Plans to rid ich, need advice

[asylumdown]

Alright, after that little hiccup that cost me most of my corals, I got back in to the tang game, and while I knew my tank was never 'ich free', I didn't expect the explosion that bringing in these two tangs would cause. I'm worried for their survival at this point (the tangs), but I figure if I'm going in for a penny, I'm going in for the whole damn pound.

I knew my tank had ich in it pretty early on, but since it never seemed to bother anyone beyond a few pesky spots that went away after a day or so, the effort of getting everyone out for treatment never seemed worth it. I added a powder blue and a purple tang this week, and BAM! Now fish that never seemed to be bothered by it are flashing and scratching. The purple tang will probably get over it himseld, but the powder blue won't survive without intervention, so here's my plan:

I don't think putting all my fish in the 40 gallon breeder I have with a crappy canister filter is going to work. They'll die from the cycle, crowding, and inevitable water quality issues long before the display is ich free, so instead I'm going to put my unorthodox sump to good use.

The sump is 4 chambered, with a 20 gallon (approx) skimmer chamber, a 15 gallon (approx) 'frag chamber' (that is currently being used as a place for extra live rock), a 50 gallon "water change chamber" and a 15ish gallon return chamber. The sump is designed so that during water chambers, I can divert the flow directly in to the return chamber, bypassing the first three chambers completely. Normally, I would then use a pump with a hose pointed to a drain to empty the 50 gallon WC chamber, then fill that chamber back up with R/O water, mix salt, then bring the whole sump back online again. To do the ich treatment, I'm going to spread my fish out between the water change chamber and the skimmer chamber, divert the flow so that my display is bypassing most of the sump, and then use the pump that would normally drain the water change chamber as a 'return pump' for my new little isolated system, pumping water from the water change chamber back in to the skimmer chamber. Then I'll drop the salinity in that isolated sump system down to 1.010 and leave my display tank fallow for 8 weeks.

I hope this will be a less stressful process for the fish, as they will have 95ish gallons of system volume, still have a functioning protein skimmer, two heaters, and about 50 pounds of cycled rock to filter the water for them. The auto-doser is also already set up above the frag chamber with a reservoir of carbonate solution to keep the pH up. My display tank will be fishless so it won't need the skimmer, and it will still have it's own heaters (in the return chamber) and the auto-top off system. The only thing I'll need to do manually is add R/O water to the quarantine part of the sump to keep it level, but at this point that's as simple as flipping a switch, since the pump that brings it up for water changes pumps in to the water change chamber anyway.

The only thing I'm concerned about is that the frag chamber with all the rock in it also has about 3 inches of sand for pods to breed in away from the hungry searching of my wrasses. I'm sure there will be a lot of die off from the hypo, but I don't know how much of an issue this will be.

Does anyone have any input, advice, or sees an issue I haven't thought of? Should I take the reactor with GFO that's currently in the water change chamber offline for this, or should I leave it running in the hypo treatment? What about my biopellet reactor? Currently it draws and returns water from the skimmer chamber, but sits in the water change chamber, both of which will be in hypo for 8 weeks. Will the bacteria in it survive the treatment (and help maintain water quality in the quarantine system) or would I be better off moving it's inputs and outputs so that it's still part of the display system?

Also, anyone have any advice on how to get 16 fish out of a 250 gallon tank in less than 2 hours?

[Cal_stir]

Garlic, lots of garlic, fresh garlic in a blender and strain out the juice, make the water smell like garlic.

[George]

whew...that was a long read. After a long day at work, I don't think I have an idea of your sump set up but here are my comments about your questions....

Originally Posted by asylumdown

Does anyone have any input, advice, or sees an issue I haven't thought of? Should I take the reactor with GFO that's currently in the water change chamber offline for this, or should I leave it running in the hypo treatment? What about my biopellet reactor? Currently it draws and returns water from the skimmer chamber, but sits in the water change chamber, both of which will be in hypo for 8 weeks. Will the bacteria in it survive the treatment (and help maintain water quality in the quarantine system) or would I be better off moving it's inputs and outputs so that it's still part of the display system?

