One Bad Choice... and now I have to pay the piper

[EddieJ]

Day 26 of 42 for the fish in Hypo
Day 30 of 70 of leaving the DT Fallow

Everything is rock steady and going to plan. Fish are all looking great, eating well and active. SG has been spot on at 1.008 thanks to the ATO. I wanna give a fantastic review for Seachem's Stability. I used this to start some freshwater tanks and decided to dose it in my Hypo QT as I have had a constant battle with low levels of ammonia. After 1 week of dosing Stability, the ammonia is now totally zeroed out with my Salifert kit (total ammonia) and the Seachem badge along with the free ammonia test kit. Been that way for a week with no additional dosing so it definitely established my bio filtration. Right now I am on a 20 gallon a week water change schedule.

Had to ramp up the coral feeding in the display tank as it's really become very ULNS without the fish in there.

[f3honda4me]

Keep us up to date!

Hyposalinity is my favorite too these days. 1.008

[EddieJ]

Thought I would share some pics of my hypo salinity chamber (sounded more impressive than HT or QT LOL). It's a very inexpensive setup overall but has proven to be efficient and stable. Items used are as follows:

2 Deep Blue Large Sponge Filter driven by a Million Air MA-600 Dual air pump
1 300 watt heater with Ranco temp control
1 100 Gallon Rubbermaid stock tank
1 Pinpoint PH meter
ATO is run off my Apex controller
1 AGA 48 inch strip light
1 Hydor 1400 powerhead



As you can see, there is plenty of surface movement with the air driven sponges and powerhead.

Here are a couple pictures with the air and powerhead off




The ATO bucket and PH Meter.



The float switch mounted with a couple of magnets



The Ranco temp controller. I will NEVER ever NEVER ever run a heater without a controller. Best 45 bucks you can spend!! I have had at least 3 heaters fail which would have cooked a tank.




The baked baking soda water (ALK) drip system. Very easy to make out of a gallon jug. Bake 2 cups of baking soda in the over at 350 for an hour, mix with a gallon of RODI water. You have to keep an eye on PH when running at a SG of 1.008. I usually need to set a drip for a few minutes each morning and evening. I keep the PH in the 7.9 - 8.05 range. Remember, lower the PH less the amount of NH3 (free ammonia) which is the toxic element to fish. But you also need to be vigilant and to make sure you don't have a PH crash. It's not a big problem with me as I run Zeovit and am used to the daily routine of checking parameters and dosing.



Here is the tank with the covering on along with the 48 inch light. Just wanted to make sure the triggers and wrasse don't jump. Great thing about this setup is the fish don't really get spooked so in turn, no jumping. Plus this is great for observing the fish. With the lights out in the room, I can watch them without them knowing I am there. The one drawback with the Rubbermaid is you can't see the fish as easily as in a normal tank. It's not too difficult to pull up a bucket and watch them for a bit. You can watch their behavior and give them a good once over in search for those nasty little white dots.



So there is a rather large hypo setup that can treat a good # of fish. You don't need to have it cycled before you start it up either. Get your fish out of the tank and into relief as soon as possible. I recommend Seachem's Stability along with AmGuard from the get go. During the first couple weeks, keep the water changes large and keep a close eye on ammonia. The SeaChem alert badge is great and I also follow that up with the Multi- Test kit which also measures free ammonia. Remember, when you are using an Ammonia binder, your normal kits ammonia test kits (Salifert etc..) will read very high. Now you can calculate free ammonia with some math using ph and temp, but it's much easier using the badge or test kit designed to detect free ammonia. Also, fish can handle pretty big drops in salinity.. I have read a few research articles where fish were placed directly into hypo saline water (SG 1.008) from normal salinity water and had no trouble. The lower salinity is very therapeutic for the fish as they use much less energy for osmoregulation. Another side benefit is that meds work much better in lower salinity water as well. Now you have to raise salinity slowly as this does place stress on the fish.
I hope this helps someone out who is in the place where their large tank has ich in it and they feel like there is no way out. With a relatively low budget you can treat your fish and leave your DT fallow for 10 weeks. I would caution, if you are not the type of person who keeps a routine and pays attention to details, hypo is most likely not for you. You have to keep that SG rock solid at 1.008 as to give no relief to those nasty little swimmers. And of course, ALWAYS keep a strict QT regimen for all new arrivals… I did that from the beginning, but with one lack of judgment , I have to take my medicine and pay the piper.

