blue tang lived up to one of its nick names..

[psykokid]

yup... Blue tang, aka Hippo Tang aka Ich magnet..

I'd seen some spots on her before from time to time but wasn't sure exactly what they were. Always wary of stuff like that I always kept close watch on her. I had never seen more than a couple spots at a time and they were always gone within 12 to 24 hours.. Well, this time it was more than a couple..  A whole lot of spots. This evening I had to draw the line though when she started flashing on the mag floats and the sand bed. She was obviously uncomfortable so I did a water change and with the leftover water + leftover new salt water + plain RO/DI i set up a hyposaline hospital tank.

I used a piece of ABS pipe that i had leftover from the nitrate reactor build to provide her some shelter. Turns out though that ABS pipe floats.. So I pulled a couple of pieces of LR out of the sump and stuck one small piece on the inside of the tube and another larger piece on top of the tube to weigh it down.  Im going to run and get some pvc tomorrow for her to hide out in and i'm just going to cook off that rock that is in there with her now. I had a filter bag full of carbon that was about to be changed but i figured in lieu of having a proper cultured sponge filter that would work just fine since it's got lots of surface area and is already colonized with bits and bobs from my tank.

Catching her was anti fun as well since tangs will wedge themselves into a crack when they feel threatened. Finally got her out and moved over about 20 minutes ago. I'm going to bed now..

[Bergy]

you can borrow my uv light for a while to run on your 'hypo' tank???

It could be a good test to see how long it takes for the ich to fall off vs going the hypo treatement which will take a month or two...


BTW:   you are right, tangs/especially the hippo tangs are prone to getting ich....  but feeding them right is a good start, although i am sure you do that already, but just sayin''

maybe some nori for lunch???

[psykokid]

i offer all sorts of stuff to that tang.. nori, ulva, pellets, flake, mysis, krill, small bits of silversides.. she eats everything..

[Bergy]

could be environmental...

mayby one it's tank mates are hasslin it??

or like greg's redent episode.... he traced a problem back to a vibration on his return pump...

[psykokid]

only thing i can think of is that the she hasnt had the big pile of rocks to hide in when she slept. Maybe i need to build something in the back for her to hunker down in and feel more secure..

[psykokid]

well, i borrowed a small t5 20" fixture from a friend and she's finally coming out in the open a bit. The whole day i had some tinkle poor light over the tank and she hid out then entire day. I put this light on there and she was out within 10 min. Not bad, i guess the fixture is a current 20" nova extreme. Uses some wonky 18W t5 bulbs which are hard to come by apparently.  Right now its running a single blue 460 nm bulb which is plenty for now.

[Bergy]

im thinking that they are fish food at night, so when the light is poor/week, they are hiding for thier very life


btw, dont foget, i need a water jug today, for tomorrow

[psykokid]

havent forgotten your water jugs, i'm going to bring them over this evening..

[Just_Greg]

i have a couple of very good friends who are good with treatment, and one of them swears by "Quick Cure", which i believe she said is a malachite green/formalin product.  she says it works in about 5 days.

the other recommends quinine sulfate, as she has had some cases of crypto that seems to be resistant to hypo.

since you are going with hypo, keep a close watch on pH, as it tends to drop really fast.  you'll need to buffer the tank occasionally.  7.8 isn't horrible for a hypo tank.

good luck!

[psykokid]

I've got a skimmer running in the tank. Even though its really only skimming out food and a lil bit of fish poo, the main thing i have it there is for is to provide aeration to the water and keep the pH up. The pH has been running around 7.8-7.9 so thats not too bad. Im going to do a water change on the tank today to make sure i keep ammonia and nitrates/nitrites in check.

I went and picked up a 125W jager heater since i didnt have any heaters rated for less than 200W. It was funny, the 75W heater was 22 bucks, the 100 and the 125 were the same price at 25.. that was a no brainer there. Plus i can use it to replace the heater in the main DT since its of questionable vintage. Its a little under rated for the tank volume but the 200W heater rarely turns on. The lights heat the water up to around 81-82 at the max and swings down to 77-78 at night..

[Bergy]

didnt you get some of that 'balance' or whatever it was called to raise the pH???  I hve some if you didnt...

[psykokid]

I have some. as long as the ph doesnt really drop lower than 7.8 i'm ok with that. I can add a little bit of balance to bring it up if need be. She's still got a few spots on her so I'm going to do a FW dip tonite to see if I can knock those off.. Other than the Ich she's super fat and healthy. I dont have a skinny fish in my tank (as evident by my nitrate issues)

[psykokid]

well, she hid out most of yesterday and when she appeared today she was COVERED in spots and her eyes look like she was wearing goggles.. :( I pulled her out of the tank, broke it down and did a water change on the main DT to have some water to re-setup the HT. Im making more RO as we speak and i just about have the salinity down in the HT to where it needs to be..  As soon as i get enough RO water made up i'm going to get it up to temp and match the pH to the little 3 gal tank she's in atm and then do a FW dip before i put her back in the HT.. Going to add some epsom salt to the HT to see if i cant get the popeye look she has to abate a little....  If she doesnt look better in the next day or so im going to do a formalin dip

My wife said to me tonite after she looked at her and saw how bad off she looked, "you need to save dori!" I guess i was talking to someone earlier in the week and she overheard me saying she was just a fish.. Guess my wife's grown quite attached..

[Just_Greg]

Jake,

if you end up having to treat, a good friend is using quinine sulfate with excellent results.  she said she hasn't had a case of crypto is hasn't cured.  another good friend uses Quik Cure, which is a formalin/malachite green preparation.

we have our volitans on hold ATM, as it is shedding with a normal frequency and only has the odd spot on its finnage, but we have the HT up and ready to roll if needed.

[psykokid]

Well, she didnt look any better this evening so i went ahead and got all the stuff to dip her.. Went to the lfs and picked up some quick cure, while i was there i was reading the back of kordon's rid ich+ and it has the same ingredients as quick cure (formalin/malachite green) I remembered that I had some of the rid ich at home from that tank that lanny and I broke down. I picked up the quick cure anyhow, but upon reading the directions the quick cure didnt state what ppm the formalin would be at their recommended dosing (which was to dose the qt and let the fish live in it for a while, not to dip) The rid ich did list the ppm that it would be for a given volume of water per amount of chemical. Their recommended dosing for their product was 5 ml per 10 gallons of water to achieve a 15 ppm solution. So that would break down to .5ml per gallon. We were shooting for a min of 150 ppm for a dip concentrate so we would need to up the dosage to 5ml per gallon to achieve that concentration.

Dipped her in the solution for 10 min, at that point she was starting to stress out a bit (gilling becoming even greater than it had been, very twitchy) so i pulled her, rinsed the her in an intermediate fw bath and then back into the newly changed out (again) HT.. That was about 12. Hopefully she'll look better in the next day or so.. If not I may do an intermediate dip in methelyne blue since it tends to help bloodflow through the gills and calms the fish down a bit and then do the formalin dip again, maybe bringing up the concentration up to 200 ppm. Im just finishing cleaning up now so time to get some shuteye.