You don't need GFO, biopellets in your treatment area. Those things deal with nitrate and phosphate which are not harmful to fish unless they are at a very, very high level. I would take them out.
Also get some ammonia badges and prime (or any ammonia binding agents).

Originally Posted by asylumdown

Also, anyone have any advice on how to get 16 fish out of a 250 gallon tank in less than 2 hours?

Borrow, steal...a lot of brute trash cans for water change/storage from your fish friends. Drain your tank and get the fish out.
Good luck.

[gregzz4]

Ya, drain your tank, it'll make netting so much easier
Put your rock in the mentioned brute containers while netting

I'd be inclined to keep the skimmer on the DT as you want to keep that tank fed while fallow. Find another skimmer for the hypo if you feel it's needed, but a couple HOB filters will do just fine
Get them into your sump now and seed the foam blocks. If you can't wait for them to seed from the DT water, get some startup stuff to help you over the ammonia cycle

And the mentioned ammonia badge and ammo guard or similar is a must
Lots of water changes the first couple weeks may be needed

Treat the DT like you would if the fish were still in there;
Water changes, testing, etc, and feed whatever corals there are that need it

The only thing I see about your plan that would make me nervous is the chance of contmination from splashing DT water into the hypo section

Lastly, I believe the preferred salinity for hypo is 1.009

A Hyposalinity Treatment Process

Best of luck

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by George

whew...that was a long read. After a long day at work, I don't think I have an idea of your sump set up but here are my comments about your questions....

Sometimes I don't even understand it. Trying to explain it to people is even harder...

Originally Posted by George

You don't need GFO, biopellets in your treatment area. Those things deal with nitrate and phosphate which are not harmful to fish unless they are at a very, very high level. I would take them out.
Also get some ammonia badges and prime (or any ammonia binding agents).

Borrow, steal...a lot of brute trash cans for water change/storage from your fish friends. Drain your tank and get the fish out.
Good luck.

I have lots of all of the above. I'll redirect the pellets so they're on the main system and take the GFO offline. More swimming room for the fishes. Thanks!

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by gregzz4

Ya, drain your tank, it'll make netting so much easier
Put your rock in the mentioned brute containers while netting

I'd be inclined to keep the skimmer on the DT as you want to keep that tank fed while fallow. Find another skimmer for the hypo if you feel it's needed, but a couple HOB filters will do just fine
Get them into your sump now and seed the foam blocks. If you can't wait for them to seed from the DT water, get some startup stuff to help you over the ammonia cycle

And the mentioned ammonia badge and ammo guard or similar is a must
Lots of water changes the first couple weeks may be needed

Treat the DT like you would if the fish were still in there;
Water changes, testing, etc, and feed whatever corals there are that need it

The only thing I see about your plan that would make me nervous is the chance of contmination from splashing DT water into the hypo section

Lastly, I believe the preferred salinity for hypo is 1.009

A Hyposalinity Treatment Process

Best of luck

I got just about everybody out tonight. It required removing every single freaking rock (and I have ALOT of rock), and I still didn't get my leopard wrasse. Little bastard hid himself somewhere in the sand and I couldn't find him. Turned my tank in to mil dragging my hands through the sand trying to find him. Hopefully he re-appears tomorrow and will fall for a trap. On the upside, this gave me the opportunity to remove some base rock that made my tank look too busy, and my new scape is waaaaaaay better. I also got at the two aiptasia my CBB wasn't eating and blow torched them. Soooo satisfying.

My fish are all in the sump now, fully freaking out. I didn't realize that my bengali's were breeding again and got an unfortunate surprise when the male expelled all the eggs in to the net. Poor guys. They're butterfly fish food now.

