Clowns With Whitespot

[jtnova13]

Hey guys,

So i just got my first two fish (perculas) 3 days ago. They were swimming and eating fine. This morning i noticed very small white dots on them which I assume is whitespot. Also, they are only hanging out in the corner by my overflow and near the surface of the water.

Can I just chuck them in a 10 gallon or so tank with a piece of live rock and a powerhead and then treat them with copper?

Can they recover without treatment? They are the only two fish in the tank, so it's not stress from other fish. I acclimatised them for 1.5 hours before introducing to my tank.

I couldn't get them to eat saltwater flakes, but they were taking spirulina. I will get some different food this weekend.

My tank params are as follows:

ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: ~0 hard to tell
pH: 8.3
Temp: 78F
phosphate: 0

 

[AK77]

Are you sure its whitespot and not brooklynella ? Can you post some clear pictures for people to have a look?

 

[jtnova13]

i'm pretty sure it's crypto. They look like tiny grains of salt. I am at work, will take pictures when I get home later.

 

[AK77]

You could do that. Just don't plan on using the LR again in your main tank if you keep corals or inverts.

Do you have a UV sterilizer unit or ozonizer?

 

[jtnova13]

Interesting development.

I came home today and what used to be bright white dots are gone. The fish are much more active than they were this morning...

any ideas? Can fish cure themselves of ich?


AK, I don't have a UV sterilizer or ozonizer. I heard ozonizer is dangerous for nubs to handle. Will a UV prevent further ich outbreaks if this was ich?

 

[Truck]

i wouldnt use UV sterilisers they put problems on hold rather than getting rid of them

 

[AK77]

i wouldnt use UV sterilisers they put problems on hold rather than getting rid of them

If its hooked up to the quarantine/hospital tank, wouldn't it just sterilize the water to ensure that the fish eventually became parasite free?

 

[Truck]

i wouldnt use UV sterilisers they put problems on hold rather than getting rid of them

If its hooked up to the quarantine/hospital tank, wouldn't it just sterilize the water to ensure that the fish eventually became parasite free?

no because parasites will hide in the substrate and the substrate doesnt pass through the sterilizer

i hope rabbut comes along as he will explain it well about why UV's arent affective in most cases

 

[jtnova13]

so i just read about the stages of ich.

Long story short?
Stage 1: looks like salt crystals on the fish (i had that)
stage 2: salt crystals fall into sand bed
stage 3: crystals turn into lots of ich and swim around searching for hosts
stage 4: find host, rinse and repeat

So, does this mean they haven't gotten rid of the ich? Should I wait it out before quarantining since they are the only fish in the tank? If it returns that means they went through the cycle, if it doesn't that means they beat it without treatment?

I am thinking the best course of action is to qt the clowns, bump my tank temperature to like 85 to speed the ich lifecycle up and dose the clowns with some meds while they are in qt.

How would you set up the qt tank so there is no LR in it?

 

[AK77]

i wouldnt use UV sterilisers they put problems on hold rather than getting rid of them

If its hooked up to the quarantine/hospital tank, wouldn't it just sterilize the water to ensure that the fish eventually became parasite free?

no because parasites will hide in the substrate and the substrate doesnt pass through the sterilizer

i hope rabbut comes along as he will explain it well about why UV's arent affective in most cases

Why would you have substrate in a hospital tank? I know that Ich, once it emerges from the cyst swims its way down to the substrate, until it develops into the stage where its looking for a host and free swimming again. Surely if there is no substrate for it to hide, and in a hospital/quarantine tank there is no reason to have any, that UV should be fairly effective in treating them.

 

[Truck]

i wouldnt use UV sterilisers they put problems on hold rather than getting rid of them

If its hooked up to the quarantine/hospital tank, wouldn't it just sterilize the water to ensure that the fish eventually became parasite free?

no because parasites will hide in the substrate and the substrate doesnt pass through the sterilizer

i hope rabbut comes along as he will explain it well about why UV's arent affective in most cases

Why would you have substrate in a hospital tank? I know that Ich, once it emerges from the cyst swims its way down to the substrate, until it develops into the stage where its looking for a host and free swimming again. Surely if there is no substrate for it to hide, and in a hospital/quarantine tank there is no reason to have any, that UV should be fairly effective in treating them.

even so rock will also harbour the parasite and you cant guarantee that they will all pass through the UV

 

[AK77]

so i just read about the stages of ich.

