quarantine

[salty joe]

Is there a safe way to quickly rid fish of parasites (2-3 days) by using a combo of temp, salinity, chemicals, o3, uv,or anything else?

Also, since marine fish drink water, will copper kill internal parasites?

BTW, very interesting article on "reef safe" chemicals.

thanks

Joe

[Skipper]

[top]

[Steven Pro]

What kind of parasites are we talking about?

There is the tank transfer method for curing infestations of Cryptocaryon irritans/Marine Ich. It works off the premise that the parasite must detach from the host every few days to reproduce. If you move the fish to a new sterile aquarium every three days, after four moves the fish is clean. You can use two aquariums and when the one is not in use, simple drain and dry. This will effectively kill any Ich parasites left behind. This would clean a fish in 12 days, but ideally you would still quarantine the fish for an additional month to ensure there was no cross contamination.

This method should also work for Amyloodinium ocellatum/Marine Velvet, but it has not been proven. The downside is the repeated handling combined with the lack of beneficial bacteria and subsequent ammonia problems can be very tough of the fish subjected to this treatment.