Does this look like Whitespot to you?

[Pufferpunk]

I don't agree with this. The reason to add salt is to blast the osmotic pressure inside the cyst & cause it to die. Marine salt will do the same thing. Getting the SG up will also help the fish's immune system to fight off disease.

[mrgreen]

So if my SG is 1.008, the aquarium salt I've been adding has been superfluous?

[LilGreenPuffer]

Were you raising the salinity when you treated them, or was it where you wanted it?

[mrgreen]

Its where I've had it for a while. I haven't changed the SG, just been adding aquarium salt as it says on the AS box.

[LilGreenPuffer]

Well, my guess is that the ich you were dealing with was brackish, so you needed to change the salt concentration to something it couldn't handle. On the other hand, this fish needs to change salinity anyway, so the increased marine salt will do the trick. But that's just my guess. Let's see what the experts say.

[Lil' Swimz$]

...so the increased marine salt will do the trick. But that's just my guess. Let's see what the experts say.

LilGreen, I'd say your one of the experts!!

[LilGreenPuffer]

Not so much...

[Lil' Swimz$]

*Scough* Uh, yah!!

[Pufferpunk]

I'd keep that SG & just do the heat & WC.

[Malabar Front]

What is your SG?

And how much aquarium salt are you adding for the ick?

Apologies, I haven't been able to get back here sooner. I do indeed have test kits, and not those rubbish strips, either.

I've had the F8 a week, and he was kept in freshwater in the LFS (of course). I have the marine salt and refractometer to start weening him and my bacteria onto low brackish water and was about to give the minnows currently in the tank to my girlfriend. Of course, now the whitespot has landed, nothing is going in or out of this tank now, so it's freshwater while I treat it. If I can find another place to put the minnows as quarantine in the meantime, I'll start slowly adding the salt at the weekend.

The puffer still seems fairly happy, though the cysts are still on his body. It's only been two days, so maybe a couple more and they'll have dropped off at this temperature. Oxygenation seems fine still, though all the fish's appetites have quite clearly increased, so I've been feeding them a little extra.

You can tell he's suffering, though. He's been itching himself in the plants in the tank, so I feel awful for him. Bless.

Thanks for all your advice, chaps.

edit: forgot to answer your second question. The aquarium salts box says 9g/litre for supportive use, built up slowly over a few days. I've been dissolving a few tablespoons of it in some tankwater in a tub each day, then slowly pouring it into the outstream of the filter.

[KorrepZ]

Aint adding salt a big mistaken myth when it comes to white spot?

You should use some medicine....

[LilGreenPuffer]

No, it's not a myth. There is an article on the Library that you really should read. Many medications can be extremely harmful to puffers because of their sensitive scaleless skin.

[KorrepZ]

Always thought salt was more to contain and slow down the cycle of white spot rather then cure it.

[Pufferpunk]

Salt works on Ich in the way it works on a snail or slug (ever pour salt on a slug?). The osmotic pressure of the salt causes the Ich to die. Heat speeds up the lifecycle of the parasite & large WC removes living, free-swimming cysts & eggs.

[LilGreenPuffer]

The osmotic pressure works like this: Everything tries to equalize. When you put your new fish's bag in your tank, the temperature in the bag goes up a bit (assuming that your heater makes the water warmer than the outside temperature), and the temperature in the tank goes down an eensey, miniscule bit. Ich cysts contain some salt. When you make the salt concentration in the water different than the salt concentration inside the cyst, the salt concentrations will try to equalize so hard that the cyst will burst open. The salt concentration in the cysts is higher than freshwater/low brackish and lower than high brackish/saltwater, so you can increase the tank's salinity for freshwater ich, or decrease it for saltwater ich.