hyposalinity

[kizkiz]

read this elsewhere

http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/images/statusicon/post_old.gif 04-09-06, 09:49 PM
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You drop the salinity in the tank to below 1.017 (some say as low as 1.009 but IMHE 1.015 is about as far as I would take it.)

The infectious stages of marine white spot, the tomites, can't survive the low salinity and die off. But it can take a long time to cure a tank like this, maybe a month to 6 weeks. However, you can keep on with a reef safe cure whist you are carrying out hyposalinity

Most inverts are OK with it, but it can be stressful for shrimps and urchins/starfish/brittle stars


One question - how quickly do you lower the slainity? we talking 0.001 a day kind of level or quicker?

My two flame angels are covered in what looks like white spot. Very similar in sight to freshwater white spot. It's spread from just the tails to everywhere in about 2 days :eek:
Male is still swimming and feeding ok, but the female is today sitting on the floor and not making too much effort to eat :(
been feeding new era flake, but only just hit the aegis phase last week.

Mainly for wombat too - what is the best reef safe WS medication you'd recommend trying? figure dosing to keep it in check somewhat while lowering salinity might help, coupled with the new era flake.
No qt myself, but then i doubt i could catch them anyway. lol

thanks in advance

[Wombat]

Well that's the $64,000 question the quicker you do it the more stress you will put on animals that are sensitive to osmotic changes (shrimps urchins etc) but at 0.001 per day that will take around 10 days from 1.025 to 1.015. so you runt eh risk of the white spot getting out of hand in that time frame

Personally I' go 0.002-3 per day but slowly maybe in two or three goes every 24 hours if possible

[Wombat]

Well that's the $64,000 question the quicker you do it the more stress you will put on animals that are sensitive to osmotic changes (shrimps urchins etc) but at 0.001 per day that will take around 10 days from 1.025 to 1.015. So you run the risk of the white spot getting out of hand in that time frame

Personally I'd go 0.002-3 per day but slowly maybe in two or three goes every 24 hours if possible

As for reef safe's I don't recommend specific products (found that to be a bit of a minefield and I'm not commercial so don't go down that road) but I'd look for products with quinine or fucidic acid in them. You can get quinine (and fucidic acid) from your vet and you want dose of about 1mg/l. But Quinine isn't tolerated well by corals or clams

[Wombat]

odd posted twice? Sorry

[mysticwave]

sorry to jump in this thread kiz and wombat.

so suppose you have now got the s.g at 1.017, how long a period should you leave this level before bringing it up to normal of 1.025/1.026? and do you bring up 0.001 per day?

Many thanks.
CC

[Wombat]

Around 6-8 weeks

Yes bring it back up slowly around 0.001/ da will be fine

[mysticwave]

Many thanks Wombat. :-)

[kulashaker]

1.015 will not kill marine Ich, this will only help your fish fight the infection. 1.009 is around the level that the whitespot parasite will die due to the amount of water that it takes on board and cannot cope with before exploding, your corals will not like being dropped to 1.015 and some will close up and maybe even give up altogether after a sustained time. This I know because I am 12 weeks into trying to fight this bloody nightmare and have possibly read everything available to cure my problem. For other info read my Whitespot nightmare thread. Sorry to jump in.
Deano.

[Wombat]

As for hyposalinity as I said in the original post I personally wouldn’t go below 1.015 in a reef tank as many delicate invertebrates won’t survive 1.009 for long and I would advise people with a lot of rare and expensive inverts to treat the fish separate in a QT tank (which I would suggest would be best practice for a reef tank anyway)
Of course you can treat at 1.009 and yes it will clear the parasite faster but you run the risk of killing a lot of inverts and some fish don’t tolerate low salinity well either

[kulashaker]

Isn't it strange that everyone has they're own little ways of dealing with the same problems yet some things work in one tank but not in another? I guess there are so many variables in this game there is probably never going to be A definative answer?

[Wombat]

I guess one of the reasons for that is each tank is different re stock, amount of living rock, fish that live in it etc and each of these variables will contribute to different outcomes with each treatment

Also there are many strains of C. irritans some are hyposalinity resistant others possess evidence of resistance to other treatments