[EddieJ]

Day 36 of 42 for the fish in Hypo
Day 40 of 70 of leaving the DT Fallow

Everything is going very smoothly. Fish look great and it's almost time to start slowly raising the SG.

[EddieJ]

Fish made it thru the 42 days of Hypo Salinity and I have started to slowly raise the salinity in the tank. I still have 23 days left of leaving the DT fallow so I will take my time bringing the salinity up. Everybody looks good and healthy!

[EddieJ]

Well, things have gone very well to this point. My fish get to go back home next Sunday!!! Still have a couple water changes to perform to match the salinity of the DT. Glad to report everyone is healthy and active with no sign of those nasty little buggers. Now as for my display tank, well that's a different story LOL!! It was a battle to keep the coral alive without fish... Since I run Zeovit I dialed it back a bit but it still went ultra ultra low nutrient. Now I didn't have a ton of coral so it wasn't too terrible, but I did lose a couple frags and my anemone. I tried to keep the anemone feed but it insisted on looking for a better location. Well, we all know what that means... La Machine! or in other terms, Vortech meet Anemone.... Get the call from the wife that the tank is cloudy and it looks like pieces of lobster or floating.. RIP...

Sure glad the end is in sight, 10 weeks is a long time to go without fish in the DT. I won't call it a total success until I see the fish in the DT for a month with no dots... That should be easy enough as my Hippo Tang will show me real quick....

[EddieJ]

Well, let's see, since my last post..... a couple days after my last post I noticed my Hippo flashing and upon further inspection, (drum roll please) White SPOTS!! This was after 6 solid weeks at 1.008. The hypo was performed flawlessly, calibrated refractometer, ATO etc... I NEVER saw any dots after the 1st couple of days. The fish all looked great the entire time. This happened after the salinity was slowly being raised. My only theory is some late developing cyst that took A LONG TIME to hatch.. My understanding is Hypo does not hurt the cyst, but kills the swimmers when they hatch and look for the host. I am not sure I buy into the strains that can live at 1.008 being the culprit here. Now I am not doubting there is strains that live at 1.008 in the brackish water areas (fish farms, etc..).. I doubt this strain would live at 1.0265 where our reef fish live. It's a simple organism and I would think it would struggle to live in both levels of salt. Anyhow, so after a few choice words, I setup for the tank transfer method... And today they transferred back to the DT which has been fallow for 11+ weeks... So I guess I went ALL IN with the TT method. I am thinking maybe for Hypo to be more effective it needs to run at least 10 weeks, just like the DT being fallow. I guess I am just unlucky. I am hoping the tank transfer method did the trick, it appears to have done it. But just as I may have gotten unlucky with a batch of ich that took much longer to hatch, a short cycle ich could short cycle the tank transfer method. Say a 2 day drop and hatch cycle...

This ordeal started way back on March 26th, here's hoping for a happy ending. All the fish made it thru and look good (except my flame wrasse, his fins are a little beatup, most likely from some aggression due to the cramped space during the TT).

In the end, I don't regret going the Hypo route.. I had the time to do it since the DT was going fallow for 10 weeks.. It was some work watching the PH and salinity levels daily, but I am sure it works well if extended longer. I may have just gotten unlucky..

As for the tank transfer method, absolute piece of cake to do, inexpensive and in theory should be highly effective.. Don't overthink it folks, 2 tanks, 2 heaters, 2 airstones and some pvc.. My fish were not stressed in the least with this method.

[b0bab0ey]

Sometimes I wonder how many more failures are we going to have to read about before hypo is removed from the "sticky" as a proven method for treating Crypto.

[MrTuskfish]

Originally Posted by b0bab0ey

Sometimes I wonder how many more failures are we going to have to read about before hypo is removed from the "sticky" as a proven method for treating Crypto.

b0bab0ey, I'm moving to your side. I've never been a big fan of hypo, but have a lot of respect for many folks who love it. I used to think failures were always due to some error by the hobbyist. Also, I think many hypo failures involve velvet; which is often mis-diagnosed as ich and won't respond to hypo. I have no doubt that it has served many folks very well; but something is wrong. Possibly resistant strains of ich? I just don't know; but this seems to be happening more and more.

[jcw]

Congratulations on your persistence and skill.

I sincerely hope they are ich free. (But if not, it's not the end of the world. I'm going on 8 months since getting it for the second time and no fish deaths)

I would have undoubtedly killed all those fish by now.

