Wednesday, December 23, 2009

White spot out-break (and I have corals!!!)


I am writing this blog because, most saltwater enthusiast will have problems with White spot/Ich at one stage or another and, if you have corals sometimes you don't have a spare quarantine tank etc available.... The only option can be to treat the fish in the reef tank.

So when I first set-up my saltwater tank I didn't have a cooling mechanism set-up at all and because, its summer here we can get 40 degree days; leading to 30 degree's inside the house (which is fully tiled). The saltwater tank did at one stage get up to 29 degrees and, I think it was what had caused the outbreak of the white spot i.e. maybe accelerating the growth of the parasites.
The temperature over this period did fluctuate from 25 - 29 degrees all in one day - not the best for any tank.
So anyway the only fish to get the white spot was the sailfin tang - from my research I believe that tangs do seem to be pretty sensitive to changes in aquarium water parameters so are good indicators to something being off. I did know that the temperature fluctuations were no good for the fish however, had no real way to fix this that was within budget at the time. However, I did a few days later come up with a solution i.e. attach a fan to the inside of the stand that would continually cool down water in the mini-reef and, now the temp stays at around the 25 degree mark (a cheap solution if you can't get your hands on a chiller or a fridge).

The sailfin started off with small little specks of white spot and, eventually did start to flick itself off the rocks and, I also did notice the blue wrasse flick itself once or twice and, maybe have one or two white specks appearing.

Now if you were researching the ways to cure white spot you may have heard about putting the fish into a freshwater bath (raising the pH to the correct level - then bathing the fish for a few minutes ... I have also heard of bathing it for a few seconds and, then doing this again in 4-5 hours). Now that was the original plan however, the sailfin was way to quick to catch and, the only way I would have caught him was if I demolished the whole tank first! so that plan fizzled out.

I rang around a few shops and, no one experienced enough new how to cure the white spot without hurting the corals..... So for a week or so I kept all parameters as prefect as possible - the sailfin or any other of the fish for that matter had any problems eating. And, my second plan was to make sure the water quality etc was great and, maybe the white spot would cure itself. But this didn't work :<


FINALLY i found a product that was coral safe called "Myxazin" and, treated the tank with this. It leaves a little green tinge (not bad like malachite green more like Bactonex) to the water and, doesn't seem to bother the corals at all and, I can attest to this. So its been two days now (48hrs of treatment) and, the white spot seems almost gone and, the cleaner wrasse seems to be having a field day picking off the parasite from the sailfin tang.

Lesson - make sure you maintain a stable water temperature.
Also please note none of the corals were adversly harmed by this misadventure :>


There is a link to Myxazin on the top right of the blog :>

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