75 Gallon Sw Build - Page 6

[Jayd976]

Yeah they look like Collonista snails after a quick search. While I only have a snail and a crab they’d be easy to temporarily rehome for the time being. But all the little critters in my live rock and the thousands of pods I’d really hate to lose them.

I’m guessing it was the coral beauty as it’s the last fish I got about a week or two ago. It’s the first to show any real signs. He’s the one fish that I had to cut the initial dip short on because he started freaking out.

I’ll try this Ich attack stuff if it doesn’t seem to work in combo with freshwater/meth-blue baths I’ll go with something more proven and figure out something for the inverts.

 

[Jayd976]

So after examining all the fish today I don’t see any further white spots did a water change and dosed another round of Kordon Ich Attack just to be safe. Will continue to monitor, but so far all is looking good.

Cleaned out the algae reactor today as well and think I figured out where the snails came frI’m (the chaeto). Also noticed a bunch of the LED’s burnt out what do you expect from cheap LED strip. I’m going to order a new one from marine depot(warm white spectrum) the one they have for it that I think Grant went with. There was so much slime/mat algae in the reactor on the spots where the lights wrap around it was disgusting. Had to toss 30-40% of the chaeto.

 

[Jayd976]

So I see some spots coming back on the Coral Beauty. I guess another freshwater bath is in order.

 

[stella1979]

Hoping for the best!

 

[Jayd976]

Again with the freshwater/meth-blue bath all the ich cysts fell off. But I think I’m going to have to setup a hospital tank to treat. Netting and dipping him every couple days is probably adding extra stress and certainly won’t really help the situation.

 

[Jayd976]

That’ll also allow me to treat with something stronger than that all natural/herbal reef safe stuff.

 

[stella1979]

I think you're probably right. Hmm... there's still a decent chance that the parasite is in the tank. Any thoughts of moving the inverts and dosing the display?

 

[Jayd976]

Yeah, but then there goes thousands of pods...

 

[stella1979]

Yeah... I didn't even think of that. Well, here's hoping that the freshwater/m. blue baths did indeed prevent ich from taking hold in the tank. Good luck, and please let me know how it goes.

 

[Lorekeeper]

I don't know if you know anything about the life cycle of ich, but it might be worth looking up. Pretty simple little process, but the stuff will always be in your tank till it either A) Starves, or B) is killed with meds.

If you have the tanks to do it, I'd move out all your fish into hospital tanks and treat those tanks with meds and raise the temp, to make sure you get the stuff. Do a few month fallow period on your tank, and I think you'll be alright. It sucks, and it's a hastle, but it's your best bet, IMHO, and if the ich did really take hold in the tank, it'll help get it off your fish before it gets too bad.

Just my $0.02!

 

[Jayd976]

Yeah I know about the Ich life cycle. I don’t have adequate tanks to house 8 fish adequately for that period of time.

I guess it boils down to what’s more important saving the fish and my wallet and treating the whole display and sacrificing some inverts or doing what I have and hoping for the best.

I could setup a hospital tank for the sole fish that seems to be affected by it. But it’ll likely get it again after treatment and putting back in main display. I believe the power struggle between the coral beauty and the tang is what is stressing the fish and brought it on. As I said it seems the be the only fish showing any signs so far. Behavior and eating habits are normal for all including the coral beauty. At most it had 4-6 white spots at a time. The baths got rid of them each time. But that’s added stress to capture, treat, release and repeat every couple days.

 

[Jayd976]

What I’m thinkimg about doing is pulling the coral beauty out and treating in a hospital tank. And treating the main tank with that all natural reef safe Kordon Ich Attack. Reviews state it works it just takes longer than some of the other chemical based treatments.

 

[Jayd976]

Following yesterday’s bath, still no spots today.

 

[Jayd976]

Still no sign of spots

 

[Lorekeeper]

Good to hear!

Hopefully you've taken care of the worst of it, and the fish aren't stressed enough to be vulnerable.

 

[Jayd976]

They’ve never shown signs of any real stress and continued to eat normally which is good. The coral beauty seems to be the only one that showed any real spots and at worst it was like 6. I think the freshwater baths were able to kill what was on him and hinder their cycle before it could really take hold.

But we shall see.

 

[Jayd976]

Three days since last bath or treatment still no signs on anyone. Think we’re clear!

 

[Lorekeeper]

Glad to hear!

Definitely keep an eye out for the next few weeks, but I'm glad to hear everything's going so well!

