Emergency: Need Well-Seeded Brackish Filter Media Approx. Sg 1.009

[Nick79]

1) Water parameters: pH=8.1, Ammonia/Nitrite=0, Nitrate <=20, salinity=1.022
2) 72g with 30g sump. Approx 80 lbs live rock. Inhabitants: 2 GSPs (5", 3"), 1 (new and deadly) NLP (3")
3) Products: dechlorniator. Feeding sched: few times a week until puffers are a bit too fat. Water Change: whenever nitrates get unacceptable.
4) My fiancee added her under-quarantined narrow-lined puffer to my tank after she couldn't eradicate unexpected ammonia spikes (with water changes) from the QT tank. It showed no symptoms of ich during the spikes, but was only QT'd for a week.
5) Set up: Years ago, cycled with live rock

I need to acquire/purchase well-seeded, known *healthy*, brackish filter media at around sg 1.009 (1.005-1.013 is fine). Preferably a large quantity, but at least enough to support 1 3" puffer fish (others will be added gradually), so that the fish can go to hypo with just an acclimation without the weeks of large, stressful water changes.

My fiancee has offered to drive anywhere within 20 hours or so of CT, USA to pick it up.

Please, help save my puffers!

 

[nmonks]

Why do you need to use brackish water media?

I'm slightly confused by what your goal is here. If you have a brackish water fish with marine ick, simply set up another tank as near-freshwater, e.g., SG 1.003-1.005, acclimate the infected brackish water fish across 30-60 minutes via a bucket and the drip method, and keep the infected fish in the near-freshwater tank for a week or two. When you're done, acclimate it in the reverse direction, and put it back in the high-end brackish or marine tank.

If you already have a brackish water tank, and want another one, then "clone" the existing tank by taking out up to half the live media in the mature filter and placing into the new filter. Mature filters can lose up to 50% of their biological media without serious water quality problems.

Cheers, Neale

 

[Nick79]

Why do you need to use brackish water media?

I'm slightly confused by what your goal is here. If you have a brackish water fish with marine ick, simply set up another tank as near-freshwater, e.g., SG 1.003-1.005, acclimate the infected brackish water fish across 30-60 minutes via a bucket and the drip method, and keep the infected fish in the near-freshwater tank for a week or two. When you're done, acclimate it in the reverse direction, and put it back in the high-end brackish or marine tank.

If you already have a brackish water tank, and want another one, then "clone" the existing tank by taking out up to half the live media in the mature filter and placing into the new filter. Mature filters can lose up to 50% of their biological media without serious water quality problems.

Cheers, Neale

Sorry, they're full marine puffers in marine now. We need brackish media to do a hyposalinity treatment (from the full marine) for the marine ich without having to do massive, stressful water changes.

We do have a brackish tank, but there are hardcore treatment resistant parasites in the tank and media that we do not want to transfer.

 

[nmonks]

Sorry, they're full marine puffers in marine now. We need brackish media to do a hyposalinity treatment (from the full marine) for the marine ich without having to do massive, stressful water changes.

Are they GSPs and red-like puffers? Yes or no? If yes, then they could be adapted to near-freshwater conditions in an hour. If that. Seriously, these fish evolved to handle massive, stressful water changes! It's their ecological niche. Done this many times.

We do have a brackish tank, but there are hardcore treatment resistant parasites in the tank and media that we do not want to transfer.

What sort of parasites? Hard to imagine any low-end salinity species tolerating full marine conditions for long, or high-end parasites tolerating freshwater conditions.

In fish farming, it is absolutely standard practise to move euryhaline fish such as salmon and sea trout up and down estuaries so that sometimes they're in freshwater, sometimes in salt water. This is a low-impact, drug-free way to kill external parasites. Causes some problems to the environment to be sure, fish cages being highly polluting in many ways, but in terms of healthcare, wide variations in salinity can work very well.

Cheers, Neale

 

[Nick79]

Sorry, they're full marine puffers in marine now. We need brackish media to do a hyposalinity treatment (from the full marine) for the marine ich without having to do massive, stressful water changes.

