Hospital tank set up advice, please comment on plan

[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.

[Gooly001]

Hi George,

Good question. It is our belief that fish exert energy on osmosis; extracting freshwater from saltwater to drink, so the reasoning for the lower salinity is to help the fish NOT to overexert it's energy on diffusing the saltwater but to allow it to have as much energy as possible to fight the disease that it is needing to combat.

However, on the opposite side, if the fish is treated in total fresh water for a prolonged period of time it will explode with freshwater in it's system.

So to summarize, 1.018 won't kill the ich but will help the fish reserve it's energy on fighting the parasite as oppose to having to use it's energy desalinating.

Cheers,

Paul

Originally Posted by 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.

[Lance]

Originally Posted by OceanicCorals-Paul-

Hi George,

Good question. It is our belief that fish exert energy on osmosis; extracting freshwater from saltwater to drink, so the reasoning for the lower salinity is to help the fish NOT to overexert it's energy on diffusing the saltwater but to allow it to have as much energy as possible to fight the disease that it is needing to combat.

However, on the opposite side, if the fish is treated in total fresh water for a prolonged period of time it will explode with freshwater in it's system.

So to summarize, 1.018 won't kill the ich but will help the fish reserve it's energy on fighting the parasite as oppose to having to use it's energy desalinating.

Cheers,

Paul

Hey guys, I read an interesting article on hyposalinity therapy and some of the benefits aside parasite control, according to the author are:
- acclimation and alleviating the effects of stress
- wounds heal quicker
- some antibiotics work more efficiently in softer water than in full strength
seawater
- conserving metabolic energy