The Puffer Forum

I added 2 new fish to my brackish tank yesterday, and today they look like they have ich. Question is, they were in freshwater when I bought them, and I acclimated them over 4 hours into the brackish(1.008). If it were FW Ich from the store, wouldn't it have been killed off in the brackish water?

Since this is a brackish tank, would the same heat+aquarium salt treatment do, or would it be useless to add the salt. Temp is already 80, I can bump it up a few degrees though. They are the only 2 fish displaying this. My original puffer, and gobies show no signs yet.

Oh, and i'm not %100 sure it is ich, may be velvet.

This is based on my understanding of ich, but maybe some others will chime in here.

You probably received the fish with ich from the store. If the ich is under the fishes slime coat, it can survive most treatments. Where you are actually killing the ich is when it reproduces (free swimming stage)

Unless you are very unlucky and have a strain of super-ich, the ich your fishes has will die off, and won't be able to reproduce.

You could try the recommended temp increase to 86 deg F, but do it slowly and watch your fish closely for signs of distress, I would also add an airstone or venturi powerhead for extra O2 @ the higher temp.

Ich, when it is attached to the fish, has a hard outer shell. It can only be killed in its free-swimming stage, which is why they need to be treated with heat and salt for a minimum of 2 weeks after you see the last one on the fish. This is also one major reason we recommend quaratine of several weeks of any new livestock before adding it to the main tank.

Same heat and salt treatment should work since they were in freshwater before. Ich or velvet doesn't matter, same treatment for both.

Yes, usually I do quarantine. Gah, the only reason why I didn't this time is because I was worried about aggression in the q-t tank.

So if I understand this right, I should still add the aquarium salt to this brackish tank? Or will the ich die off once it drops off the fish(aided by the raising temperature to ~86*) because of the marine salt.

ToyotaRKeener wrote:Yes, usually I do quarantine. Gah, the only reason why I didn't this time is because I was worried about aggression in the q-t tank.

So if I understand this right, I should still add the aquarium salt to this brackish tank? Or will the ich die off once it drops off the fish(aided by the raising temperature to ~86*) because of the marine salt.

No don't add any aquarium salt. In fact, just throw the bottle away.

Marine salt can also be used to treat ich, so just keep what you have and raise the heat a little. Any kind of salt, including table salt, can be used to treat ich but if you already have marine salt in there, no need to add anything else.

Great. Thanks guys!

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but -
From everything I researched regarding ich (my Figure 8's came with it), I was under the impression that there is no such thing as brackish water ich. Hypersalinity kills freshwater ich and hyposalinity kills marine white spot, and there is no in between, so the brackish water itself should kill the ich on its own.

I know that my Figure 8's came in freshwater, and I acclimated them right into SG ~ 1.010 and the ich was gone within a week or two. I think I did bump up the temperature to 82-84 degrees, just to speed up the lifecycle and make it easier for the puffers to settle in.

There are species of ich (and pretty much any other parasite) for every water type. Your fish just happened ot be carrying the freshwater version, and it died in the brackish water. Had they been carrying the brackish version, and you put them in brackish water of a similar salinity, you would have had more trouble.