First Video and our newest addition, BLELLOW!

I wanted to get some footage of the new tank and the fish online earlier, but I never got around to it. And then we had the ich episode, which set things back for awhile. Well, the hyposalinity treatment is finally over. I moved Fins, Red, and Jaws back to the display tank after a month in the QT, and after a week of raising the salinity. I'm not sure whether ending the hypo treatment was premature or not. Some of the articles I read said that hypo should be done for about four weeks, which is what I did, but other people said eight weeks. I decided to move them out after a couple of close scares in the QT (there was an ammonia spike which almost killed them) and because Fins's HLLE (Head and Lateral Line) was clearly worsening in that tank.


But so far, so good. I haven't seen any ich on the fish since the first week of hypo, and the tank was empty of fish for a month, so hopefully it's all gone. If not, I'll probably resolve to a strong feeding regiment rather than trying out Hypo again. I think it probably works, but you also probably need a bigger QT and more time for water changes, neither of which I have.


I'll definitely be quarantining all the fish henceforth.


Our newest addition is Blellow, the bicolor angel (Centropyge bicolor.) I actually purchased him right as I started the hypo treatment but because he was already ich free (I picked him up from a tear down) I had nowhere to put him. So I had my mom babysit him in her kitchen tank, which was great because she took good care of him and somehow thought of his name. C and I were at a total loss, and then mom just said "Blellow misses you." She really connects to the fish. Blellow is a stunning fish and everyone seems happy, as you can now see. Enjoy the show!

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.

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 5

Just a quick update. As of today, all three fish are doing fine in the QT. So far, none of the fish have shown any signs of ich. Fins has been in there the longest (1 week today), but she continues to eat normally and has remained fat. Perhaps because of prior experience with tangs I do fear an onset of lateral line; it's a little hard to tell whether she's showing some head erosion because of the actinic light that I have in the QT. If something is going on, it's happening slowly, which is good. So far her body is free from any erosion.

Red is doing well--he's not showing any signs of ich since entering the tank. I suppose the real test will be in a couple of weeks. If the fish remain ich free through the expected ich cycle, then I'll feel comfortable that the hypo has worked.

Meanwhile Jaws continues to do his thing with the sand. He appears totally unaffected by the move. I guess that means that netting him, the ten hour drip acclimation to hypo and his two attempts to jump out of the acclimation bucket didn't stress him out as much as I originally feared.

I continue to add PH Buffer, but I think the PH is beginning to normalize. The hydrometer reads a steady 1.013.

In sum, so far so good. I'm happy with the decision to do Hypo.

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 4

Well, the plan has worked to perfection thus far. Yesterday I completed the madness around 10 pm, when I released Jaws and Red into the 29 gallon tank. I drip acclimated them in the same bucket for about 10 hours. In other words, the drop in salinity was about 4 times faster for them than it was for Fins. Nevertheless, they appear to be fine. They are both swimming around and eating, and Jaws is doing his thing with the sand in that tank.

It definitely helped that I was able to find two pieces of plaster coral in the basement of my house and a little freshwater fish house for the fish to hide in. Jaws appeared to be a bit more stressed when I eventually threw the two of them in the tank. His time in the bucket was nothing short of stressful. Two times--once at the beginning of acclimation and once at the end--he tried jumping out of the bucket and was almost successful. Luckily in both cases he plopped right back into the water, but I was definitely surprised to see how high these fish can jump (there was about 2 inches of water in the bucket, which is itself more than 12 inches tall, and Jaws managed to jump about six inches above the bucket.)

But I'm happy to say that the two of them appear to be doing fine today, and that the hypo appears to be working. So far there is no sign of ich on any of the fish and they are still eating and swimming normally. Fins doesn't seem to mind his former tankmates sharing the cramped space, which is nice as well.

In sum, it appears okay to lower the salinity on a clown and goby faster than it might be for a tang. Meanwhile, the three fish appear to be fine together in the 29 gallon tank. Fins even looks less stressed out now, especially with the rocks in place.

