DT & Hyposalinity.

I've just noticed some black ich on both of my clowns, I really do need to be sure that they do well (ORA clowns, pretty pricey pair.) I've learned that black ich (actually a type of worm) will reside in your sand bed or elsewhere for a while even though there are no fish to eat off of. I don't want to wait 2-3 months (+ I can't have fish in QT while I'm on vacation next month) so, I sort of devised a way to hopefully kill off any existing black ich in my tank.

I have a spare 10g with a quad t5 fixture and a few power filters that I can use to set up a QT, but it wouldn't be for the fish. What if I were to remove all inverts and corals, place them into the QT and put the DT into hyposalinity with the fish, snails, and hermits?

I'd assume that it wouldn't take nearly as long as a wait for the worms to die off if I'm doing hypo-salinity in the DT and I'd be able to have the clowns heal in the lower salinity. I just don't know the affects it would have on my pods, bristleworms, and other life I'm trying to keep. + I've heard that this will kill aiptasia, I'd hope that it would also get rid of my hydroid problem..

Would a conch be able to survive in hypo? I've heard snails and hermits can survive in lower salt levels, would a conch fall into the same class as a snail? What would I drop my salinity down to? 1.013? Lower? Should I do a fw dip on all my fish during hyposalinity? Would I just do a water change except use freshwater to lower salinity? Or drop the level down and let my auto top off slowly lower salinity. So many questions :-/

I'd like to have some opinion on what to do, not so confident with using medications, but I will if I need to. + I do have a UV sterilizer on my DT, but I doubt that would really affect the speed at which the parasite will spread.

Thanks! ;D

 

Hypo is between 1.08-.09 specific gravity.

 

Bump for the night, going to be putting corals into QT & lowering salinity to 0.020, plunging into hyposalinity when I get a few opinions..

 

To clarify, you are going to run the SG at 1.020 with corals in the tank? Or moving corals and running display at 1.020?

 

Moving corals and inverts to quarantine and running display at 1.010... 1.020 is the current SG that I've dropped it down to.

 

I would not try to keep corals at 1.020 long term or short term. Are you measuring using a hydrometer or refractometer?

As long as you are going all the way down to 1.010 you might as well go to 1.008 since some strains of Marine Ich and other parasites may still be resistant 1.010. Any thing 1.013 or higher is a waste of time IMO.

I would double check your values, because you should be seeing some stressed corals at 1.020. Be careful bringing the SG back up come time, it's a lot more stressful. JM2C

 

Oh no, the SG in the quarantine that has the corals is reading at 1.025, the display is at 1.020. I'm going to drop it down to 1.008 instead of 1.010, as you suggested. I am using a refractometer & calibrating it before each use.

I did also do a fw dip on both of the infected clowns, the rest of the fish I don't see any black spots on at the minute. How long do you think I would need to keep the display on hypo for black ich to leave the sand bed?

Thanks! ;D