Hyposalinity

[PjFish]

I don’t qt snails but do scrape the heck out of their shells and use a cordless Dremel then rodi dip the shell part .. Ive found numerous flatworm & nudi eggs stuck on their shells in the past..

 

[Patio]

Inverted Reef sells quarantined clean up crew. Keep in mind that the prices reflect their time and effort.

 

[spuri87]

Hypo (Day 4):

Clowns look much better, with lesser white spots than yesterday.. Blue tang finally coming out more in the open, still struggling to eat from the water column, right eye has a larger layer of mucus, as I could see today when it came out in the open, which might be impacting its vision, but eating a lot of nori to make up for it.. it still has white spots on its fins but overall looking much much better! I do see a little bit of scratching from convict, lawnmower blenny and blue tang, but not a lot.

Before 1 fire ends, another 1 begins in this hobby lol.. I have been seeing a dino outbreak in my tank recently.. My phosphates have always been high, but when I check a couple of days back, Hanna Phosphorous ULR showed 200, which apparently is the max range it can show, so phosphates are definitely more than 0.6.. I added rowaphos as per the instructions 2 days back and re-checked again.. it showed 200 again, not sure if I should replace rowaphos now or give it more time (heard it acts super fast, so might have already exhausted itself?.. I have been manually siphoning out redd layer from rocks and sand, but its unbeatable! I received UV yesterday, will plumb it today, heard it may help too.. time will tell! Otherwise will look at other options like chemi clean

Salnity - 1.009
Nitrates - 20
Phosphates > .6
Ammonia - 0
ph - 7.6

Attaching pics from today

 

[MichaelB]

Focus on one aspect at a time. Skip trying to worry about po4 and other things until fish are ok, are my thoughts.

Rowa phos needs to be in a filter sock or area where water flows through it. Just in the tank anywhere it won't really make a difference without waternpassing through it.

 

[dangalang]

Turn your lights off if there are no corals in the tank.

 

[spuri87]

Hypo (Day 6):

Happy thanksgiving y'all!

Blue tang looks really good today, swimming like old days before it caught ich, eating everything from water column, eye issue seems to be resolved as well.. I still see a very few spots on Clowns and some scratching from blenny and convict.. White spots may be a little bit of concern since ich in hypo should have died off in 3-5 days.. flukes is what takes longer, but will give it a few more days to monitor

UV is installed.. Socks--> UV input--> Skimmer--> UV Output in the return chamber.. Water looked a little bit clearer this morning.. Ordered Chemiclean and Microbacter7 to hopefully handle Cyano after hyposalinity is done, but 1 thing at a time as Michael said above

I am turning on the lights for only 1-2 hours a day now, thanks to the suggestion from @dangalang above.. thank you! Mostly for cleaning and examining purposes!

Here are some pics from today of the still infected fish! Spots on Clown tang has disappeared completely

 

[Coral reefer]

This will likely not solve your problem and it’s likely to come back once you raise salinity again. Good luck tho!glad it seems to be helping for now

 

[spuri87]

Thanks @Coral reefer for your reflection on this method.. Just wondering when you say that, is it coz of 1st hand experience doing this, 2nd hand experience hearing about someone else doing this OR just statistical guess? Also, do you believe going fallow for 72 days is the only way to get rid of ich from the tank or are there other ways one can achieve that?

 

[Coral reefer]

Thanks @Coral reefer for your reflection on this method.. Just wondering when you say that, is it coz of 1st hand experience doing this, 2nd hand experience hearing about someone else doing this OR just statistical guess? Also, do you believe going fallow for 72 days is the only way to get rid of ich from the tank or are there other ways one can achieve that?

Experience from a couple different client tanks over the years
I’ve never tried fallow

 

[Alexander1312]

Inverted Reef sells quarantined clean up crew. Keep in mind that the prices reflect their time and effort.

But I do not think they clean the shells, so I might actually buy them from Paul / @PjFish going forward . That sounds like some quarantining I would pay for (vs. just keeping the inverts in elevated temp water that inverted reef does).

 

[Patio]

Haha yeah I don’t know if they clean the shells either. Include me in the @PjFish group buy!

