Looking for advice

[gregzz4]

You mentioned your fish are breathing heavier than normal. Probably due to MI in/on their gills.
Try adding an airstone to saturate the water, and don't overfeed as you'll be putting more load on your bacteria thus depleting more oxygen.

I'll add this ...

Hyposalinity, in my experience, is not stressful on fish.
Rather, it helps them spend more energy healing, and digesting food. This is because they aren't exerting as much energy towards osmoregulation.

It takes longer than the tt method, but if the DT is going to be fallow anyway, there's no harm in my mind. And I prefer not to handle my fish any more than necessary.

Only drawbacks to hypo (for me) are;
- Keeping the hypo pH up. I've solved this issue by using my controller, a pH probe an alk dosing pump. Plus I have an ATO on the QT so it's very stable.
- Keeping the hypo filtration bacteria boosted with a start-up liquid as hypo slows down bacterial metabolism (for lack of the proper terminology).