Lion with Ick... Copper okay?

[Sun_Shining]

I am dealing with a med - large Volitan Lion with Ick (say 10 inch fin span). I'm pretty sure its ick, but never having dealt with this particular disease before I'm basing it on research.

From what I understand, he was not itching a lot at the beginning, just some white spots (like freshwater ick). In an effort to eradicate it without meds, the temp was increased in tank to about 80. BUT was not kept there for more than a couple days, cause he "looked better". When temp came down briefly , the infestation increased exponentially.

Unfortunately, now, its pretty advanced. Amazingly enough, he is still eating.

He is the only fish in the tank with baserock and sand substrate.

what I'd like to do is:

To cure him:

1) freshwater dip
2) into QT 20gal with copper and lots of areation
3) then into QT with fresh water new filter and nothing else for a couple weeks

To cure tank:

raise the temp in the original tank to 90, and let it sit that way for about 4 weeks.

Will this work? Do you have any other ideas?

[Sun_Shining]

Follow up question:

Since he is the only one in the tank right now (45Gal Corner) could he be treated in the original tank, and knock out both infestations at once?

I have not been able to find a suitable answer to that one

Also, given he is a fairly decently sized lion if I can avoid moving him I will. Don't want to deal with dodging spines if I cna help it.

Thanks.

[Wolverine]

Lionfish can be treated with copper, and I've done it successfully several times in the past, but I personally prefer to use hyposalinity now; it's easier on the animals, and I don't have to pull out the test kits twice a day like with copper.

I'm not sure about raising the temp in the main tank to 90. You'll kill off as much beneficial stuff in the tank as negative. Also, when people talk about increasing the temp speed metabolism, there's a limit to this; it's more of a bell-curve than linear. If you're going to increase the temp, I'd go more to the mid-80's range.

Since you only have baserock and sand, you could consider doing hyposalinity in the main tank. That way you wouldn't put the fish through the stress of moving him.

Dave

[Sun_Shining]

I have read that Hypo-Salinity will only really work on not so advanced cases, where the parasite has not burrowed into the gill mucus. Is that the case?

Currently he is covered with spots, breathing a little harder, and his color is pale.

If hypo salinity will work then GREAT so I don't have to worry about the copper getting constanly bonded to the substrate etc...

[Sun_Shining]

Also, could I combine the increased temp (its currently back at 82) with hyposalinity?

Can the fish take the increased stress of higher temp and lower salinity?

[Wolverine]

I've not heard that about hyposalinity. The also can be true about copper (it won't work in the more advanced cases).

If you're doing hyposalinity, it's probably OK to do it in the main tank. I never use copper in the main tank. Sure, it's a FO right now, but it's not unreasonable to think that you might want to convert to a reef later on.

Dave

[Sun_Shining]

Thanks I'll give it a whirl. Found this reference on Hypo-Salinity Shock therapy...

http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/hyposalinity/a/aahyposalinity.htm

I appreciate your time.

[Wolverine]

Check out Steve Pro's articles on the subject of Ich:
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.php

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-10/sp/feature/index.php

Dave

[55semireef]

I would not use copper even its for a fish only tank. Once you use copper that tank will never be able to be a reef because the copper is absorbed in the glass and spontaneously gets released do to water fluctuations which harms all inverts if not kill them.

[stykthyn]

is the 45 gallon the main tank or a QT tank? with a 10" wingspan that me be a large part of his problem,and I doubt a lion of that size wil lfit in a 20

[Sun_Shining]

On a different topic since the medical aspect of the lion has been covered - Hypo-salinity is the treatment of choice - I'd like to respond to the previous post:

I've always wondered what the thought process was for lions to "need" really big tanks. Yes, the lion would have been hard pressed to fit into a 20. Hence, combined with not wanting to mess with his spines, we kept him in the 45g. But implied in the statement was the thought that the 45g could contribute to the stress cause its too small (unless I mis read it).

I get it with tangs (esp the yellow tang) and some eels, but lions don't seem to move much. We had a lion years ago, that lived in a 125 gal. And honestly it just sat. We even hooked a camera up to watch him to see if he swam alot when we weren't there. He didn't. He picked his perch, and unless we were feeding him, he simply hung out. On the rare occasions he did swim, it was a stately kind of movement. Like a senator moving in front of the cameras. We felt it was a waste of a 125, since we didn't want, at the time, to keep eels or other big predator fish.

In the 45g Corner tank, this fish has more turn radius than the other one did in the 125. The tank is deeper, he has more perches, and he is in the center of the room, and watches everyone go by every day. While the total gallons is less, the shape of the tank appears to be better for his total fin radius. Ultimately, we WILL have to move him, but for now he appears to be fine. He picked up the illness from an event that I can pinpoint, caused by ignorance of the person taking care of at the time.

So, without totally flaming me, am I missing something?

[stykthyn]

mine is constantly on the prowl, as were the 2 previous lions I have kept. undoubtedly some fish are more active than others, I am not trying to flame you. how are the water parameters? Having such a large predator in a smaller tank can cause huge nitrate swings unless the filtration is adequate. This is just my personal experience.

[Sun_Shining]

Didn't take it as a flame, and I will admit that an N of 2 hardly makes our observations applicable to lions as a whole. =)

Water parameters did suffer (the specific event that caused the illness). That has been corrected and we are taking care of the lion.