I'm going to let it run for the night so the skimmer can clear the murk in the tank, then start reducing salinity tomorrow. I'm not worried about splash back, my sump is really deep, and the baffles from one chamber to the next are offset by only half an each between each chamber, so no splashing ever happens in there.

Thanks for the responses. I'm glad I did it this way. The other option was removing all the coral and hypo treating the display tank, but after taking out all that rock (half of which is Marco rock) I realized just how much life is in there already. Some of my Marco rock is just as covered as my real live rock. It would be a crying shame to nuke all that.

[asylumdown]

Alright, so all fish, including the leopard wrasse are in QT and the salinity is 1.010 (I'll drop it to 1.008 in the last week). pH is just over 8

The purple tang has more spots than ever, hopefully they'll fall off in the next 24 hours. The powder blue is back to only eating brine shrimp, so I've stocked up on both vitamin encapsulated brine and brine/spirulina. I'll keep a constant supply of all the different colours of algae sheets in there too. I've set up a filter sock so I can suck up any uneaten food and hopefully keep the water quality high. None of the other fish seem to care at all that they've been moved, everyone else is eating aggressively.

The internet gives conflicting reports on how long I need to leave the DT fallow, some say 8 weeks, some say 6 weeks. I'm leaving town on the 8 week mark for a week so I don't want to put my fish back in the tank that day, only to leave town if there are problems. Will it still be effective if I put them back in at 7 weeks? That will give me a full week of observation with them in the DT.

Also, how long should I leave them in hypo? I theoretically could leave the salinity at 1.010 for 5 weeks, drop to 1.008 for the last week and a half, then slowly start increasing to match the tank, but I don't know if keeping them at that level for that long is safe?

[gregzz4]

The plan is to keep them @ 1.009 for the period. Not 1.008, or 1.010
Read the link I posted as I feel it is the best way to go ....
The timeline is also in the linked thread ...
The DT MUST be fallow for at least 8 weeks, but 9 is preferred
You MUST allow time for the MI to die out. Why would you rush one extra week, when you know it will die in a fallow tank ... ???

The biggest thing you need to do, to follow the hypo treatment, is to take another 4 weeks bringing your fish back to 1.025
You need to keep an eye on them and ensure there are no signs of MI ......
This is the hardest thing for all of us to do as we think it's gone .....

Why would you rush it now, when your DT is MI clean ???

Don't rush this last phase ....

I know it's hard to do, but you NEED to wait just a bit longer ....

[Madreefer]

Call me ignorant, cocky or just plain crazy. I'm speaking from actual experience here and not something I think is true because I read it online. Garlic is IMO the best thing for ick. I lost a whole tank full of fish to ick around 8 years ago.At the time of the outbreak I tried the hyposalinity and fresh water dips blah blah blah, it just stressed the fish out and the ick got worse. So start restocking my tank right away and back comes the ick. Somebody suggested using garlic and so I thought i'd give it a try.I make my own food so of course I put alot of garlic in it. I also add a couple of drops when the food is defrosting. Anyways, to this day and up to a few months ago I add fish to my tank that are totally covered in ick. I usually get good deals on them if they're infecte with ick. The fish in my tank will start to get a few spots on them but it eventually goes away after a week or two. The said fish that I put in fully recovers. Now I dont recommend people put ick coated fish in their tanks i'm just trying to get the message out that in my experience garlic works great for ick. I've had most of my fish now since the big die off 8 years ago and they are all healthy and in my mind there is no ick in my tank due to the garlic overdosing. There's the debate that garlic is hard on the fishes liver but I see no problems. Sorry for the long post and I hope everything works out ok for your fish. Not trying to create a debate just letting you know of my experiences with ick and garlic use.

[Cal_stir]

I've used hyposalinity several times on QT'ed fish and it works great, however, your display tank must remain fish free for @ 8 weeks to ensure the ich has cycled out. I had a bout in my display tank that I successfully erradicated with garlic, I didn't think it would work but there was no way I was tearing the tank apart to catch all the fish, I now add garlic to the food everyday.