 

[stella1979]

I'm very glad to hear that too!

 

[Jayd976]

Check out these bristle worms that came out.

 

[Lorekeeper]

Hey, at least you know you've got a good CUC!

I've seen one decent sized one crawling around in my tank. Probably a few more, too. Got a ton of brittle stars, a few asterinas, and apparently a bunch of spaghettI worms that I stirred up while I was looking for a fish.

 

[Jayd976]

Ok so bad news is I checked on him this morning and he was fine didn’t see any spots as well as last night. This afternoon I did another check and had about a dozen spots on him. So I set up a hospital tank to treat him with “ICK-X” which apparently works great.

Gave him a freshwater bath then put him in hospital tank. So I’ll treta main tank with the organic stuff that hasn’t hurt my inverts as a precaution and treat hospital tank with the more tried and true stuff.

 

[Lorekeeper]

Sorry to hear!

 

[Jayd976]

Ok so bad news is I checked on him this morning and he was fine didn’t see any spots as well as last night. This afternoon I did another check and had about a dozen spots on him. So I set up a hospital tank to treat him with “ICK-X” which apparently works great.

Gave him a freshwater bath then put him in hospital tank. So I’ll treta main tank with the organic stuff that hasn’t hurt my inverts as a precaution and treat hospital tank with the more tried and true stuff.

 

[Jayd976]

Coral Beauty is showing signs of improvement. Was covered in a couple dozen spots the last couple days and as of this morning looks much better. Unfortunately, I started seeing signs of ich on some of the chromis so gave them a freshwater bath and ended up losing one shortly after returning it to the tank. Think it was too much and with ich possibly already in the gills was breathing rapidly and went to the bottom and disappeared until this morning when I found it partially buried in sand dead. Feel bad cause I think that death is mostly my fault too much stress from spending 20 mins trying to catch them and then a 5-6min freshwater/Meth-blue (RODI water with matched PH) bath. The others all recovered nicely though. The tang has something going on on his side, but I think its more from brushing up against the rock then anything else. Don't see any ich on it so dipped him as a precaution as well. Still treating the main tank with the all natural Kordon Ich Attack which hasn't seemed to have any negative effects on any inverts.

 

[stella1979]

Thanks for keeping us updated on how this is all working out for you. I'm sorry to hear about the chromis, but I truly appreciate your honesty about all this. If we hide all the bad stuff, how will the next person learn, ya know? I can tell that you're doing your research and moving ahead with what's best for your situation. It's the most we can do, and however things work out, you'll know you did your best. Wishing you good luck with the coral beauty and hoping the tang is only slightly injured and will make a quick recovery.

 

[Jayd976]

Thanks. The tang is still very active and an eating machine. No real signs of stress or disease at all. But we will see what happens. I think its a true lesson learned though. Just because what you've been doing has worked doesn't mean it will work every time. What I mean by that is I've never quarantined my fish and have always just done a freshwater/meth-blue bath for 5-10min with all new fish and that seemed to work. Now I will certainly QT all new fish from the start as its just not worth all the headache. Easier to treat one fish and one small tank then two tanks and lots of fish, inverts, etc.

 

[Jayd976]

All seem to be doing well. The @wound” on tang seems to have disappeared. Not seeing any spots on any fish including coral beauty.

 

[Lorekeeper]

QTing is definitely a good idea.

I trust my store's QT technique pretty well, as it's exactly what I'd do here at home. Any new fish they get in are treated with all the basic meds (Prazi, Methalyn Blue, etc.) and then are treated according to whatever issues show up. Then, they're put on the floor a month later. Causes their prices to be quite high, but it's nice to not have to worry about disease and parasites. Any fish I don't get from them get's QT'd in a rubbermaid tub.

 

[Jesterrace]

Jay, we must be reading each other's minds on fish selection. I have a Yellow Tang and Coral Beauty that are in QT for a few weeks:

 

[Jayd976]

Looks like everyone in display tank except the two clowns have Ich.

Every time I think we’re making progress and give a good report the next day bam... so I’m just not going to say anything anymore lol

 

[stella1979]

Dang... Sorry to hear. Any thoughts on moving the inverts and using the strong stuff in the DT?

 

[Jayd976]

I’m contemplating it. I still have 2.5 bottles of that all natural stuff. I’m hoping the dosage on that as you can’t overdose it. So going to use a much stronger dose on that and if that doesn’t work then I’ll have to dose the main stuff in DT and move inverts out.