I guess my main question is this: Is the push to bigger tanks for lions and other larger predaters more insulation against water quality issues for the average keeper, or is there a deeper underlying concern?

For example, we have kept potbelly seahorses (h. abdominalis). They are the largest seahorses. While you CAN keep them successfully and long term in tanks of about 2ft tall, they will not breed. They have an elevator motion that seems to require about a 36" height minimum.

Is there something underlying like that in Lions that is behind the push for larger tanks?

[Wolverine]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7395942#post7395942 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sun_Shining
I guess my main question is this: Is the push to bigger tanks for lions and other larger predaters more insulation against water quality issues for the average keeper, or is there a deeper underlying concern?


Both.

I will give you the viewpoint from someone who has made this mistake. I used to have a volitans lion in a 50g tank.I had done this with the same theory that lionfish are OK in smaller tanks because they don't move much. He usually just hung out in one part of the tank unless it was feeding time, so that supported my decision.
I decided after a time that he had really gotten too big, and I couldn't justify keeping him anymore. His wingspan was well over 12". When I put him in a bucket to take him in, his fins touched all sides at once. I donated him to a 180g tank at a Children's museum where we lived at the time. Once he was in that tank, he was all over the place; he was constantly on the prowl, and I never once saw him just sitting in one place.

I've seen several other instances of this, where you take a lionfish from a small tank and put him in a big one, and suddenly it's a much more active, lively fish.
After that experience, I've decided that I can't justify keeping lionfish in smaller tanks.

Dave

[Sun_Shining]

That is probably the best arguement I've heard for a larger tank for lions.

Thanks.

FYI, hypo-salinity treatment has given him a much improved behavior and attitude.

[cstamper65605]

Sun Shining, please let us know how he does. I just got done with a 6 wk round of hypo for 9 fish from a 240--the tank was fallow for 8 wks. 3 tanks and endless water changes--ugh. All fish but one are back in main tank and doing great. My only problem was the first two days I did copper on one tank with a sailfin tang in it and now he has developed HLLE so that is a real bummer. he is very agressive and I am keeping him by himself, both to dose with garlic and vitamins, and to add him last after we Q our replacement fish, one of which is a tusk fish--my greatest loss. Only lost one other fish, an emporer angel--of course the two most expensive fish, we lost. Good luck with your hypo.

[Sun_Shining]

Okay, here we are day three. Tank temp 80 degrees. First day did a 30% change out salt to fresh. Dropped the salinity to 1.019. Second day did another 30% change out, dropped it to 1.014. Today did a 10% change out and dropped it to 1.012.

Yesterday and today he is looking a lot better. He is up and swimming, he is more energetic and still eating. There are little white specs throughout the water and floating at the surface.. like fine sand right now. There are still specs on him, but much less prevalent. He is no longer breathing hard at all.

As requested I'll keep you posted.

[Sun_Shining]

Okay, so its close to a month at hypo-salinity. He seems to have completely recovered. His color is vibrant again, and the tears in his fins have mostly healed up.

BUT, it appears that he can no longer see really well. I'm not kidding. He registers movement on the other side of the glass, but when I feed him, the food can drift right in front of him and he does not go for it. I know he wants it, cause he prowls where the food gets dropped (its his favorite, shrimp). He just can't see it.

If it lands on his head, then he can eat it (most of the time.). When it lands on the sand, he then goes down and moves his bottom fins all over the sand, almost jiggling them in the sand. when he finds a piece of shrimp he missed on the down, by wiggling his fins on it, he then moves his head down to where his fins were wiggling on the shrimp and eats it.

Is it possible that the extensive bout of ick he had, which did cover his eyes before we were able to eradicate it, caused permanant eye damage?

Has anyone else heard of a mostly blind lion?

[espo72]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7392157#post7392157 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by 55semireef
I would not use copper even its for a fish only tank. Once you use copper that tank will never be able to be a reef because the copper is absorbed in the glass and spontaneously gets released do to water fluctuations which harms all inverts if not kill them.

This is not true...I have had 3 seperate tanks that were treated with Mardel's Coppersafe. At the time they were FO tanks. Now two of them are full blown reef tanks, the other housed an octopus for over a year. I never even changed the sandbed in one reef and the octo tank. I ran a canister with poly filters for a few weeks and did some 50% water changes. I then uses some feather dusters, crabs, snails as guinea pigs for a few weeks. The rest is history...
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/espo72/DSC01927.jpg
here is my 90 gal reef. This tank was a FO tank which was dosed with coppersafe as a parasite preventative.

[emperior911]

i used copper in my fowlr and shortly after converted it to a reef. no problems at all.

[Wolverine]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7589236#post7589236 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by emperior911
i used copper in my fowlr and shortly after converted it to a reef. no problems at all.

I think that in the past people have over-estimated the amount of copper that gets adsorbed onto the glass.

Dave

[LRS078]

There is also different brands of copper with different formulations varying from "better test 3x daily" to "dose and forget for a week". The safest I've found is SeaCure Copper Treatment.... You still need a test kit to monitor your dosing to appropriate levels but it doesn't swing as wildly and goes away with ANY carbon/purogen(sp?) use.

As for lion blindness, do a search on wetwebmedia.com should have the info you need.

Hope this helps...