Copper in quarantine?

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by TheNewGuy

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.

[Baldy]

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?

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

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).