Originally Posted by EddieJ

Well, let's see, since my last post..... a couple days after my last post I noticed my Hippo flashing and upon further inspection, (drum roll please) White SPOTS!! This was after 6 solid weeks at 1.008. The hypo was performed flawlessly, calibrated refractometer, ATO etc... I NEVER saw any dots after the 1st couple of days. The fish all looked great the entire time. This happened after the salinity was slowly being raised. My only theory is some late developing cyst that took A LONG TIME to hatch.. My understanding is Hypo does not hurt the cyst, but kills the swimmers when they hatch and look for the host. I am not sure I buy into the strains that can live at 1.008 being the culprit here. Now I am not doubting there is strains that live at 1.008 in the brackish water areas (fish farms, etc..).. I doubt this strain would live at 1.0265 where our reef fish live. It's a simple organism and I would think it would struggle to live in both levels of salt. Anyhow, so after a few choice words, I setup for the tank transfer method... And today they transferred back to the DT which has been fallow for 11+ weeks... So I guess I went ALL IN with the TT method. I am thinking maybe for Hypo to be more effective it needs to run at least 10 weeks, just like the DT being fallow. I guess I am just unlucky. I am hoping the tank transfer method did the trick, it appears to have done it. But just as I may have gotten unlucky with a batch of ich that took much longer to hatch, a short cycle ich could short cycle the tank transfer method. Say a 2 day drop and hatch cycle...

This ordeal started way back on March 26th, here's hoping for a happy ending. All the fish made it thru and look good (except my flame wrasse, his fins are a little beatup, most likely from some aggression due to the cramped space during the TT).

In the end, I don't regret going the Hypo route.. I had the time to do it since the DT was going fallow for 10 weeks.. It was some work watching the PH and salinity levels daily, but I am sure it works well if extended longer. I may have just gotten unlucky..

As for the tank transfer method, absolute piece of cake to do, inexpensive and in theory should be highly effective.. Don't overthink it folks, 2 tanks, 2 heaters, 2 airstones and some pvc.. My fish were not stressed in the least with this method.

[b0bab0ey]

Originally Posted by MrTuskfish

b0bab0ey, I'm moving to your side. I've never been a big fan of hypo, but have a lot of respect for many folks who love it. I used to think failures were always due to some error by the hobbyist. Also, I think many hypo failures involve velvet; which is often mis-diagnosed as ich and won't respond to hypo. I have no doubt that it has served many folks very well; but something is wrong. Possibly resistant strains of ich? I just don't know; but this seems to be happening more and more.

Taken from this article http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa164

More recently, studies have demonstrated different salinity tolerances among strains of Cryptocaryon. Yambot (2003) described one Taiwanese outbreak occurring in sea bream Sparus sarba at a salinity of 5 g/L, and another outbreak in sea perch Lates calcarifer occurring at a salinity of 10 g/L. These two strains were successfully propagated in the laboratory at 7 and 10 g/L, respectively, and are well below previously documented preferred salinities.

While I'm sure encounters with such strains are rare, reading that was enough to make me eliminate hypo as an option. I think snorvich is right, and tank transfer is the best overall option and as close to 100% effective as it gets. The problem is tank transfer isn't for everyone, especially those of us who travel for work or who are kinda lazy when we are home. (Hey, at least I admit it.) That's why I still like copper and now more recently, Chloroquine phosphate. I can just dose it once, turn off the lights and tell my wife to feed the fish while I'm away. Getting her just to do that is enough of a hassle - there's no way she would clean/sterilize a QT every 3 days if I unexpectedly had to leave for a week or so.

[MrTuskfish]

I'm totally sold on TT and want use it whenever I can. I have used Cupramine (prophylacticly)
on all of my new fish for so long, and am very comfortable with it, that its hard to switch. I feel comfortable putting a TT fish into my system and its been years that I would say this about anything but Cu. I have to get comfortable with the no oodinium protection aspect of TT; but I can easily catch that visually.

[geaux xman]

I'm a big fan of cupramine too. I looked at Copps fish collection and when he said he puts all his fish thru cupramine, I started to do the same. That was the best thing I ever did for myself in this hobby.

G'luck on your TT treatment.

[MrTuskfish]

Originally Posted by geaux xman

I'm a big fan of cupramine too. I looked at Copps fish collection and when he said he puts all his fish thru cupramine, I started to do the same. That was the best thing I ever did for myself in this hobby.

G'luck on your TT treatment.

Yeah; Treating all new fish with copper isn't at all unusual. It's not for everyone and requires more info than the copper label product provides.