Troutnut
02/25/2009, 07:17 PM
I've had my ocellaris clown and a few chromis in a 10 gallon hyposaline quarantine tank for a few weeks now because they were exposed to some other fish that died from ich. I ran into trouble with the clown when I started raising the salinity back up, and I'm not sure how to interpret the symptoms.
First, to be honest, although I was aiming for a sg of around 1.009 for the hyposalinity treatment I'm not sure I actually got that low. I may have bottomed out around 1.010-1.011, and I think it dipped a bit higher once in a while as I didn't keep up with the evaporation. I should have been watching it more closely... and now I'm not sure if it killed off the ich or not.
A few days ago everyone was looking good so I decided to start raising the salinity back up, aiming for about .001 to .002 sg per day. By the time I got up to about 1.016, my ocellaris clown wasn't eating, was swimming with his mouth unnaturally agape, and had little white ich-looking flakes all over his body.
I thought surely it was ich that I hadn't eradicated, and I've started lowering the salinity again, down to sg 1.013 now. In barely 24 hours the clown seems good as new... no sign of ich-like spots, breathing normally, and eating.
Throughout the whole ordeal, I didn't see any bad symptoms in my bluegreen chromis.
So, what's going on here?
I've got 2 guesses:
1) He's got ich, but it's neither dying nor showing itself at the salinity range I'm at. When I raised it, the ich really broke out, and when I lowered it, the parasites went into "remission," if such a thing is possible.
2) Maybe I was raising the salinity a little bit too fast, which messed with its skin and gills and caused ich-like symptoms?
I really want to get these guys back in the main tank ASAP so they're in decent habitat again. Should I give up and do another 2 weeks at carefully monitored 1.009? Or try raising the salinity more slowly and see if they do better?
First, to be honest, although I was aiming for a sg of around 1.009 for the hyposalinity treatment I'm not sure I actually got that low. I may have bottomed out around 1.010-1.011, and I think it dipped a bit higher once in a while as I didn't keep up with the evaporation. I should have been watching it more closely... and now I'm not sure if it killed off the ich or not.
A few days ago everyone was looking good so I decided to start raising the salinity back up, aiming for about .001 to .002 sg per day. By the time I got up to about 1.016, my ocellaris clown wasn't eating, was swimming with his mouth unnaturally agape, and had little white ich-looking flakes all over his body.
I thought surely it was ich that I hadn't eradicated, and I've started lowering the salinity again, down to sg 1.013 now. In barely 24 hours the clown seems good as new... no sign of ich-like spots, breathing normally, and eating.
Throughout the whole ordeal, I didn't see any bad symptoms in my bluegreen chromis.
So, what's going on here?
I've got 2 guesses:
1) He's got ich, but it's neither dying nor showing itself at the salinity range I'm at. When I raised it, the ich really broke out, and when I lowered it, the parasites went into "remission," if such a thing is possible.
2) Maybe I was raising the salinity a little bit too fast, which messed with its skin and gills and caused ich-like symptoms?
I really want to get these guys back in the main tank ASAP so they're in decent habitat again. Should I give up and do another 2 weeks at carefully monitored 1.009? Or try raising the salinity more slowly and see if they do better?