Hospital tank set up advice, please comment on plan

[Delphinus]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the replies.

So no to the Aquaclear then? Just water changes every 2 days in an otherwise filterless tank? Should I add a small powerhead for water movement or find an air pump and air stone?

Do I understand correctly that you recommend both SG down to 1.018 and cupramine at half-dosage for butterflies?

And potentially methylene blue? How do I know if this is needed?

Man .. I am totally out of my depth here.

Here is the the thing: they really don't act as if they have ich. No scratching, no loss of appetite. But they are covered with white dots, they look like they have been salted. This comes and goes. I have a UV on the tank as well but it must be completely ineffective (the lamp needs replacing and it's not one I can get locally - it's an AquaUV 57w). It must be ich .. if it was something else wouldn't they be more affected?

They are in the tank by themselves, maybe 2 or 3 snails and a golden dwarf eel. I have been meaning to move the 3 into a new FOWLR I've been setting up but it's nowhere near ready. Once the new tank is cycled I can move the eel over, he's not affected by spots at all. I'm assuming maybe eels have more tolerance/immunity against ich?

[Delphinus]

Also how much water do you change out every 2 days? 50%? Just bring in water from the DT, or use brand new SW for these changes?

[Gooly001]

Hi Tony,

This is my regement for treating ich once I detect it.

-90 gallon QT with Prizm Skimmer (crappy skimmer but works ok for QT)
-IO salt mixed with fresh RO water at 1.018
-Cupramin dosed according to directions for Angels and halfed for -Tangs/Bflies
-Koralia 1050 power head for water movement and aeration
-2" PVC cut to length. PVC is easy to sanitize after the QT period. Don't waste money on LR for QT because most meds will make the LR die and add nutrients to the QT system.
-Mark water level on the QT tank so that you know how much to top off on salinity daily
-If you notice red wound marks on the fish after/during the copper treatment it may be an infection so Methelyene Blue can be added to disinfect. MB is very difficult to overdose so you can use it generously. Just make sure you run an air stone and discontinue skimmer usage
-Temperature should be around 78 degress. Most people recommend upping the temp to make the ich cycle faster but my opinion is to stabilize the fish in the QT before stressing them out by forcing the ich to multiply
-Salinity at 1.018 does not kill the ich but allows the fish to reserve energy from having to work on osmosis. The cupramine will kill the ich over the course of the treatment.
-Getting the fish to eat is the most important thing here. If the fish eat during QT they can battle the disease. If they don't eat after 4-5 days then I find that their chances of survival are greatly diminished. Feed lots and keep water changes up if you do.

Paul

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the replies.

So no to the Aquaclear then? Just water changes every 2 days in an otherwise filterless tank? Should I add a small powerhead for water movement or find an air pump and air stone?

Do I understand correctly that you recommend both SG down to 1.018 and cupramine at half-dosage for butterflies?

And potentially methylene blue? How do I know if this is needed?

Man .. I am totally out of my depth here.

Here is the the thing: they really don't act as if they have ich. No scratching, no loss of appetite. But they are covered with white dots, they look like they have been salted. This comes and goes. I have a UV on the tank as well but it must be completely ineffective (the lamp needs replacing and it's not one I can get locally - it's an AquaUV 57w). It must be ich .. if it was something else wouldn't they be more affected?

They are in the tank by themselves, maybe 2 or 3 snails and a golden dwarf eel. I have been meaning to move the 3 into a new FOWLR I've been setting up but it's nowhere near ready. Once the new tank is cycled I can move the eel over, he's not affected by spots at all. I'm assuming maybe eels have more tolerance/immunity against ich?

[Gooly001]

Oh yah and I remember vaguely reading somewhere that smooth scaled fish are almost immune to the ich parasites. We rarely encounter ich on wrasses and smooth scaled fish.