With Paraguard do you have to do water changes in between treatments? It doesn’t say. Ich-X you do so you don’t overdose the formalin, but that’s going to be a lot of water needed on hand constantly.

 

[stella1979]

I can't actually remember my experience with Paraguard very well, but that's because the fish kept getting worse and I quickly switched to IchX because of the formalin in it. Seachem is very good with instructions though, and Paraguard is considered safe and relatively gentle. Instructions do not say to change water, so I would just stick with your regular routine.

Another thing to note, just in case you haven't done this before. Paraguard and other meds containing malachite green are very, very blue, and the color will appear to stain silicone seals and other plastics, like a filter intake. It does fade though. I am quite sure of that since I went through a long illness with a very blue goldfish tank. I thought the silicone and AC intake would be stained forever, but it went away pretty quick actually.

I feel it worth mentioning... my goldie was just covered in spots, and I'm still not sure what it was because he didn't respond to ich treatments. I tried herbal stuff, then Paraguard, then IchX. This went on over a couple of months and he just got worse and worse. I ended up having to treat a secondary issue because septicemia popped up after a while. I was desperate for help and got some good advice here. What I ended up doing was running carbon for a few days to remove any residuals of previously used meds. Then I dosed the tank with Seachems Sulfaplex for the septicemia. It worked, thank goodness!! I was in tears seeing red streaks, a couple of large red spots and a blood red lateral line on this well-loved fish. Still, the spots persisted, and the only thing that took care of that was daily methylene blue baths. M. blue cannot go in a tank because it will kill the cycle. In fact, the cycle in that tank died as a result of the small amounts of m. blue entering the tank after the bath. I should have rinsed him.

Anyway, just wanted to tell you about a long struggle that I eventually overcame, though it got bad and took way too long and too many meds. I'm afraid of that fish ever getting sick again because I'm not sure his liver could handle another treatment... like, ever.

So, I wouldn't actually recommend m. blue in your situation, but if Paraguard doesn't start to work quickly, you may need to step it up even further. Copper. You would need the copper, a good test so you can carefully manage levels, and possibly something like Cuprasorb, which will remove copper from your system. I'm unsure if carbon really does the trick here, but after some recent difficulties in the salty qt's, I decided we needed to be prepared to use copper in the future. I still haven't used it yet, but when I went shopping for supplies, I went ahead and got Cupramine, Cuprasorb, and a copper test.

 

[Jayd976]

Yeah, the M.blue seems to be the only effective thing of removing the spots off the fish. The problem is once they go back in tank within a couple days they return. So need something that will kill what’s in the tank.

Luckily, all the seals and tubes in tank are black if I have to go that route.

The catching and freshwater baths seem to be too much stress though as I lost one Chromis and nearly lost another as well.

My current hospital tank is only 10 gallons so too small to put everyone in there and the tang and angel would constantly be at it.

 

[Jayd976]

Ok so as of the last two days the coral beauty in QT has become completely covered in ich. Even with daily 20-30% water changes and dosing Ich-x. The QT tank did have a layer of sand in it as it was previously used as a temporary tank when my 29gal busted a leak and I had to transfer as much as I could into it to save everything for a few hours until I could pick up a new 29. Anyway ive removed the sand to ensure I can do a better job of sucking up any of the cyst that pop off before they can respawn again. He's still active and eating fine, but now covered in spots. I know this is one of those things where it gets worse before it gets better so we shall see how next couple of days go. Tang in display is also starting to show some more spots, but also acting normal and eating. The all natural stuff seems to be doing a decent job of preventing a whole outbreak, but nothing really seems to be eradicating it.

 

[stella1979]

Aw man, I hope things take a turn for the better soon.

 

[Jayd976]

Going to finish out the ich-x treatment and if by then its not off the coral beauty I'm either going to try the Paraguard I already have on hand or go with the more tried and true Cupramine. May even setup the 29gal as a larger hospital tank for all the fish and let the 75 go fallow for 6-8 weeks. I've got some vacations coming up in June and July and I'm hesitant to go that route as the person who will be house sitting each time has no fish experience and it will be someone different each time. Given the extra stress from a move into a smaller tank with all those fish I would like to be on hand to monitor and do water changes as necessary.

 

[Jayd976]

Poor guy.

 

[stella1979]

How long have you been treating with Ich X now?

 

[Jayd976]

Around about a week.

