| Re: Whitespot
An age old concern and the only way you're going to win: Remove fish; place them in quarantine; bump the temperature of the qt up to 82 F; treat them in hypo (1.009) with a very little amount of cupramine and methaline blue. Do this for a month and you'll be fine. Let the display go fallow during this time.
I wouldn't dare treat a display tank unless it's a FO. Experience has taught me that inverts, corals, cnidarians, ben. bacteria will suffer intensely in hyposalinity (sp. gr. <1.018). I once treated my FOWLR in hypo for a month. It was easy at the outset because I was trying to lower the specific gravity very gradually. In the beginning, it was no problem. The white spots slowly went away and eventually disappeared never to return. However, nearing the 2 to 3 week mark, my ammonia and nitrite spiked! and it SPIKED BAD! I soon learned that I had wiped out ALL of the beneficial bacteria, ANY hitch-hiking inverts, and whatever else that may have been residing on or within the live rock and sand. I was changing 20% the water every 2 to 3 days because the ammonia and nitrites were out of control. The nitrates however never rose above 5 ppm. EVEN my cheato was whithering away slowly. This tank nearly crashed and burned. However, I had save the tank because I had a pretty good amount of time and money invested.
Eventually, it all worked out for the best but learn from this mistake! No matter how hard it is to catch the fish to place into quarantine; do it. You won't be sorry you did. |