I had a post at the end of "Hyposalinity Treatment of C. irritans in Display Tank" where leebca had told me that I should start my own thread instead, since my questions where "different". However, my main goal is the same, fighting marine ich. Much of what I write here and posted pictures will be the same from the other post.
I started a marine aquarium in April 2010 and after 3 months I started adding fishes. My DT is running only with ATS as the sole filtration and a calcium reactor. Ever since the algae in the sump started to grow, all my readings on ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate have been undetectable. Phosphate was once read at 0.003 PPM but have since been 0.001 and now 0 for months using Hanna phosphate checker even before I setup my quarrantine tank. A few months ago, after loosing some fishes to ich, I setup a quarrantine tank. My reasoning was since my DT can work with ATS, I can apply it to my quarrantine tank even easier. So I had a fiberglass plate made and put into my DT sump for algaes to grow and then transfer it to my quarrantine tank.
with the lights out
with the lights on running on 35 watts 4000K lighting
I then had my LFS people come over and dismantle everything to move all the fishes to the quarrantine tank. I did however, lower the SG from 1.022 to 1.008 in 3 hours, but none of the fishes showed any ill effect. As leebca had warn me in the other post, there may be a more profound effect in the long term for the fishes by dropping the SG so fast. I did not drop the SG in such a short period unintentionally, I did it intentionally hoping that the rapid change in the SG may have more impact on the ich. I have gone through many vet journals that I can find over the toleration of marine fishes in SG changes and there are conflicts in school of thoughts. I chose to take the chance. As you can see, the fish so far are fine after 6 weeks of hypo at 1.008.
As for my water parameters, I have never made any water changes since day 1, I only add RO water for the evaporation so the SG have been steady at 1.008 using refractometer. My PH level have been at 8.1-8.2 since day 1 and I have not needed to add any buffer. Maybe because it doesn't go through the nitrogen cycle, the PH didn't drop. I do not fully understand. My thoughts are maybe because my use of ATS for this 25 gallons quarrantine tank, the only undesire waste would be ammonia. There are no nitrogen cycle to begin with so there won't be nitrite or nitrate to be produced and the algaes comsumes any nutrients so fast, I could not get a detectable reading of ammonia with my test kits (waterlife or sera test kits). As you can see in the previous pictures, my 25 gallons quarrantine tank have more fishes in it than there should be. Anyway, I just like to share my battle against marine ich with everyone that's in this forum and I wish everyone, including me, to succeed. Lastly are a picture of my DT and quarrantine tank:
James from Taiwan
I started a marine aquarium in April 2010 and after 3 months I started adding fishes. My DT is running only with ATS as the sole filtration and a calcium reactor. Ever since the algae in the sump started to grow, all my readings on ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate have been undetectable. Phosphate was once read at 0.003 PPM but have since been 0.001 and now 0 for months using Hanna phosphate checker even before I setup my quarrantine tank. A few months ago, after loosing some fishes to ich, I setup a quarrantine tank. My reasoning was since my DT can work with ATS, I can apply it to my quarrantine tank even easier. So I had a fiberglass plate made and put into my DT sump for algaes to grow and then transfer it to my quarrantine tank.
with the lights out
with the lights on running on 35 watts 4000K lighting
I then had my LFS people come over and dismantle everything to move all the fishes to the quarrantine tank. I did however, lower the SG from 1.022 to 1.008 in 3 hours, but none of the fishes showed any ill effect. As leebca had warn me in the other post, there may be a more profound effect in the long term for the fishes by dropping the SG so fast. I did not drop the SG in such a short period unintentionally, I did it intentionally hoping that the rapid change in the SG may have more impact on the ich. I have gone through many vet journals that I can find over the toleration of marine fishes in SG changes and there are conflicts in school of thoughts. I chose to take the chance. As you can see, the fish so far are fine after 6 weeks of hypo at 1.008.
As for my water parameters, I have never made any water changes since day 1, I only add RO water for the evaporation so the SG have been steady at 1.008 using refractometer. My PH level have been at 8.1-8.2 since day 1 and I have not needed to add any buffer. Maybe because it doesn't go through the nitrogen cycle, the PH didn't drop. I do not fully understand. My thoughts are maybe because my use of ATS for this 25 gallons quarrantine tank, the only undesire waste would be ammonia. There are no nitrogen cycle to begin with so there won't be nitrite or nitrate to be produced and the algaes comsumes any nutrients so fast, I could not get a detectable reading of ammonia with my test kits (waterlife or sera test kits). As you can see in the previous pictures, my 25 gallons quarrantine tank have more fishes in it than there should be. Anyway, I just like to share my battle against marine ich with everyone that's in this forum and I wish everyone, including me, to succeed. Lastly are a picture of my DT and quarrantine tank:
James from Taiwan
