Ammonia Level Reading

[charles bentley]

asif the shops should realy sell one thats ok for inverts shunt they, i thought some one would have made one.

 

[TigerIssey]

They do make them, but echoing what bronzecat said earlier, we don't know how effective they really are. I believe I read somewhere that there are 2 strains of whitespot in marine fish. If it is the nasty strain (more virulent) they have a very low probability of working. This is why ski said the only real treatments were the ones he suggested.

If you try an invert safe one and it does not work (treatment lasts a week then you usually repeat it) you have lost time and probably won't get a second chance to treat.

Ski will tell you how quickly whitespot can wipe out your entire fish stock. He has had it himself and now always quarantines fish prior to adding them to his display tank.

Once you have the fish treated in quarentine you must then leave your display tank without fish for about 6 weeks I believe, this is to get rid of any parasites at other stages of the life cycle that are in the substrate in the cyst stage. I think Rabbut has experience with whitespot too, someone else definately had a wipout in their journals.

 

[bronzecat]

I will echo that Although i haven't had that problem, i have some good books and have tried to expand my knowledge on this, and other forums. I have yet to hear of anyone treating with non-copper based meds and getting good results.

I know its a pain, but i recently had an issue with my Skunk clowns and had to set up a QT tank rapidly. It doesn't take much to set one up, if it hadn't been for the heater sticking on in mine it would have only taken my 6 hours. The key issues are to match the temp, Ph and salinity. I used a 12 gallon tank and an internal filter with some of the seachem matrix media from my main tank and an air stone.

 

[Truck]

rabbut ran his tank fallow for 6 weeks or maybe a bit longer.

 

[TigerIssey]

Cheers Truck I thought it was Rabbut and thought it was 6 weeks.

 

[SkiFletch]

If it really is whitespot (pics would help), it can certainly kill lots of your fish quickly. I had a whitespot outbreak in my tank and lost half my stock within a matter days, even with a QT tank. Some fish never showed signs or symptoms of it, but of those that did, only 1 survived. There are however some other causes for "a spot" on a fish that are not so troublesome.

As for "reef-safe" treatments, I've yet to see the one that is both reef-safe and/or kills whitespot... All a bunch of snake oils that don't list why/how they actually fight whitespot. QT and hyposaline or copper treatment are still the only tried and true methods. Also to clarify, when treating with copper, you buy a copper med along with a test kit and add it until you get to a tested value of 0.2-0.3ppm. Do not have rock/sand in the QT tank if treating with copper as they will suck up the copper and make it difficult to reach a constant level of copper in the water column