jbardwel
04/02/2007, 11:44 PM
Steven,
I wanted to get your comments on what I read in "The Reef Aquarium" vol 1 by Delbeek and Sprung
"we have seen healthy coral and other marine life in nature and in captivity at specific gravity values within the range of 1.010 and 1.035. Full strength seawater is about halfway betwen these extremes of this range about 1.025. . . many reef aquarists maintain their aquariums at a slightly lower specific gravity, approximately 1.022. This is fine". . . NOW THE INTERESTING PART "Sudden change in the specific gravity is occasionally used to control disease outbreaks in the fish an is particualry effective against Cryptocaryon irritans. Causing the specific gravity to drop from about 1.022 to 1.017 over the course of a few hours by the addition of freshwater will not harm the reef aquarium and can effectively control the disease. After a few weeks with low specific gravity, when the fish have recovered from the disease the specific gravity can be gradually increased back to its normal value and maintained there"
I have a 80 gal tank that is really mostly a FOWLR tank. It is currently overstocked IMO due to moving a 280 gal reef, I dumped all the 280's fish into my existing slightly overloaded but healthy 80 gal because I wasnt sure what the moved reef would do. Fortunately the 280 did fine, but the 80 is overloaded with fish, a 3" yellow tang, "2 coral beauty(new), 3 spot damsel (3"), 6 line wrasse(new), 5 green chromis(new), regal tang(4"), large engineer goby(8"), long spine urchin a couple other small gobys, a few mushrooms and 4 cleaner shrimp. I wasnt surprised to see an outbreak of ich first on the regal. I pulled it out and treated it for 2 weeks with copper. Just after I put the regal back in I noticed ich on the coral beauty. I presume that it was existing ich in the tank that had slowly been building up while I was treating the tang. So I thought I might try Debeek and Sprung's method. I have read all I can on ich but never heard about this moderate hyposalinity reefsafe method. Most recommend 1.010 for ich treatement which would take out my shrimp, probably, but I am thinking they would be able to take the 1.017. I have had ich a couple of times over the last 9 years with my regals (one of which lived 7 years) but always got it back under control with fresh water dips, formaldehyde and copper in treatment tanks. I could do this but to pull all the fish out would be just about impossible. Even with all the live rock out (which actually only takes about an hour) the engineer goby and the other small gobies would hide in the sand and I would have to take all that sand out, probabaly killing the gobies in the process.
So do you think Delbeek and Sprung's method works or is worth a try?
I wanted to get your comments on what I read in "The Reef Aquarium" vol 1 by Delbeek and Sprung
"we have seen healthy coral and other marine life in nature and in captivity at specific gravity values within the range of 1.010 and 1.035. Full strength seawater is about halfway betwen these extremes of this range about 1.025. . . many reef aquarists maintain their aquariums at a slightly lower specific gravity, approximately 1.022. This is fine". . . NOW THE INTERESTING PART "Sudden change in the specific gravity is occasionally used to control disease outbreaks in the fish an is particualry effective against Cryptocaryon irritans. Causing the specific gravity to drop from about 1.022 to 1.017 over the course of a few hours by the addition of freshwater will not harm the reef aquarium and can effectively control the disease. After a few weeks with low specific gravity, when the fish have recovered from the disease the specific gravity can be gradually increased back to its normal value and maintained there"
I have a 80 gal tank that is really mostly a FOWLR tank. It is currently overstocked IMO due to moving a 280 gal reef, I dumped all the 280's fish into my existing slightly overloaded but healthy 80 gal because I wasnt sure what the moved reef would do. Fortunately the 280 did fine, but the 80 is overloaded with fish, a 3" yellow tang, "2 coral beauty(new), 3 spot damsel (3"), 6 line wrasse(new), 5 green chromis(new), regal tang(4"), large engineer goby(8"), long spine urchin a couple other small gobys, a few mushrooms and 4 cleaner shrimp. I wasnt surprised to see an outbreak of ich first on the regal. I pulled it out and treated it for 2 weeks with copper. Just after I put the regal back in I noticed ich on the coral beauty. I presume that it was existing ich in the tank that had slowly been building up while I was treating the tang. So I thought I might try Debeek and Sprung's method. I have read all I can on ich but never heard about this moderate hyposalinity reefsafe method. Most recommend 1.010 for ich treatement which would take out my shrimp, probably, but I am thinking they would be able to take the 1.017. I have had ich a couple of times over the last 9 years with my regals (one of which lived 7 years) but always got it back under control with fresh water dips, formaldehyde and copper in treatment tanks. I could do this but to pull all the fish out would be just about impossible. Even with all the live rock out (which actually only takes about an hour) the engineer goby and the other small gobies would hide in the sand and I would have to take all that sand out, probabaly killing the gobies in the process.
So do you think Delbeek and Sprung's method works or is worth a try?