Are they GSPs and red-like puffers? Yes or no? If yes, then they could be adapted to near-freshwater conditions in an hour. If that. Seriously, these fish evolved to handle massive, stressful water changes! It's their ecological niche. Done this many times.

We do have a brackish tank, but there are hardcore treatment resistant parasites in the tank and media that we do not want to transfer.

What sort of parasites? Hard to imagine any low-end salinity species tolerating full marine conditions for long, or high-end parasites tolerating freshwater conditions.

In fish farming, it is absolutely standard practise to move euryhaline fish such as salmon and sea trout up and down estuaries so that sometimes they're in freshwater, sometimes in salt water. This is a low-impact, drug-free way to kill external parasites. Causes some problems to the environment to be sure, fish cages being highly polluting in many ways, but in terms of healthcare, wide variations in salinity can work very well.

Cheers, Neale

Hi, I'm posting for my fiance who just checked this thread out - he usually goes by Nick and knows you from online, has talked to you before and has nothing but good things to say about your advice. To respond:

>Are they GSPs and red-like puffers? Yes or no? If yes, then they could be adapted to near-freshwater conditions in an hour. If that. Seriously, these fish evolved to handle massive, stressful water changes! It's their ecological niche. Done this many times.

>>2 GSP's, who may be able to deal as you say, but the one I'm concerned about is the narrow-lined puffer who is much less tolerant of salinity changes.

>What sort of parasites? Hard to imagine any low-end salinity species tolerating full marine conditions for long, or high-end parasites tolerating freshwater conditions.

>>The brackish tank is separate, for a different fish, and is running at about 1.008 has very treatment resistant protozoan wasting disease in it. Long treatments, both in the water and soaked in food using metro and flubendazol have failed to resolve this (separate) problem, as have prazi treatments for tapeworm and levimisol treatments for other types of worm.

(apologies for the formatting).

 

[nmonks]

>>2 GSP's, who may be able to deal as you say, but the one I'm concerned about is the narrow-lined puffer who is much less tolerant of salinity changes.

Tetraodon erythrotaenia, the red-line puffer? Should be fine. Seriously. Try it out. Nothing to lose. Certainly won't kill him. Try and keep the carbonate hardness and pH comparable to the near-marine conditions, but otherwise salinity really shouldn't be an issue.

Oh, I just googled the name. Could it be Arothron manilensis? Now, I haven't kept this species, but I have kept Arothron hispidus, and in fact bought two specimens of that species as FRESHWATER fish! Arothron are incredibly hardy fish, and do migrate into estuaries. While I mightn't take it right down to freshwater, SG 1.010 should be fine, and would certainly shift marine ick. Again, try and keep other parameters the same. Do perhaps be a little more gentle when acclimating to reduced salinity, but really, should adapt fine.

>>The brackish tank is separate, for a different fish, and is running at about 1.008 has very treatment resistant protozoan wasting disease in it. Long treatments, both in the water and soaked in food using metro and flubendazol have failed to resolve this (separate) problem, as have prazi treatments for tapeworm and levimisol treatments for other types of worm.

Wasting problems can be caused by all sorts of things, and I'd also review diet, since a thiaminase-rich diet (e.g., just prawns and mussels) could cause similar symptoms. Praziquantel isn't an especially reliable anti-helminth. Fenbendazole and Flubendazole seem to be much more reliable than either Levamisole, Piperazine and Praziquantel. This said, worms don't seem to be the major reason for wasting. Worms tend to cause swelling. Wasting is most often a Mycobacteria infection, and these are, unfortunately, almost impossible to cure.

Cheers, Neale

 

[Nick79]

Oh, I just googled the name. Could it be Arothron manilensis? Now, I haven't kept this species, but I have kept Arothron hispidus, and in fact bought two specimens of that species as FRESHWATER fish! Arothron are incredibly hardy fish, and do migrate into estuaries. While I mightn't take it right down to freshwater, SG 1.010 should be fine, and would certainly shift marine ick. Again, try and keep other parameters the same. Do perhaps be a little more gentle when acclimating to reduced salinity, but really, should adapt fine.

