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Anonymous

Guest
i just cam home today and found my sailfin tang has a white film peeling off of him. does anyone know wht it is, how do i treat it?

thanks
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Information regarding the tank and its parameters are needed before any type of recommendation may be made.

------------------
Dan
Minotaur15 on #reefs
Captive propagation will be our salvation. Do your part.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
well its a 55 gal,
45lbs of L.R.
nitrates 0.0
nitrites 0.2
ammonia 0.0
calcium 40ppm
ph 8.3
1 sailfin tang
1 powder brown tang
1 yellow tang
1 chocolate chip starfish
1 green brain coral
1 colony of yellow polyps
1 gonipora coral
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
well i finally found what disease my sailfin had. and im sorry that i didnt find this info in time. heres some info on the disease, thanks to http://www.petswarehouse.com

Common Name: Slimy skin disease
Scientific Name: Brooklynella hostilis
Type of parasite: ciliated protozoan

Signs: A grayish-white film will be noted on the skin of the fish, and is especially
apparent on the eyes or darkly pigmented areas of the affected animal. Swollen
gills and ulcerated areas may be noted in advanced cases. Such fish will generally
tend to hang either at the waters surface or at the bottom of the tank. NOTE:
This disease is highly contagious, and care should be taken that cross
contamination does not occur.

Treatment: Generally, malachite green is your best bet for an effective
treatment. The correct dose is 0.10 PPM malachite green for three treatments,
one every other day. At this level, your fish should not experience malachite
sensitivity. Of course, dosing at 0.10 PPM means doing more than adding one drop
per gallon. To figure out the correct amount of liquid to add, you take the
concentration of malachite green listed on the bottle (in percent), and convert it
to milligrams per milliliters (percent= 1 gram/100 milliliters of water). Divide the
milligrams per milliliters by the final concentration. This will give you the results
in milliliters/liters. To convert to gallons, divide the number of milliliters by 3.8 .
For example, we have a 10 gallon tank, want a final concentration of 0.10 PPM (or
0.10 mg/l. It's interchangeable for our purposes), and we are using a 0.75%
malachite green solution. So...0.75% = 7.5 mg/milliliter. 7.5 mg/ml divided by
0.10 PPM (or mg/l) = 2 ml per 40 gallons. Since 2 milliliter is about 32 drops, we
will need 1/4 of that, or 8 drops per 10 gallons of a 0.75% malachite green
solution. Now for the kicker: most medications advise ONE DROP PER GALLON.
This works out to 1.25 times the amount actually needed. No wonder some
hobbyists lose fish when using malachite green: they have severely overdosed. You
want to dose at least three times, once every other day for three treatments.
Another treatment is to freshwater dip the fish for no more than five minutes
every other day for three dips. While this may take care of some, if not all, of
the parasites on the fish, you will still need to treat the whole system as per
above. Copper has also shown some effectiveness against this disease. You will
want to add enough citrated copper to bring the level up to 0.15 PPM (you can
really go as high as 0.20 PPM, but no higher, please). I know many of you use
heavily chelated ( or bonded) coppers, but I advise against their use. First off, in
order for copper to be truly effective, it must be in its ionic state. Heavily
chelated coppers, by definition, are not in that state, and so are less than useful.
The fact that crabs and shrimp can live in systems treated with heavily chelated
copper attests to its ineffectiveness in most cases (try that in a system treated
with an ionic copper. The inverts do not live very long). Secondly, the level
produced by some chelated coppers is far higher than is actually needed to
control the disease organism (which should also tell you something. At as high a
dose as some of these chelated coppers produce, the fish should be dead). This
higher-than-needed dose is actually detrimental to the fish in the long run in
several other ways: gill degeneration, liver shutdown, anemia, compromised immune
system..the list goes on. There is absolutely NO need to subject the fish to levels
far above what is needed to treat the condition. How do you know how much
citrated copper is in your system? You'll need to get a good test kit in order to
measure the level. Personally I advise the powdered reagent kits over the tablet
kits, as they are far more accurate. In the beginning, you may find it difficult to
maintain a 0.15 PPM level due to the calcareous material in the system. This is to
be expected as the carbonate reacts with the copper, forming copper carbonate.
At first, you will need to check the level twice a day, and add copper as needed to
maintain the 0.15 PPM level. Once you get two consecutive readings of 0.15 PPM,
you can consider that day one, and you can begin monitoring the level once a day,
adding copper as needed. You will want to continue this regime for 14 days.
During this treatment period, you will also want to feed the fish an antibacterial
medicated food. While not essential, it does help the fish fight off bacterial
problems since the copper treatment does tend to compromise the immune system
to a degree. After 14 days, do a 50% water change (to bring the copper level
down), and add a copper removing resin/polymer to further lessen the amount of
copper in the system.
 

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