Paul

[ScubaSteve]

Hi Tony,

Bummer dude. I recently lost my butterfly to ich. Butterflies are weird with ich. They don't act like they have it and it comes and goes, like you said. But each time it comes back it comes back a little worse until one day they take a dramatic turn for the worse. Mine went from ich-y but happy and healthy to dead in less than 48 hours.

And I agree with Paul on the comment about secondary infections. My butterfly, in his dramatic down turn, contracted a secondary infection that lead to symptoms like red spots on the skin (bleeding) and the tell-tale signs of popeye. It is the secondary infection that I believe got passed around to everyone else in my tank. A day and a bit after my buttlerfly kicked the bucket, my mandarin followed. No idea what killed the mandarin but he had all sorts of weird symptoms that were all over the map. As Paul said, ich isn't likelt to attack smooth skinned fish (like mandarins). Who knows... Just be prepared for this.

Change 50% every second day and don't bother with cycling the sponge. It'll do nothing at this point and meds will kill anything useful. The butterflies are finicky as all heck. Even though you CAN drop salinity fast, try not to as this seems to just irritate the butterflies, who then get stressed, which makes things worse. I never tried the copper meds but I agree with the half dose idea. As long as you can keep them eating like pigs you're golden. Oh, and don't for a second think they'll fight it off like tangs do... once a butterfly gets ich they just start cycling through it and progressively get worse.

Have fun and good luck! Tell those butterflies to stop getting their knickers in a twist and getting sick.

[fishoholic]

In my experience hypo has been much easier on fish then cupramine treatment, and with ich (IME) hypo has been 100% effective, that being said though my CBB was my only fish that was fine during the cupramine treatment when I had velvet, but he was one of the only ones who never showed symptoms of velvet either. FYI cupramine treatment will normally cause a loss of appetite, where I find hypo doesn't. With hypo I went from 1.024 down to 1.010 over 4 days and after 2 weeks at 1.010 I raised it back up slowly over 7 days, up by 2 points a day.

I have a 110g QT tank (which I've used to do hypo and I used it for cupramine treatment) and in both cases I used fresh saltwater (no point in introducing more of the disease from using display tank water etc.) and I did 50% water changes every other day. In both cases I also had 2 koraila 4's running and 5 bubbliers. In your case I would run a small power head and a bubblier.

[Delphinus]

Ugh. Thanks for the all the replies. I have to say it makes my head swim though. So one the one hand butterflies are sensitive to hyposalinity. On the other hand butterflies are sensitive to Cupramine. Aaaaaaaa!

What's completely bewildering to me is that I had them for over 18 months, ich-free, in a tank where one of the tangs had occasional spots on and off for 18 months, but never more than a half-dozen individual white spots, so was never a huge concern to me. Now that fish is in another tank and completely ich-free, and these guys have a nice large tank to themselves so you'd think they'd have less stress, but when the spots come back they are really bad.

Is 20g big enough for 2 butterflies? When I hear stuff like 90g QT/hospital tanks I start to wonder that treating two butterflies in a 20g is a recipe for more trouble since clearly they just stress out over little things.

The tank is not a full blown reef. In fact, there is nothing in there except the 3 fish (2 butterflies and a tiny eel, who completely ignore each other), live rock, the occasional snail. Would there be any benefit in rehoming the eel into his new tank and then simply lowering the SG in this tank to something like 1.019-1.021? Recognizing that this will not kill the ich, but, 1) it seems to me nothing kills ich anyhow, it's always there, just not able to infest fish when they are healthy; and 2) this way they are in their home, comfortable, still eating, etc. Then I shore up the UV and maybe garlic the food, or add vitamins or whatever .. and see what happens?

My hesitation is that I did try hypo on some pyramid butterflies a couple years back when I bought them and they developed ich. That episode was a complete failure. If they're just going to die anyhow then is it kinder to let them die in their home as opposed to speeding it up in a doomed attempt at treatment in a 20g ???

[George]

Paul,
I probably missed something. But why you only lower your salinity to 1.018? Since you know 1.018 won't kill ich and you dose copper anyway. Why bother with that salinity and just leave the salinity at normal level.