What I do is drip till the water lever doubles and I remove half of the water and do this about three times if the sg is with in .001 there going in the tank. Most of my fish are only driped a max 30 min and that is to manly match ph as the overnight flight really trows it out of wack. I some times add vinegar to balance out the ph.
The longer you drip the harder it is on the fish. Most ppl just drive the fish home from the lfs 30 min tops and the sg is close. So a short drip will work. When I get fish they were boxed about 5-8 hrs before the flight leaves from la then here and to the shop. Where the sg from the wholesaler is really low 1.015-1.019and we bring it up to about 1.023.
I personally don’t use buckets when I acclimate - not often anyway. I float the bag to get temp right, open bag and secure while still floating, add small amounts of tank water to bag over 1/2 hour to get salinity to match. Remove fish from bag and add to tank - pray tomato clown doesn’t kill it in seconds.
This enables acclimating without temperature fluctuations.
Update: Picked up a replacement naso. Seems healthy and was eating the next morning. However, the original Naso has infected the tank with ICH. Today the replacement Naso has it, and so does Sushi, the clownfish I won from the DRC raffle from Jason.
I’m putting this up early for your opinions…I’ll be researching the effects on ICH medication on beneficial bacteria, and when to add corals back but…
Since I dont yet have a crazy ammount of corals, and the ones I do can be easily removed…I was thinking about putting the corals in a QT tank since I dont have to worry about fish waste/food/ammonia with them, and replacing a few gallons of water a week should suffice. Then I would treat the display tank for ICH.
Thoughts?
Silly fish…corals are much less stressfull on me sofar!
You can’t treat a display tank with ich meds the copper gets in to the rock, sand, and silicone thus making it impossible to keep corals again. Remove the fish, place in to a hospital tank treat hospital tank with ich meds. Leave DT fishless for 8 weeks. Ich will complete the life cycle and die off without a host.
There are no short cuts to this one.
I agree no ich chemicals in tank with LR and Substrate, if you really wanted to go the route of keeping the fish in the display I would go for Hypo-salinity and realize your will end up with a least a mini cycle as bacteria strains often have narrow ranges they with reproduce in.
Hyposalinity or medication? If medication, which is your preference?
I’ll be headed out to the LFS for meds tonight if thats what you guys like. Hyposalinity seems to be the easiest on the fish, but also the most work. Its for sure Ich too. I remember it from my freshwater days, and the white spots are starting to popup on the Niger trigger. Learning the QT lesson the hard way! I’ll be using water from the DT for the initial fill of the QT.
20gal long, HOB filter w/ floos, Heater, and some 2" PVC elbows for shelter. Gonna be tight for a Naso (3"), Niger (3"), 2 clowns (2"), 2 chromis (3" & 2").
This is gonna be FUN! Thanks again for all the advise!
I like copper as you can keep your parameters close and copper will also treat marine velvet.
Just after you are done treatment run carbon for a day or two before you put the fish back.
When I add a new fish to my system I always quarantine. I treat with cuppramine for a week then start hyposalinity and feed prazipro. I think this regement would serve you well since your display tank must remain fallow for 8 weeks. In order to break the ich life cycle.
Well, the tank is just over 3 weeks into being fallow…we’re 1/3 of the way there… #@$^ I’m thinking I might actually re aquascape the current pile of rubble that resulted in trying to get all the fish out. I’ve lost all the fish but one blue/green chromis. The Naso and the Niger passed from ICH. Both of the perc’s passed on the same night, so I’m guessing an ammonia spike killed them due to me not having a prepared QT and/or any seeded filter media. I tried using Amquel and water changes, but apparently it wasn’t enough.
Learning the hard way, but atleast we’re learning.
Wow, hate to hear about all the death Rob. Live and learn, but learning the hard way sucks. So, if you do decide to re aquascape…will you be redoing the whole tank or just treat it with meds?
With the aquascape, I had to pull out some of the rocks to take down the two structures I had setup. After getting all the fish out of the DT I just tossed the rocks back in random piles, so it looks a mess and I need to re-aquascape at this point. There won’t be any need to treat the tank as I’m pretty much starving the Ich parasite and interrupting its life cycle by letting the tank sit fishless for 9weeks.