Treating porcupine ICH Copper/Hypo/?

[Sno]

Hi guys i recently had a tank wipeout thanks to a bad case of whitespot. So ive started fresh and have a permanently run quarantine tank this time with no live rock and no substrate so i can keep ontop of things alot easier.

And ive bought myself two baby porc's the lfs held onto one of them for me for 2 months and one for 1 month, they are both very small like an inch, and are together in the quarantine, I no have hand them since sunday so about 5 day's and they are both eating well and a huge variety of foods, they get along fine together, except one seems to nip at the glass, filter return pipe and behind the heater for some unknown reason you hear a massive crack and then seem him drop from the filter return pipe!

i had whitespot on my previous porcupine puffer and at first it was hard to tell however within a couple days he was coated in white spot's and appeared dry and there was no doubt what was wrong with him. One of these new fish seems to have little specs on his fins and i cant work out if they are the start of ich or not, however i don't want to leave it til it's too late.

Before as treatment i went with hyposalinity and all my fish dropped dead after showing signs of ich and then secondary diseases, my puffers face turnt black, my butterfly lost scales due to scratching, both within 1-2 weeks, and the yellow tang become reclusive and just passed after 2-3 weeks after initially bringing the salt level down. i went with 1.009-1.010 sg calibrated with R.O water left for 30 secs to compensate for temp.

My problem is if this is ich i have tried hyposalinity and it just didn't work for me, i killed my fish it was a huge outbreak of ich to the point where all fish become entirely covvered in whitespot as opposedto having just a few spots, i was told by a few lfs' that 1.009 sounds too low and the fish obviously had become more suseptable to bacterial infections due to low immune systems caused by hypo, and they all said i should go with copper in future even with the puffer in there.


However copper is an irritant and i know puffers are scaless and aren't the best fish to use copper with. So i'm looking for another option to help these little fish? or some advise from anyone who HAS used copper with porcupines, bearing in mind these are juvenilles of a no more than an inch in size. the product all the lfs sell here is Cuprazine by Waterlife. What do you guys do when puffer's have ICH. i followed an online hypo guide and i can't help but feel like its the reason it killed my fish when they did all get bacterial infections and die, and a few people told me that this was a result of such a low sg.

They are lite spots if anything and certainly no comparison to my last outbreak, therefore will they be able to pull through on their own? like no treatment just good feedings? supplemented with garlic? i will be moving them again in 4 weeks aslong as no further signs appear to a tank with lr and sand so would be hopeful the ich is gone as i dont want the stress of moving them to bring ich out again in a tank with substrate ect.

Thankyou so much to anyone who even manages to read all of this i know its a huge post i just want to be clear with everyone what ive tried and get new opinions as to what else i can try, as i dont want to end up like last time ever again.

[Pufferpunk]

Always hypo. Are you planning on keeping both puffers?

[Sno]

Yeahhh i'm so frightened of what happend happening again though! I'll read into it and see if they get any worse signs or if its just me being over paranoid.

[Pufferpunk]

I would not house 2 puffers like this together, unless you are keeping a 500g tank.

[Nuclear_Glitter]

Even though you feel it was the hypo the first time what most likely happened is they got so badly infected that they died from the Ich, not from your salinity. You also should increase your heat because it speeds the life-cycle of ich up. Also when treating for ich you have to do large, daily water changes. Use a gravel vac and vacuum the whole tank bottom to get all the floating parasites off. Heat and extra salt are truly the best ways to treat this disease.

here's a link on the life-cycle of ich, good to understand for treatment.

http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/ichpar ... ecycle.htm

[briguy44]

Not to try to offend N-G but with saltwater ich (crypt) temperature will do little to help the process. Freshwater and Saltwater ich are two totally different parasites that react to heat in different ways.

Point of this post: you don't have to worry about raising your tanks temperature when/if you have to treat your porks.

[Pufferpunk]

Heat is actually hurtful to a fish suffering from crypt.

[Nuclear_Glitter]

I am not offended at all. That is some REALLY good information to know. Thank you for sharing. =]

[Nuclear_Glitter]

I found this article that you might find helpful.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1985626