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 3

Ah, the excitement never ceases in our tank.

The wife, who is an expert at spotting ich, called me over to take a look at Red last night after shabbos. It's a good thing she looks, because I'm pretty much in denial that any of my fish could ever have a disease. In any case, it was pretty inevitable. If Fins had ich, then removing Fins from the tank wasn't going to solve the problem. Once the ich is in the water it will find a host. It will only die if it has no fish to host it. With Red and Jaws still in the display tank, the ich wasn't going anywhere.

So Red has ich, and Jaws--while still not showing any signs of it--will get it eventually. Now the question is what to do about it. The big issue is that I've already started hypo on Fins, which means that the salinity in the QT is very low, and throwing Red and Jaws inside will just kill them through shock. I contemplated setting up another QT, but without a viable source of biological filtration on hand, I decided that they've got a better shot in the QT. So what I'm drip acclimating them to the lower salinity over the course of the day. It's a long time for a couple of fish to sit in a bucket, but I figure that they send fish in bags overnight across the country. Hopefully they'll pull through--the jury is still out.

In the meantime, catching the two was pretty difficult. Red was particularly hard to catch, and it forced me to move all the rocks around, destroying the aquascape that was and forcing me to create a new one. The resulting aquascapes has its pros and cons. On the one hand, we can now see Greeny, who is basically front and center. All of the rockwork is pushed to the back corner of the tank, so everything--the rock, the tank--all look bigger. The con is the effect all the moving will have on the coral. It's all in very different locations now, often further from the light. We'll have to see if it pulls through.

Last night I had a bit of a scare with Fins. I was out all day and didn't have a chance to check on him. When I finally got home at night he was obviously spooked, breathing fast and not eating. The not-eating scared me the most because even in hypo he's been a pretty voracious eater. I quickly realized that I forgot to buffer the water that day and that the PH probaby spiked. I through in a little calcium carbonate and Fins quickly began to calm down.

So to conclude and sum up, I'm worried about the Red and Jaws, and more the Jaws than Red. The display tank is empty of fish, but Pincher and "Emeraldo" the Emerald Crab that came along with Greeny are having a blast playing king of the castle. The hypo treatment in the QT is going to go for about four weeks, at which time I'm going to start raising the salinity. Meanwhile, over the course of that time the display tank will remain free of fish, so that the ich can cycle, find that there is no viable host, and die a much deserved death. In the meantime, here's some shots of Pincher and Greeny.

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 2

A bit of an update on the hyposalinity treatment with Fins. We're now day three of treatment. The salinity in the tank is down to 1.014 and everything appears normal. There are no signs of any ich on the tang, but I'm aiming for at least three weeks of treatment. I believe hyposalinity is supposed to be like a really long freshwater bath, with more permanent results.

Fins continues to eat plenty. Yesterday I fed him a sheet of Nuri (little of which still remains), spectrum pellets and mysis shrimp. Today he'll finish off the rest of the Nuri and in addition to the pellets, I'll probably give him some Formula 2. He's looking fat, which is always important with Tangs because they expend a lot of energy swimming (and I'm guessing even more so in hypo.)

The light in the tank is now on. I actually think Fins kinda likes it--makes him feel a bit more secure, especially without a rock in the tank to hide behind. Speaking of which, I'm going to my mom's today to check on our latest addition, and I hope to pick up a rock I saw in the basement. Hopefully that will make things a bit less boring for Fins.

The big question is now whether I push Fins a little further and drop the salinity down to 1.012 as originally planned. I probably should. It'll probably only take one more gallon of distilled water. Guess I will.

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 1

Well, I've finally tried to do something about it.

Fins, our sailfin tang, didn't show any signs of ich (the dreaded fish parasite Ichthyophthirius multifilis) when we bought him, and the quarantine tank was filled with my mom's porcupine puffer (Diodon holacanthus) whom she wanted out of her tank and sold, so I opted not to quarantine him and threw him into the display tank immediately. I was well aware that tangs often hide ich inside their gills, but I was hoping for the best.

