Whitespot Aaarrrrgggghhhh!

[dannyboy01]

Hi this has probably arisen many times before, my flame angel is suffering from whitespot and im getting stressed it wont go, it seems to be at night he gets covered then during day it seems to go. please help what is the easiest way of getting rid of this before you all say i know a uv steriliser but cant afford one at moment. please help.

 

[AK77]

Whitespot is a PITA. The best course of action will be to quarantine that fish in a hospital tank ASAP. If you don't have a spare tank, I'd recommend getting one. It only has to be a cheap second hand thing, that will allow you to observe the fish.

Fill it with water from the main tank. This will help reduce the amount of parasites from the main tank and secondly, it will mean that the stress on the fish will be significantly reduced transferring it from one tank to another. Place the effected fish into the new hospital tank. Add a marine whitespot treatment at the correct dosage and follow the instructions for repeat dosing.

If you can, raise the temperature as high as you can in the main tank without affecting any of the inhabitants. 28c should be fine. This will speed up the life cycle of the parasite and hopefully, if it doesn't find another host, will die off. Keep observing the fish in quarantine and more importantly, those fishes that remain in the display tank. After about 2 weeks of the fish in quarantine being clear and no fish in the main tank contracting it, the fish should fine to return to the display tank.

If other fish have ich, it might be better to just quarantine all fish and treat for whitespot in the hospital tank, leaving the display tank void of fish for 2 weeks. The parasite is only treatable when in its reinfection stage IE when its waterborn and seeking a new host.

You could attempt hyposalinity treatment, but unless you have performed this before or have an experienced fishkeeper to give you help and advice, I'd stick with the medications.

In the future, if you purchase new fish, put them in a quarantine tank for a couple of weeks and treat as if it is sick. Then add to your main tank. Nothing more gutting than having hundreds of pounds worth of livestock wiped out by one infected fish.

DONT be tempted to add copper based medication to your display tank if you have live rock, invertebrates or corals.. as you'll most likely kill them all.

 

[kkyyllee]

dont add copper to the main tank it will kill all ur inverts and make ur sand liverock and tank usless for inverts, easiest thing to do would to set up a quarantine and treat the fish there

 

[dannyboy01]

Thats cool cheers. i dont know for sure if it is white spot it appears overnight then after breakfast its gone? i took advise from my lfs they told me to use a treatment which is invert safe, and it states that on box since using it i have lost my star fish and a turbo snail and both my hermits waste of time and money, im very slowely starting to loose interest and money, if i cant trust my lfs who can i trust.

 

[AK77]

If you can rule out all other causes of death (high nitrates etc) then I would contact the manufacturer and complain. I'd also ask them exactly what is in there product, (something they are most likely legally required to do). If there is copper in the medication, then you are pretty much stuffed for keeping inverts and corals again.

With regard to the whitespot, you are probably catching it at a certain point in the life cycle, IE cyst form. By morning these may have burst and the fish looks clean, only to be reinfected throughout the day and more cysts forming by the evening again. In one way, this is a good thing, because it means that the life cycle of the parasite is very fast... so once the fish is removed, the ich will be unable to find a fish host and subsequently die off. That's why I suggested leaving the tank void of all fish for a period of 2 weeks and raising the temperature to about 28c. At lower temps the life cycle is slower and could take over a month to 6 weeks to break the cycle.

Hang in there though, because a marine tank is very rewarding. I know these things are a pain in the ass. Trust me... I've had nothing but troubles myself. Anyhoo, check your water parameters and if you can photograph the results. Then contact the manufacturer firstly to complain and secondly to ask then what is specifically in their product. Once you have the chemical list, google it to see if any are compounds of copper.... like malachite etc, etc.

AK

 

[AndyS]

I believe SeaChem do a product that soaks up copper and other toxic metals out of the water, its called Cuprisorb, and is sold in pouches or jars, you could try using that if you have introduced copper into the system.

 

[kkyyllee]

if copper was introduced ur sand liverock and tank are useless, keep an eye one ur paramters from things dieying in the rock

 

[AndyS]

if copper was introduced ur sand liverock and tank are useless, keep an eye one ur paramters from things dieying in the rock

Thats rubbish, its a myth that copper is invincible. In some rare cases it can seep into silicone, but most of the time it is fine. Fair enough the live rock and sand may have been spoiled by using copper, but it depends on the concentration of the copper. At worst you may have to buy new live rock and sand and start over. The tank should be fine. Cuprisorb is supposed to work wonders. Couple this with some carbon and it should be removed pretty quickly.

My tank is living proof of this, i used copper based meds when it was a freshie tank, tested for copper ten minutes ago and the result was 0.