Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 6

So a few things have happened since I last blogged:

1. Fins has developed some serious HLLE (Head and Lateral Line Erosion, though for now it's confined to his face.) He also has some blotches on his body, which someone on RC claimed was Marine Velvet.
2. There was an ammonia spike in the QT over Passover almost killing the fish.
3. The initial hypo period of three weeks has passed, and no ich is visible.

I'm in a bit of a pickle. The ammonia spike in the QT scared the hell out of me and basically reminded me that I couldn't get away with having all three fish a QT with a biowheel forever. I was hoping to push hypo for closer to five weeks, but I've decided that Fins' condition, coupled with no further signs of ich, warrant a cessation of the treatment. Starting Friday I began raising the salinity in the tank (which was lowered to around 1.011 after I noticed some ich in the initial week of treatment) by adding a half of cup of Instant Ocean per day. Right now the salinity is between 1.016-1.017. I figure by adding a half of cup of salt per day, I'll probably achieve 1.023 over the course of 5-6 days, which is slow enough not to stress out the fish too much. (I've read that raising salinity must be done slowly.)

The plan is to then monitor the fish in the QT tank for another week, and then move Red and Jaws into the Display, which will be void of fish for over a month by then (and hopefully void of any ich.) The wife wants me to leave Fins in the QT until I figure out what the blotches are. I'm a bit torn over this because I'm certain that the HLLE will just intensify in the QT. On the other hand, it will be easier for me to do Vitamin C treatments in the QT.

In later news, the Display is fine. Our new Kenya Tree frag is really big and cool. I love free stuff. Greeny is miraculously still alive as well. It really does not seem interested in Silversides, but it does eat krill, so I'm going to keep feeding it such.

I noticed that the two Odyssea Powerheads just stopped pumping any water, so I took them apart, cleaned them up a little bit, and had them working at full strength for about a day. I've already noticed that the one on the right has slowed down considerably. Here's my feeling: these pumps suck. Do not buy them, no matter how tempted you are to get something cheap. I bought two Odyssea EX250s from Aquatraders.com for $34 about a month ago. They are rated at 250 GPH, which compared to the 295 GPH of the MJ-1200 seemed pretty good, especially given the price of the MJ-1200. Well, huge mistake. I should have just spent $10 more and got two MJ-1200s off Ebay. Learn from my mistake, and don't get this item.