 

[spuri87]

Experience from a couple different client tanks over the years
I’ve never tried fallow

Thanks @Coral reefer .. with due respect, I hope you are wrong this time

 

[spuri87]

Hypo (Day 8):

All fish look ok, very few spots still seen on the clown and I just noticed one other cardinal has 1 cloudy eye.. usually infection is in both eyes, so I am unsure if its due to an injury or flukes/ich.. Will wait and watch..

In last couple of days I saw a bump in Ammonia (0.25).. its expected apparently coz a lot of things are dying in the tank that cannot sustain well at hyposalinity.. I added turbostart 900 and prime to the tank.. will keep an eye.. Also, turned off UV for 5 days yesterday as suggested when adding turbostart to the tank

In other news, my convict completely went rogue and was trying to kill all my Yellow Tangs.. ALL of them, but mainly after the biggest yellow in the tank.. I tried feeding more, it wont eat - wont let eat! I tried mirror, all fish would go fight the mirror, convict was after the yellow's tail and dorsal fins! Yellows havent eater anything in last 2 days, I see damage on Dorsal fins of 2 of the yellows, one kinda moderately bad.. After 1 hour of fighting and breaking down my entire aqua-scape, I finally caught him and put him in the sump.. Yellows got back to eating and grazing and hopefully peace reigns! Not sure, but maybe its coz I turned off the lights and there was lesser algae for all of them that triggered this behavior, but this wasnt normal bullying - consistent pestering and going after the dorsal fin for 2 days straight while yellows trying to tail-slap consistently (video attached)! it would go anything and everything that looked yellow.

 

[Turkeysammich]

Any time you move/ rearrange aqua scape, remove a fish, change something. you reset the pecking order of the aquarium. I believe fish when scared, release a pheromone into the water. Other fish pick up on it and attack. It’s the survival of the fittest

 

[spuri87]

Any time you move/ rearrange aqua scape, remove a fish, change something. you reset the pecking order of the aquarium. I believe fish when scared, release a pheromone into the water. Other fish pick up on it and attack. It’s the survival of the fittest

Do you think changing the lighting schedule might have triggered this? nothing else changed.. well, I guess Hypo in itself is a big change for the fish which might have triggered this as well. Didnt move aqua-scape, add/remove any fish recently (until today when trying to catch the convict!)

 

[Turkeysammich]

Do you think changing the lighting schedule might have triggered this? nothing else changed.. well, I guess Hypo in itself is a big change for the fish which might have triggered this as well. Didnt move aqua-scape, add/remove any fish recently (until today when trying to catch the convict!)

Dunno. I wasn’t there to see what actually happened. But I can tell you that it was in this past week. Old school reefer always tell new reefers to write everything down that you did. So you can reference it back no matter how small the details. The best reefers are extremely detailed.

 

[spuri87]

Dunno. I wasn’t there to see what actually happened. But I can tell you that it was in this past week. Old school reefer always tell new reefers to write everything down that you did. So you can reference it back no matter how small the details. The best reefers are extremely detailed.

thanks @Turkeysammich .. I just wanted to create this journal so that I can get advice from all the experienced folks here and also could go back to it in case things go south in next month or so of hypo!

Who knows, 5 years down the line someone new to this forum looks at this journal and learns from my mistakes

 

[Coral reefer]

I dont feel like it’s all that strange. I’ve seen it several times where a group of fish go from “just fine” to “there’s no stopping this madness” from one day to the next.
Difference of feeding? Hormones related to lighting? Chemicals dumping into the water other fish pick up on? Sexual maturity? Honestly no clue?
I’ve seen it more than once though.
I had two blue tangs that were fine for a long g time until…they weren’t. I’ll never do that again. It was sad and ugly.
I’ve seen six line wrasses go from fine to kill everything they can. On and on. It happens fast, like bad things tend to do unfortunately

 

[PjFish]

Had two fox faces for years then one day was a WWF Double Header! Had to separate PIF.. Same with a six line and also a large clown trigger who started taking small pieces outa my arms!! . Hard to say with all you have going on but sure they’re definitely stressed just have extra nori available for them through the day! Maybe live black worms or brine shrimp for the finicky..

 

[spuri87]

thank you all, good to know this is common! How long shall I keep him in the sump? I know there are no guarantees if he will behave after adding him back, but I love this health convict and would like to give him a 2nd chance, specially coz he was doing pretty well during his 1st 50 days with the same set of fish! I am thinking maybe keep him in there until the end of hypo (about a month from now)?