Hi Terry,
Thanks for your input. I agree that hyposalinity will work on C. Irritans a lot of the time but it is my belief that it cannot 'cure" a tank or fish of the disease. There has been much evidence that the critter in its other less visible stages of life can live in near fresh water. In other words, you may appear to have cured it but still have a ticking time bomb. My experience has shown copper treatment done at proper levels for the proper amount of time to be the only cure.
I used to feel quite strongly against copper treatrment for fear of residual effects on the specimen, however since having the responsability of keeping parisites out of a 41000 gal display, I have had to overcome that fear. Why you ask. Well, one of the mechanisms by which hyposalinity appears to work is the rapid lowering of salinity. Since we use only RO water (1200 gal / day) we cannot lower nearly quickly enough. In our situation we have to quarantine and treat with whatever is known to work. A mistake in judgement could potentially put over 400 fish of 60 species in peril. We have recently introduced C. Irritans to the display for the first time in 4 years despite or quarantine proceedures and treatment. How this happened I cannot explain other than it may have been passed from our larval rearing and rotifer cultures that are contained within the same building and not treated. Due to the fact that we have sharks, we cannot use copper in the display and therefore have gone the garlic route. Using fresh garlic very heavily we have C. Irritans visibly taken care of. Unfortunately we will have to live with the fact that it still lives in the tank and must be controlled. Fortunately we did not find signs of oodinium, as my experience has shown garlic to be not effective. In that case we would have no choice but to remove the sharks and treat with copper.
"I wouldn't even use copper for Amyloodinium anymore. Chloroquine phosphate works so much faster for Amyloodinium."
This is interesting to me and I would like to hear more about this.
"I have used Cupramine with copper sensitive species such as small angels, lionfish and mandarins and they came through just great. You do have to use Cupramine at a higher dose. The instructions suggest .5 ppm (not .05 ppm). I have found that .4 ppm works quite well with it."
I don't have any documented experience with anything other than my own formula. This is simply because the volume I need makes my methods worthwhile. I cannot imagine that any one copper treatment is safer to use than any other. The difference between formulas is really just in the agents that are used to keep it in solution. The method that I use is completely predictable and very easily removed from the system . Most importantly it will not interfere with Hach Colorimeter testing. I have seen some products that will interfere - Cupramine may be fine.
"I am currently researching the use of Beta glucan as an immunostimulant in fish. I have personally used the stuff for myself for years and I have fed it to fish. It works very well in stimulating macrophage spreading and size. Some say it increases macrophage numbers also"
I don't know anything about this but I would like to hear more.
"I would be interested in your thoughts on HLLE. Ever considered the idea of it being an autoimmune disease brought on by chronic stress? Where are you in Canada? I live in Washington State."
I feel that HLLE is the most important mystery to crack at this time. I personally have never found it to be a problem in a reef tank and have also seen yellow tangs recover completely from HLLE and bleaching once placed within a mature reef. My feelings are that many factors are involved including stress, diet and other suspected routes such as stray voltage. Since clealy not all reef tanks that I have worked with are likely free of stray voltage I put that source lower on the list of causes. I should say though that we were able to arrest HLLE in the 41000 gal display with the addition of groud probes and no other changes. This topic really begs for a large scale University study, however unless we can somehow convince the powers that be that it is important, it will not likely happen.
"Personally, I do not like to use copper with tangs, in part because I believe it can induce HLLE and is a known immune system suppressant. Tangs do very nicely in hypo."
I have seen no evidence of copper inducing HLLE in tangs in hundreds of specimens of species ranging from Sohal to Vlamingi. Yes it is true that copper is a"poison" to the specimen, but at proper levels it is used like chemotherapy is on human cancer. I don't recomend that fish only tanks be maintained at theraputic copper levels (>.15) for any more time than it takes to treat the disease (40 days). This is done by some but is surely hard on the specimens.
"It does work well to clear out some internal parasites but doesn’t appear to work really consistently for ich. Maybe everyone having their own dosage has something to do with it."
I can only say that it appears to have worked in the large display for several months now. I believe that it will never be illiminated without the use of copper but when circumstances make copper treatment difficult, it may be the only answer. Of course Hyposalinity can be used in concert as you suggest.
Regarding the use of garlic and the best delivery system of the active ingredients, here is a good piece. Some of you may have already read it but for those who are buying prepared garlic products it is a good read.
http://www.reefs.org/library/article...tes-jorge.html
Tery, drop me a line at
maternick@shaw.ca and let me know more about Chloroquine phosphate.
Regards,
Lee