need help with quarantine!

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saltwater84

Large Fish
#1
Apr 11, 2006
261
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#1
Hi guys, can you guys give me some advise about quarantining fish. I am planing to use a 20 gallons, filled the tank about to half. I know that hyposalinity and copper treatment are the only proven methonds, but I don't have the proper equiments to correct treat the fish with those treatments. What kind of ich medicine do you guys have the most success on?

will be using a pegiun 200 as filter, 100 watts heater, 18watts of live.
Still debating, my filter has not been estasblish with benfiticial bacterias, should I put some live rock and live sand in the tank as well?

oH and one more questions, could I house two fishes, blue tangs (3-4 inches), and a emperor angelfisht(3-4 inches) in that 20gals half filled with water for at leat 4-6 weeks?
 

Joe Fish

Joe Fish

Superstar Fish
#2
Apr 21, 2006
2,126
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Penn State
josy.isa-geek.com
#2
I don't think I found any good things about the other ich treatments. I used hypo with success. I used a 10 and a 15 I had. I would think it would be ok for them, but might be a little stressful. The bacteria will die with either of the two methods mentioned above.
 

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saltwater84

Large Fish
#3
Apr 11, 2006
261
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#3
what about the cycling process? if there is no bacteria in the tank, then amononia will shoot up like crazy. I would love to treat it with hyposalinity,but I need to treat the fish now, don't have the proper measuring equiment so I bought rid-ick.

The lps guy told me that rid-ick is some-what reef safe?? He said that he treated his reef tank with rid-ick before and only lost a small coral.

Is rid-ick somewhat reef safe?????????
 

Joe Fish

Joe Fish

Superstar Fish
#4
Apr 21, 2006
2,126
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josy.isa-geek.com
#4
I do not know for sure, but from what everyone else says I wouldn't trust it. I don't think you can have an effective ich treatment and have it reef safe. The QT does have to go through a cycle so yes you are right. You can start cycle with something from your tank. It will speed it up a lot. After the QT is done I wouldn't put it back in the display until you have boiled the piece. Let your display go fallow for 4 to 6 weeks and the display will be ich free.
 

1979camaro

1979camaro

Ultimate Fish
#5
Oct 22, 2002
5,862
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#5
As joe has said, you can toss a piece of live rock in your QT to cycle it. Another thing you can do (my approach) is leave the filter media for your QT sitting in your sump or overflow or somewhere in the display when not in use (obviously if you copper/hypo the QT you need to get new filter media) to keep it full of bacteria
 

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saltwater84

Large Fish
#8
Apr 11, 2006
261
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#8
I just got a 75 gallons tank, and it has been set up for at leat a month now, I will be putting them in the 75 gals tank. I figure that this would be enought space to keep them for at least a year or two.
 

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saltwater84

Large Fish
#9
Apr 11, 2006
261
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0
#9
1979camaro said:
As joe has said, you can toss a piece of live rock in your QT to cycle it. Another thing you can do (my approach) is leave the filter media for your QT sitting in your sump or overflow or somewhere in the display when not in use (obviously if you copper/hypo the QT you need to get new filter media) to keep it full of bacteria
Click to expand...

Hey 1979camaro, do you know where the saltwater fish warehouse in hayward is located at?
 

T

TheFool

Large Fish
#11
Apr 19, 2006
323
2
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#11
A bunch of stuff here.... first of all I'd the QT is too small for those two fish I would think, and frankly the 75 is as well.
If you have the salt to make saltwater you can make it at half strengh so to say you don't have the stuff to do hypo makes no sense to me...... pretty much everything else is unproven or unreliable, ridIch is quite rubbish.
Taking LR thro' hypo will kill some stuff, but the bacteria are actually unlikely to be killed, they are very tolerant of varying salinity. Live sand is a bad call as it interferes with using other meds. I would seed the filter with some junk live rock.
I assume you haven't bothered reading the QT sticky.....
 

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saltwater84

Large Fish
#16
Apr 11, 2006
261
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#16
forget it guys, I'm going with hyposalinity. It seem like rid-ich does not help it at all, actually, my blue tang looks worse. Do you guys think a instant ocean hydrometer made by marine lab will be accurate enough, I want to get a refactormeter but my lps does not have any. i need it now.
 

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TheFool

Large Fish
#17
Apr 19, 2006
323
2
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#17
RidIch is ranked rubbish as it is composed of two meds not rated as useful for ich normally and in a dose as described that is far lower than is normally effective. There are reportso f it working, and I guess it might on a very, very weak strain but frankly I think a lot of newbies can't diagnose ich properly - they see some white spotson their fish, hope for the best , add garlic , Kent RX-P or whatever and two days later it's a miracle, they cured ich (that was really sand grains or floc debris)
I would not normally hail the swing arm hydrometer as being too good, but if kept clean and used on a LEVEL surface (measure with spirit level) they can be reliable (search for a test by Steven Pro from last year). Certianly you can use one to start you with hypo - while 1.010 is the optimum a lot of strains of ich will expire at 1.013, 1.014 as you go lower. Remember it will take a few days to show an effect, so I hope you haven't waited too long - is the fish still eating?
 

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saltwater84

Large Fish
#18
Apr 11, 2006
261
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0
#18
Hey thefool, thanks for your advise, I appreciate it. Yes the emperor angelfish is still eating and doing fine, the blue tang got a little worse since I put her in the qt tank but she is still eating. I don't know, this is my first time trying to qt a fish, but it seems like dosing the rid-ich seems to worsen the condition. It seems like instead of having large white spot, now she has lots of little crystal like spot all over her body. It just made me more frustrating, I think the infection all started with the blue hippo tang I bought for my daughter.

I had went to the petstore and talk to the owner and he said rid-ich has worked for him when he treated his reef-tank with it. It doesn't look very promising for me now, but the guy told me that it is suppose to get worse before it could get better if the med was use properly. Weird, I didn't believe him.

Since my qt tank has just started and there is nothing in the tank to keep down the amonia level, how often do I have to do water change when I treat my fishs with hyposalinity?
 

Joe Fish

Joe Fish

Superstar Fish
#19
Apr 21, 2006
2,126
1
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Penn State
josy.isa-geek.com
#19
Most treatments are supposed to make the cyst on the fish burst in turn killing the parasite like hypo will do. You want to start to count down the last time you see white dots on the fish. So as soon as you don't see any more white dots then QT for 6 weeks past that. I would say daily water changes to keep the water params in check.
 

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