 

[stella1979]

I'm no expert, but switching to Paraguard seems like stepping down, and if the stronger dose isn't working... Like Ich X, Paraguard's main ingredient is m. green. Idk if one had a higher dosage of m. green but Paraguard is considered gentler because it does not contain formalin.

I'm wondering if you have time to do a round of copper before your vacation. If a change is needed, perhaps it's best to make that change soon.

I know you're doing the research and deciding what's best is up to you. Still, perhaps we should ask some others here what they think. Culprit is treating with copper right now and KinsKicks is my favorite fishy doctor.

 

[Jayd976]

There’s two types of Ich-X the “saltwater” tank me is just a 3% solution of formalin and water. The standard version has formalin, M. Green and one other ingredient I believe. Perhaps I should have went with that. Heard the standard which is for freshwater or saltwater was better but couldn’t find it locally.

 

[Culprit]

I've had to do lots of research, and evidently Paraguard can somtimes treat ich, but its extremely gentle and most of the time will not. I belive it sounds like you have the Rid Ich-X, when you should have the Rid Ich +. Rid Ich + will most definitely cure ich, but its supposed to work as an emergency med as its so hard, for instance you have a fish with brook or velvet or a disease that spreads like wildfire, so you throw them in QT with Rid Ich+ to stop the spread and take it back a bit, then you treat with proper meds.

For ich, I would definitely go the copper route. Its easy, tried and true, and will definitely eradicate ich. It may be expensive, but it will last for a while. Do not get API coppersafe, get Seachem Cupramine. That means you also need a Salifert or Seachem test kit, not API as coppersafe is a different kind of copper, and needs higher concentrations so not as exact of a test kit. Cupramine you only dose 0.5 ppm so you need an exact test kit.

I'm not an expert by any means, just passing on what I've had to learn/

 

[Jayd976]

No I have HikarI ICH-X not the Kordon.

 

[TexasGuppy]

I thought treating ich was supposed to be raise temp to 86 for two weeks and that's it. Can you not do that in a Saltwater tank? Or do you have fish that can't tolerate that level?

 

[stella1979]

Culprit - From your research, how long do you think it would take to treat these fish with Cupramine? If treatment could be done and fish appear cured within the next month, would it be safe for Jayd to put copper removing media in the filter and leave the tank with an inexperienced pet sitter for a short time? Hikari's Ich X is formaldehyde based, so like formalin. You and I have experience with formalin in Rid Ich +, and I trusted that carbon and water changes removed any residuals of that med over a few days. Do you have any reason to think there would be an issue in making the switch from formalin to copper?

 

[Jayd976]

I thought treating ich was supposed to be raise temp to 86 for two weeks and that's it. Can you not do that in a Saltwater tank? Or do you have fish that can't tolerate that level?

theres mixed reviews about that. Ich in marine tanks is a completely different parasite then that of freshwater. Some say raising the heat does nothing others say it does. Technically its not even "ich" as "ich" is named after the actual parasite Ichthyophthirius multifiliis. In saltwater its Cryptocaryon irritans. The two parasites are completely different, but have the same life cycle and parasitic traits. A real don't change it if it works type thing.

 

[Jayd976]

My first vacation is June 15th so I have some time to hopefully get this cleared up by then. Hopefully by then I can stop the treatments and just observe in QT.

 

[Culprit]

Culprit - From your research, how long do you think it would take to treat these fish with Cupramine? If treatment could be done and fish appear cured within the next month, would it be safe for Jayd to put copper removing media in the filter and leave the tank with an inexperienced pet sitter for a short time? Hikari's Ich X is formaldehyde based, so like formalin. You and I have experience with formalin in Rid Ich +, and I trusted that carbon and water changes removed any residuals of that med over a few days. Do you have any reason to think there would be an issue in making the switch from formalin to copper?

Treatment is 30 days with Copper. With Cupramine therapuetic level is 0.5 ppm. You can remove copper with carbon and water changes. I would say it would definitely be fine, just finish the treatment a few days early, do a 50% water change the day after you finish and put carbon in, the next day do a 50% water change and replace the carbon and you should be good to go.

The bad thing is you can't test for formalin or M. Green. I'd use lots of carbon and do 2-3 50% water changes and I'd think you'd be good. I know your never supposed to mix meds, but I think if there was a tiny bit left it would be fine. I didn't come across anything saying that ich x and copper reacted, but I'd make sure I got everything I could out before starting Copper.