Resistant White Spot

[sandfire]

I have been having terrible problems with white spot.

I tried immune system boosting food, and garlic – no effect
I first tried a reef safe medication - no effect.
I tried freshwater dipping the fish twice a day for 2 weeks - no effect. (coupled with large water changes).

On the advice of my LFS I then tried a more drastic approach of reducing the salinity on the tank down very slowly over 2 weeks to 0.10 for a period of 4 weeks which seemed to work, but then as soon as I increased the salinity again it came back.

I then tried removing all the fish from the tank and started treating with Copper in a bare bottom quarantine tank, I left the main tank free of fish for 12 weeks while treating the fish and they appeared free from white spot. But within a week of going back into the tank the white spot came back worse than ever.

I then tried another different Reef Safe treatment - no effect.

I then removed the inverts (crabs/hermits and snail) and treated the whole tank with Copper and its having zero affect.

Tank is 120gal, with loads of live rock, 2 inch sand bed, lots of macro algae, External Filter, Several internal powerheads, Protein Skimmer (turned off during treatment) I also use Phosphate remover when not using a treatment in the tank.

I test weekly, Ammonia 0ppm, Nitrate 0ppm, Nitrate between 5 and 10ppm, Phosphate 0-2ppm, Salinity 1.021, Temp 28.C

My Stars and Stripes Puffer is now not eating and is looking very poor. I don't know what to do next, perhaps move him into a quarrentine tank again and reduce salinity?

Please help

 

[SkiFletch]

Wow, never heard of whitespot that resistant... It's clearly laying dormant in your rocks/sand and attacking fish after QT methods. 12 weeks without fish in the display should have killed it without a host, but man you must have some tough ones. I'd reccomend two options then, both start with QTing the fish and re-treating them with copper or hyposalinity, whichever method worked better for you.

Method 1, take out all your sand, rinse it and put it in buckets with fresh tapwater for say 2 weeks. Then, throw out all your LR (or sell it), buy new LR, and start over with new LR and rinsed sand.

Method 2, do the same thing with your sand as method 1. Then take the rock in the display tank (without sand) down to 1.009sg for 2 weeks. After that, bring the sg back up and "cook" the rock. Cover the tank with a blanket or garbage bag to prevent any light from getting in. Obviously don't run lights, just heater, powerheads, and skimmer if you have one. Then once every few days mix up a bucket of saltwater, remove rocks from the tank, dunk them in the water and swish them around to get all the detritus and junk off them. The idea with cooking the rock is to kill most photosynthetic organisms in it and allow the resulting ammonia spike to help kill any remaining ich. The rinsing is to remove all the dead junk from the aquarium. About the only survivors from the cooking should be some worms, pods, and coraline algae, most other things will perish.

Cook the rock for say 6 weeks (periodically rinsing) then re-light the display tank, and add a newly bought smallish piece of LR to the system to re-seed it with possibly beneficial organisms. Give it at least a week with the lights and new rock. Then after that week, re-add the sand, and a couple days later the fish and cross your fingers.

 

[sandfire]

Thank you,

I think I will try Method 2, Such a shame about the Live Rock as I have £900 worth!

But this stuff is evil and driving me nuts. I was at LFS today and its been going on so long that they said pretty much the same thing.

Take fish out and put everything in Fresh Water till Feb next year, rinse the whole lot off before restocking again. They said I sould do the hyposalinity on the fish because the chemical method was having no affect and I am going to end up killing the fish with all the chemicals.

I am totally gutted.

 

[SkiFletch]

That really stinks man, sorry about that. Good luck and keep us posted. Btw, if you want, you can get something cheap like a horse trough or cheap plastic bins for cooking the rock in

 

[Colin_T]

I’ve had a similar problem and it was associated with a new strain of Oodinium. It remains dormant when there are no fish in the tank but within a few days of adding fish, they are covered in fine dots.
You can either treat the main tank with copper for a couple of weeks, but copper will kill any inverts you have. Or you move all the fish out of the main tank and put them in a quarantine tank where you can treat them with copper. Once they are cured then they stay in the quarantine tank for a couple of weeks. After treatment do a big water change or add carbon to remove/ dilute the medication. Then each day you take a litre or two of water from the quarantine tank and add it to the main tank. Then after a couple of weeks you can move the fish back into the display.
The fish release a hormone into the water, which stimulates the Oodinium and causes it to hatch out and infect the fish. You only need a small amount of hormone in the water to trigger the Oodinium. By adding a small amount of water from the quarantine tank with fish in, you get the Oodinium to hatch out of its dormant stage, and after a couple of weeks the parasites have all hatched and died due to a lack of hosts.
The only other option is to fill the tank with freshwater for a couple of weeks, but that will kill the live rock and macro algae.
This form of Oodinium does not affect invertebrates like shrimp and starfish.

