hyposalinity killing everything

[emmanuel]

All the fish looked ok except the tangs showed ich so I decided let me give hypo-salinity a shot . I slowly decreased the salinity its down to 1.015 over a 5 day period I'm not even at the 1.009 mark yet but I lost a yellow tang which was the only fish that looked horrible , I lost a flame angel , 2 chromis,2 dispar anthias and now the GSM clowns (pair are looking real bad and not eating their fins look raggy the hippo and purple tang are still covered with white spots .
I was reading on wetwebmedia that hypo-salinity is not recommended and will most likely kill the fish so today I started to slowly raise the salinity and will treat with Marden coppersafe the fish are in a hospital tank but after the treatment what steps should be taken to prevent any copper residue on the fish from getting in my reef tank?
I also assume the filter running in the hospital tank should never again be used with invertebrates. Is this correct ?

 

[lazibonez]

hypo salinity has worked for me in the passed, to make it work, u need to drop to the desire level in the course of 3 days if i remember correctly, 5 days is too long and wont be effective. just make sure u use a refractometer to measure your salinity. Maybe your fishes were badly infected in the first place. Becareful raising back your salinity, u must do it slowly.

 

[Killerdrgn]

Are the other parameters for the water fine?
Was the hospital/qt tank cycled before you added in the fish?
They might have died from the stress of moving and water chemistry changes.
And yes you should never use ANYTHING from your QT tank to you main tank, maybe with the exception of things like heaters or others that can be easily washed and does not absorb bad stuff.

 

[emmanuel]

I used a filter that has been running about 2 months on a cycled tank I checked the water parameters yesterday on the hospital tank and they were amonia -0,nitrite 3 so I did a water change .But from what I read the best way to treat is with copper if you have a hosp tank but then again somewhere else I read hypo is best

 

[Killerdrgn]

hypo is good cause it's cheap, as you don't really need anything more than what you already have, and you have them waiting around in the hypo for a long time to ensure that the ich is gone.
Copper is good cause it's quick and gets rid of a lot of problems, but it is very stressful on the fish.
Don't do hypo and copper at the same time it will definitly kill a lot of your fish if they really aren't strong enough to handle it.

 

[SaltH2O57]

Check and monitor your PH levels

 

[marrone]

hypo salinity has worked for me in the passed, to make it work, u need to drop to the desire level in the course of 3 days if i remember correctly, 5 days is too long and wont be effective. just make sure u use a refractometer to measure your salinity. Maybe your fishes were badly infected in the first place. Becareful raising back your salinity, u must do it slowly.

Whether you drop it down in 3 or 5 days has nothing to do with Hyposailnity working or not. Once you get it down to correct level is when you start to count the days, so whether it's 3 days of 5 days or 7 days is doesn't matter. Also Hyposailnity only works on Ich, so if it's something else it will not work.

 

[ireefny]

Ph is also a key & if you have inverts they will perish since they dont tolerate Hypo & can cause a very sudden spike of Amonia/Nitrite/Nitrate.

 

[marrone]

All the fish looked ok except the tangs showed ich so I decided let me give hypo-salinity a shot . I slowly decreased the salinity its down to 1.015 over a 5 day period I'm not even at the 1.009 mark yet but I lost a yellow tang which was the only fish that looked horrible , I lost a flame angel , 2 chromis,2 dispar anthias and now the GSM clowns (pair are looking real bad and not eating their fins look raggy the hippo and purple tang are still covered with white spots .
I was reading on wetwebmedia that hypo-salinity is not recommended and will most likely kill the fish so today I started to slowly raise the salinity and will treat with Marden coppersafe the fish are in a hospital tank but after the treatment what steps should be taken to prevent any copper residue on the fish from getting in my reef tank?
I also assume the filter running in the hospital tank should never again be used with invertebrates. Is this correct ?

First you need to get the SG level down to 1.007-9, anything less doesn't do anything. Once you get the SG to the correct level the ich spores that fall off would break open and will eventually die. You still need to wait until the ich works it's way through the fish body, and then falls off, before the fish will be free of ich. This can takes anywhere from 7 - 14 days. At that point the ich spores can still last for about 4 weeks. So once you get the SG down to 1.007-9 you need to wait about 4 - 6 weeks before you bring the SG back up. As for Hyposailnity, you need to make sure it's ich as it doesn't work on anything else.


If you plan on treating with copper, once the treatments is done you should first move the fish into a tank or pail with regular saltwater. This will get any copper or medicine off the fish before you put it back into the tank.

Also if you use copper in a tank you shouldn't place any inverts or coral in that tank, as they most likely will die from the copper.

 

[emmanuel]

If you plan on treating with copper, once the treatments is done you should first move the fish into a tank or pail with regular saltwater. This will get any copper or medicine off the fish before you put it back into the tank.