In any case, the first sign manifested on his tailfin about three days later. With the puffer still taking up my QT and not wanting to have to deal with a sick fish, I told myself that it was the nutritionally related fish virus Lymphocystis, and changed up his diet. With time, the sign on the tail was gone. But then it made a strong reappearance and I was convinced that we had ich.

Finally, yesterday and not a moment too soon, someone came and picked up the puffer. I quickly prepped the QT for hyposalinity. Hyposalinity is a method of curing Ich by lowering the specific gravity (the salt content) of the seawater to level that the fish can live but the parasite cannot. Using a hydrometer, tank water generally has a salinity around 1.023. With hypo, the idea is to drop the salinity to 1.012 (if using a hydrometer, which is not recommended, but I don't have a refractometer. If I did, I'd be shooting for 1.008.) Hyposalinity is considered less painful for the fish than other "cures" (i.e., copper or malachite green) which I have used without any success. This is my first time with hypo, so again I'm hoping for the best. For the most part, I'm following instructions found here: http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/fish-diseases-treatments/23131-hyposalinity-treatment-process.html. But be warned, there are a lot of conflicting reports on how to do this. So far, this is what I've done:

1. The quarantine tank is a 29 gallon tank with 3 inches of sand and a biowheel. That's it. I really should have a rock in there for the fish to hide, but I don't yet.
2. After the puffer was sold and out of the QT, I siphoned out five gallons of water from the QT, getting rid of any left over food or puffer poop that fell into the DSB. I made sure to leave enough water so that the biowheel could continue running.
3. I then checked to make sure the specific gravity in my QT was the same as it was in the display tank.
4. Later, after the lights went out in my display tank and my fish were preparing for sleep time, I turned off most of the lights in the house including the lights in the room that housed the quarantine tank to keep it as dark as possible so as not to stress out the fish during the netting and reacclimation process.
5. I then took a plastic bag filled it with water from the display tank, netted and bagged the tang, and brought the bag over to the QT, where it sat in the QT water and began acclimating.
6. Once I acclimated the tang, I let him into the QT and threw a towel over the tank to ensure it would stay dark and less freaky for the fish.
7. The next morning, about 12 hours later, I started the hyposalinity process by going to the store and buying 10 gallons of distilled water.
8. At home, I mixed a gallon of the water with Kent Marine PH Buffer (calcium carbonate) because I read lowering salinity in the tank using RO or Distilled water can cause devastating PH spikes.
9. I poured the water into a gallon jug with an airline valve stuck in the bottom and placed the jug on top of the tank. I opened the valve and started dripping the distilled water into the tank. I'm dripping in the distilled water as I might if I were using Kalkwasser or acclimating a fish.

I've read conflicting reports on how to administer hyposalinity treatment, one saying that rapid salinity change is the best way of killing the ich (which I believe) and one saying that you have to change the salinity slowly so as not to hurt the fish (which I also believe). I followed the latter approach, which called for lowering the salinity over a period of 48 hours with tangs. I figure that the drip method will probably help prevent a PH spike, make it easier for the fish (but not the parasite) to acclimate to the new salinity, and will ensure that the new water will be well mixed with the tank water.

I don't have a powerhead going in the tank. That's also something I've heard mixed opinions about. The plan I'm following from the instructions at Reef Sanctuary, however, say not to have a powerhead.

The tang is breathing a little faster, but I checked the water and everything, including PH is on point so far. He's also eating and swimming around, so it's possible my presence is just freaking him out. Since I started this morning, I've got the water down to about 1.019. I'm guessing that after five gallons I'll probably have to take out and drip in another three gallons to take it down to around 1.012. I'll keep posting progress reports as times goes on. The full treatment takes about four weeks, so we've got a long way to go.