 

[sandfire]

I’ve had a similar problem and it was associated with a new strain of Oodinium. It remains dormant when there are no fish in the tank but within a few days of adding fish, they are covered in fine dots.
You can either treat the main tank with copper for a couple of weeks, but copper will kill any inverts you have. Or you move all the fish out of the main tank and put them in a quarantine tank where you can treat them with copper. Once they are cured then they stay in the quarantine tank for a couple of weeks. After treatment do a big water change or add carbon to remove/ dilute the medication. Then each day you take a litre or two of water from the quarantine tank and add it to the main tank. Then after a couple of weeks you can move the fish back into the display.
The fish release a hormone into the water, which stimulates the Oodinium and causes it to hatch out and infect the fish. You only need a small amount of hormone in the water to trigger the Oodinium. By adding a small amount of water from the quarantine tank with fish in, you get the Oodinium to hatch out of its dormant stage, and after a couple of weeks the parasites have all hatched and died due to a lack of hosts.
The only other option is to fill the tank with freshwater for a couple of weeks, but that will kill the live rock and macro algae.
This form of Oodinium does not affect invertebrates like shrimp and starfish.

This sounds like the stuff! 12 long boring weeks of no fish in the tank and it still 'active' within a day or two 'on mass' of the fish being in the tank.

Only thing is its 'adapted' to the copper and still going strong although I am using the same product (Seachem Cupramine), which now has no effect anymore, I am on the third week of using it and it had no effect at all, I have reduced the salinity today and it automatically made a few 'spots' drop off. I will keep everyone updated.

Perhaps it will respond to kryptonite ?


Like I said its like Borg and adapts.

 

[Colin_T]

If the fish are in a quarantine tank you can use a normal whitespot medication that has malachite green in. Malachite green and copper sulphate will usually kill everything parasite based.

 

[andywg]

Nav had issues like this a while ago. He eventually had some success by combining ozone and UV.

 

[GShorty1981]

Every marine fish i have ever bought in 2 different tanks have always had little white spots on there fins only for the first few weeks after introduction then it just disappears,,,its weird.

 

[sandfire]

Every marine fish i have ever bought in 2 different tanks have always had little white spots on there fins only for the first few weeks after introduction then it just disappears,,,its weird.

This has been going on for the better part of a year, somtimes just a few spots but its normally the calm before the storm.

UPDATE:

My Stars and 'No' Stripes Puffer is now in a SG of 1.009, I been taking is down for since 3.00pm, I know thats a fast drop but I was told by my LFS that these Puff's are normally caught in brakish water so should tolerate it. He started perking up at about 1.014. All his spots are gone now (last half hour) and he has stopped flaring his gills and looking like he is 'coughing' his colour has returned and he is swimming about looking (OK begging) for food, which is a drastic improvment seeing for the last few days he has been so poorley every morning I have been looking for his corpse. He is in the QT with a Columbian Catshark also looking much happier and spot free.

The other occupants (six lined wrasse and Convict Goby) are in another QT still in 1.020 and I will treat them with the Malachite Green, they have not got any spots... never did really) but could be carriers.

I have thrown out the sand/gravel and have filled the tank with the now dead Live Rock with fresh water.

I will keep everyone updated, but I think I have a looooong battle still to go!

 

[GShorty1981]

I Feel for ya mate

 

[sandfire]

The bl***y ick is back!

I updated that after dropping the salinty down to 1.009 that all the ick 'fell' of and the Stars and (No) stripes Puffer perked up.

Well this morning he was sitting in his cave 'smoothered' in tiny specks again! I can see them on his gill plates, fins, eyes, skin. He is still a lot happier than yesteday BEGGING for food, I'm about to feed him before gets out the tank and opens the freezer and defrost the mussle himself. But the spots are back!

Should I drop the salinty down further for a day or two? I have been Googling (all day) and have read that Stars and Stripes Puffers are found feeding in brackish water so technically I would think he could cope with it? He certainly seems very happy in the lower salinity (this is one hardy fish!)?

What does everyone think?

Ps I did a water change to cope with the blow to the filter bacteria (monitoring Ammonia, Nitrite and Phosphate regulary) and if I go any 'fresher' I could bung on the tank a cycled spare filter from another tank?

 

[SkiFletch]

You could try with the spare filter it might help. I'd also agree that the puffer might be able to handle just a little lower salinity if they are found in brackish environments. I wouldn't go too much lower though, you're playing with fire and the fish's kidneys...

 

[sandfire]

You could try with the spare filter it might help. I'd also agree that the puffer might be able to handle just a little lower salinity if they are found in brackish environments. I wouldn't go too much lower though, you're playing with fire and the fish's kidneys...

Thank you I have taken it down to 1.005. The ick has dissapeared again.

I am interested to know what happens with the kidneys, Is this due to Osmoregulation?

 

[SkiFletch]

Yeah, Freshwater fish just drink a little water and extrete whatever they need in urine. They have more salt in their bodies than their environment does so their kidneys are designed to move more water than salt. Seawater fish have less salt in their bodies than their environment. As such, their kidneys are more specialized to remove salt and retain water. So if you put a saltwater fish in freshwater, it can last for a little while, but eventually it'll drink more water than it's kidneys can process, will become hypOsaline too much water and can kill itself. And of course the opposite is true as freshwater fish put in salt will drink too much salt and not be able to extrete it, becoming hypERsaline and leading to the fishes demise.

Brackish fish however often have more "flex" in their kidneys for lack of a better term and can tolerate varying conditions. It's still not a great idea to push them too far towards the freshwater scale for too long. Now that the ich is gone, I'd start raising it back up to 1.007 if you can and see what happens there.

Question, you don't have any sand in your QT tank and only minimal rock right?