Also if you use copper in a tank you shouldn't place any inverts or coral in that tank, as they most likely will die from the copper.

I just wanted to bring the salinity down as slow as possible and when I got to 1.009 leave it for 6 weeks but I slowly started raising the salinity after seeing how many fish were dieing its at about 1.016 ruff estimate I'm not feeling well so I havnt gone back to the tank to check I did make about a gallon of new salt water with a high salinity and dripped it back in the tank
the tank is a hospital tank and will never be used for anything else but I'm sure the same goes for the canister filter I'm using

 

[marrone]

I just wanted to bring the salinity down as slow as possible and when I got to 1.009 leave it for 6 weeks but I slowly started raising the salinity after seeing how many fish were dieing its at about 1.016 ruff estimate I'm not feeling well so I havnt gone back to the tank to check I did make about a gallon of new salt water with a high salinity and dripped it back in the tank
the tank is a hospital tank and will never be used for anything else but I'm sure the same goes for the canister filter I'm using

The fish weren't dying because you were at a SG of 1.016, they were dying from the Ich.

 

[lazibonez]

Whether you drop it down in 3 or 5 days has nothing to do with Hyposailnity working or not. Once you get it down to correct level is when you start to count the days, so whether it's 3 days of 5 days or 7 days is doesn't matter. Also Hyposailnity only works on Ich, so if it's something else it will not work.

I still do believe in bringing down to the correct salt level in a timely fashion is a big factor to make it more effective. This was confirmed by someone from an LFS who brought it down slowly as opposed to more quickly. He noticed by doing it faster really made a difference. I guess it would have worked either way , however, leaving it at that level for a duration of the treatment is more important as we all know.

Some reference --> http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/hyposalinity.html


A noted on copper, I read that for it to work properly, it must be at the correct level, u would probably need a copper test for it.

 

[manyfish]

check your water parameters to is it correct range,it could be that you temperature in the tank change to quick so your fish caught ich. I don't like to hypo-salinity I just increase the temperature around 84 and feed with garlic in the food it work for me

 

[qy7400]

There are a few LFS the run their fish only systems that low so I can't see how hypo would have this effect, sounds like something else to me

 

[Killerdrgn]

seriously though you can toss in your fish from salt to 1.007 Sg right away. it really doesn't matter that bad, unless they're already dying. Going back up is the most important part of going slow.

 

[marrone]

I still do believe in bringing down to the correct salt level in a timely fashion is a big factor to make it more effective. This was confirmed by someone from an LFS who brought it down slowly as opposed to more quickly. He noticed by doing it faster really made a difference. I guess it would have worked either way , however, leaving it at that level for a duration of the treatment is more important as we all know.

Some reference --> http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/hyposalinity.html


A noted on copper, I read that for it to work properly, it must be at the correct level, u would probably need a copper test for it.

Getting it down to the level is what is important, as that is what causes the ich spores to breaking open and die. Bring it down slowly put less stress on the fish and more important on your biological system, which can crash by bring it down to quickly.

As for treating with copper, yes you need to treat at the correct level otherwise it wouldn't work. Also it's very important to get a good test kit and make sure that you're at the correct level as to little and it doesn't work and to much you can kill the fish.

 

[marrone]

seriously though you can toss in your fish from salt to 1.007 Sg right away. it really doesn't matter that bad, unless they're already dying. Going back up is the most important part of going slow.

It's not good to just toss in an fish, invert or coral at a dramatically different SG level, you can easily cause the fish to die from stress or shock. You'll also find that most fish stress out a lot more from being put directly in lower SG than being put in tank with higher SG.

 

[Killerdrgn]

It's not good to just toss in an fish, invert or coral at a dramatically different SG level, you can easily cause the fish to die from stress or shock. You'll also find that most fish stress out a lot more from being put directly in lower SG than being put in tank with higher SG.

If this were completely true then wouldn't fresh water dips absolutley kill fish? But then we know they don't. This is a fish only thing i'm not talking about coral or inverts here. Fish can survive being thrown into a lower concentration of salt.

 

[marrone]

If this were completely true then wouldn't fresh water dips absolutley kill fish? But then we know they don't. This is a fish only thing i'm not talking about coral or inverts here. Fish can survive being thrown into a lower concentration of salt.

First fresh water dips or baths heavily stress fish and in some case can kill them. You need to monitor the fish very closely when you're giving it a fresh water dip or bath and be prepared to move the fish back if it's stressing out to much. Some fish can take very short periods of fresh water dips or bath while others can take longer but fish can and do die.

Yes fish can survive being thrown into a lower SG level but they can also die and it's not something that should be done. You'll find with LFS, that run low SG, when they place fish into their tank, without doing a lot of acclimating, the fish shows a lot of stress and some will die from shock.