Nick here(my first post personally, thanks to my fiancée for posting for us previously), and her little Ulrike is most definately Arothron manilensis. Glad to know this puffer won't mind hypo. I've read every which way of putting saltwater fish into hypo, and what to do with the rest of the tank, especially the live rock. I managed to get a phone call through to one of the fish care veterinarians at mystic aquarium, and am going to try his method, which involves slowly pushing the system to the needed level of hypo with slow water changes with fresh water a couple times a day over about 3 days. He has apparently done this many many times in systems built like mine; his explanation was that with a sump design like mine where the filter media don't touch the sump water directly, the fresh water added to the sump would mix slowly enough with the salt water in the main tank before encountering media that the beneficial bacteria would suffer minimal losses, almost as though I was drip acclimating the bacteria. I asked him about isolating the live rock for a month or so - he said his experience has shown that it's actually WAY more robust than is said, and thus 1) occasionally contains tiny living things that will harbor live cryp parasites for much longer than that, even if they are not primary hosts and won't let it reproduce, leading to recontamination and the hypo seeming to have failed, but also 2) as long as it's acclimated slowly over several days, it remains quite biologically viable at half typical marine SG, mostly suffering only cosmetic loss of some of the pretty stuff growing on it. I'm going to try this and monitor the levels closely, and we'll see if things go as smoothly as I've been told they should.

Wasting problems can be caused by all sorts of things, and I'd also review diet, since a thiaminase-rich diet (e.g., just prawns and mussels) could cause similar symptoms. Praziquantel isn't an especially reliable anti-helminth. Fenbendazole and Flubendazole seem to be much more reliable than either Levamisole, Piperazine and Praziquantel. This said, worms don't seem to be the major reason for wasting. Worms tend to cause swelling. Wasting is most often a Mycobacteria infection, and these are, unfortunately, almost impossible to cure.
Cheers, Neale

I try to provide a very varied diet, while it does include occasional mussels, crab legs, clams, bloodworms, etc are provided to the fish in question. Never fed him any prawn or krill, and only very occasional brine shrimp. I'm researching a method of more effectively orally dosing him with a metro/flubendazole/antibiotic cocktail, because he chews and spits so much just soaking the food for a time does not seem efficient.
Thanks for the reassurances that the Ulrike will be fine at the lower SG, I'll report back as to how all this goes.

 

[nmonks]

I'd have thought performing large salinity changes more stressful to filter bacteria than the pufferfish. If you are going to take a near-marine tank down to near-freshwater salinity, I'd play it safe and divide the filter media, and keep at least some at the higher salinity. That way, you can put the back-up media and the filter should the existing biological media collapse.

The efficacy of hyposalinity against marine ick is well documented in the scientific literature. To be effective, you do need to use fairly low salinities, ideally freshwater or very nearly freshwater. Do read this clear and short scientific paper, for example. If you need to convert between salinity and specific gravity, by Brack Calc tool will do that for you.

Cheers, Neale

 

[Nick79]

I'd have thought performing large salinity changes more stressful to filter bacteria than the pufferfish. If you are going to take a near-marine tank down to near-freshwater salinity, I'd play it safe and divide the filter media, and keep at least some at the higher salinity. That way, you can put the back-up media and the filter should the existing biological media collapse.

The efficacy of hyposalinity against marine ick is well documented in the scientific literature. To be effective, you do need to use fairly low salinities, ideally freshwater or very nearly freshwater. Do read this clear and short scientific paper, for example. If you need to convert between salinity and specific gravity, by Brack Calc tool will do that for you.

Cheers, Neale

I took a look at the article, seems that 1.009 is effective if held for 48 hours - I'm planning on going to right about that, and holding for at least 6 weeks, in case any cysts have already fallen off and started their work as sealed parasite factories. I do have some back-up ready as far as marine filtration. Thanks as always Neale!