idea what variant of ich you're dealing with, and considering how fish from the red sea, Australia, the South Pacific, and basically anywhere else in the world we get fish from end up in the same tanks in LFS, there's a good chance any one hobbyist's system is infected with different strains from all over the world.

I like the idea of hypo because it's the easiest and least labour intensive, and if you're concerned with pH, making a concentrated baking soda solution and adding small amounts of it can bump it up really easily, but it's another one of those treatments that might work, or it might not, and you've got no way of knowing going in whether it will work for you. It works for enough people that it persists in the forums and blogs as a method, but it fails for a lot of people as well, who are then left scratching their heads and getting told they must have done something wrong (which, in many cases I'm sure is true).

The only thing I'd say about it is to take the X salinity for X weeks instructions that are out there with a grain of salt, as I don't think the global population of C. irritans necessarily got the memo that they were all supposed to have a self destruct sequence at a number that we find to be convenient and safe for our fish. If it doesn't work for you, know that there's as good a chance that your particular strain of ich was never going to be cured by hypo (or copper for that matter) as there is that you did something wrong.

The success or failure of each of the methods of treating ich depends on so many factors that have nothing to do with the treatment being applied, and everything to do with the specific strain and conditions of your tank during the outbreak, and that often gets overlooked when people are trying "eradicate ich". Two people can apply the exact same protocol and have different results, because their 'starting conditions' were also different.

in no way am I disagreeing with you as it seems you definately know what you are talking about. But how would you go about treating an ich outbreak?

Sorry, just re-read some of your other posts. Seems the tank transfer method is what you might recommend?

Quote:

Originally Posted by howdy20012002 (Post 785090)

asylumdown
I will respectfully have to disagree.
I plunk fish into copper systems every time I bring fish in with little effect on 200 fish in them..with very little deaths.
it is the bringing the copper level up to the therapeutic level that is the dangerous part which is why I think seachem says do it over 48 hours..that is so you don't poison the fish with too much copper.
I totally agree that copper will kill fish..but as long as you keep it within the guidelines of seachem you should have little problems.
and adding cupramine will not effect the bacteria to where it will affect their ability to do their job..it is any live critters dying off within the live rock that may cause a small ammonia spike.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean? Are you suggesting that dropping a fish from copper free water in to water with 0.5ppm copper is any different physiologically for the fish then adding enough copper to bring the water they are already in to 0.5ppm in one go?

I'm pretty sure the reason the acclimation period is stressful for fish is because copper is a poison to them, and their kidneys and liver need time to adapt to the increased work they need to do to prevent the poison from killing them. You say you've had very little deaths with that method, which to me sounds like you have experienced fish mortality as a result of dropping fish directly in to full strength copper water. When the fish you're talking about can sometimes cost north of 200 bucks, I don't know if I would be willing to take that risk.

Also, it's not a good idea to have live rock, or any calcareous materials in a system where copper is being dosed. Copper reacts with it and falls out of solution.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheNewGuy (Post 785405)

Sorry, just re-read some of your other posts. Seems the tank transfer method is what you might recommend?

So far it's the only method that's 100% effective against the parasite. There's no question over whether it will work because it directly attacks the stage of the parasite that all the other treatments are so horrible at dealing with.

Once a pro-tomont encysts, it turns into this horrible little wild card. Nothing out there that we know of reliably kills it with 100% effectiveness that won't also kill your fish. The treatments for ich that are out there are designed to work on stages of the parasite that are more vulnerable, and they're pretty effective against those stages, but the tomonts - ugh. They're almost beautiful in how good they are at preserving the species.

Once a theront detaches from the fish, it becomes a 'pro-tomont' that spends on average 18 hours crawling around on the substrate. It sheds most of it's cilia, and changes shape. Then it encysts, and is basically bullet proof. The vast, overwhelming majority of tomonts will excyst and release their tomites within 10 days, which means that any system with ich in it that is either fishless, or undergoing treatment that can kill a free swimming tomite, the vast majority of the infestation will be cleared about 11-12 days after the last theront drops off the fish. The most current research has shown, however, that a certain percentage of tomonts can simply stop developing, for weeks or months. The longest recorded time encysted was 72 days, which is a crazy extreme, but considering that each study captures just a tiny fraction of the behaviour of an entire species, it indicates that as a whole, the bell curve of 'possible times encysted' for this parasite is huge. I can't remember if it was Colorni, or Colorni & Burgess who said it, but they stated that this extreme asynchrony seems so adaptive it can't be considered anything but a survival strategy.

So, you might have a system in which one or two tomonts are going to shut down for the long haul, or you might not. If you don't, then the chemical or salinity treatments will probably work as expected. If you do, you'll end up very confused when weeks after you thought you were clear and haven't added anything new to your tank, ich comes back.

The tank transfer method takes the wild card out of the equation. It directly and acutely destroys the tomonts as they drop off the fish. It only takes 12 days, and basically uses the life cycle of the parasite against it. THe main system still needs to be fallowed though.

It's way more labour intensive, and the timing is critical, but it's easier than it sounds.

Again, this is all opinion, but so far I've tried hypo (it failed, but I sucked at the protocol, so don't count that as diagnostic for the method), and I lost fish because of it. I've tried copper, and I lost heaps of fish to that. I now use tank transfer method, and I've so far not lost a fish, and it's been 100% effective.

So do you think that the problems with hypo might be either not using it for a long enough period of time (either the fish in hypo or leaving the dt fallow), or perhaps not maintaining low enough salinity?

I've had ich come back in hypo because I was not diligent in maintaining top off and the salinity crept back up again. Could issues like these cause people to believe hypo isn't effective?

Quote:

Originally Posted by asylumdown (Post 785408)

Again, this is all opinion, but so far I've tried hypo (it failed, but I sucked at the protocol, so don't count that as diagnostic for the method), and I lost fish because of it. I've tried copper, and I lost heaps of fish to that. I now use tank transfer method, and I've so far not lost a fish, and it's been 100% effective.

I have used hypo 3 times now, with 100% success rate. There are a couple critical success factors. One is that you have to go down to 1.009 (using a refractometer) and the other is keep it there for 6 weeks since the last time you saw any symptoms. There can be no compromise with those two.

I actually used nearly 3 months total time in QT with mine. I had some finicky fish and used the extra time to get them feeding well and strong before transferring them to my display tank, where they might not be treated well initially by their new tank mates (ie. my yellow tang).