Long story short?
Stage 1: looks like salt crystals on the fish (i had that)
stage 2: salt crystals fall into sand bed
stage 3: crystals turn into lots of ich and swim around searching for hosts
stage 4: find host, rinse and repeat

So, does this mean they haven't gotten rid of the ich? Should I wait it out before quarantining since they are the only fish in the tank? If it returns that means they went through the cycle, if it doesn't that means they beat it without treatment?

I am thinking the best course of action is to qt the clowns, bump my tank temperature to like 85 to speed the ich lifecycle up and dose the clowns with some meds while they are in qt.

How would you set up the qt tank so there is no LR in it?

If they have the white spots, then the parasite is in the cyst stage, feeding off of the fish until its ready to fall to the bottom of the tank. You may think you are all clear, but in fact, the cysts have burst and the parasite is now in the substrate of your display tank. It will develop into a free swimming adult again shortly and come back to attack the fish, should it find it.

 

[AK77]

i wouldnt use UV sterilisers they put problems on hold rather than getting rid of them

If its hooked up to the quarantine/hospital tank, wouldn't it just sterilize the water to ensure that the fish eventually became parasite free?

no because parasites will hide in the substrate and the substrate doesnt pass through the sterilizer

i hope rabbut comes along as he will explain it well about why UV's arent affective in most cases

Why would you have substrate in a hospital tank? I know that Ich, once it emerges from the cyst swims its way down to the substrate, until it develops into the stage where its looking for a host and free swimming again. Surely if there is no substrate for it to hide, and in a hospital/quarantine tank there is no reason to have any, that UV should be fairly effective in treating them.

even so rock will also harbour the parasite and you cant guarantee that they will all pass through the UV

Sorry, I should have clarified what I meant before. If the tank is void of everything bar the salt water and fish, a pump is placed in the tank which is on a closed loop, with a UV sterilizer in said loop, surely the odds of killing a vast majority, if not all the parasites is pretty high? Since its only a 12G tank, virtually everything on the bottom of the tank will be sucked into the pump at some point.

I agree that using a UV unit on a display tank isn't really worthwhile. I had a vecton unit and still developed whitespot on a couple of my fish. I stopped using mine on my old tank and just injected ozone into the skimmer. Never had another problem with whitespot after that.

 

[jtnova13]

AK did you still quarantine all new editions?

What do you all do if a goby gets ich?

Update on the situation:

Clowns are doing well in their 10g quarantine tank. I dropped the pH gradually to about 1.015 and started dosing ridich (it was highly recommended by my LFS). I bumped up the temp in the display to 85 to speed up ich lifecycle. Got a few more astreas to combat algae. Everything seems to be going well.

Will wait out about 2-3 weeks to see how it goes.

 

[AK77]

Hi mate,

I currently don't have any fish as my tank has only recently been completed. I will be putting any new fish in quarantine though, as I has a spare tank to do this. My LFS is pretty good and I think they keep the fish in a lower SG than the corals anyway, as this too helps with keeping whitespot at bay. It does mean though that livestock can suffer a bit more of osmotic shock due to water conditions.

Whenever I've bought fish in the past, I've always taken time to really observe them and their behaviour and that of their tank mates. If there are dead fish in a tank with a fish I wanted, I'd leave it. Similarly with fish that were listless or at strange angles in the water. I'd also look at the fins of the fish for signs of nipping or fin rot or slime. An active fish with bright colours is a happy fish in my book

Just out of interest, do you have any corals in your display tank? If you do, then reduce the temperature down to 80f. This will be more than sufficient to speed up the life cycle of the parasite and kill it off as there wont be a fishy host to infect and will keep corals happy. When you start getting up to 85f some species will start to suffer.