The Puffer Forum

So here is the deal....I have had my 90 gallon saltwater tank up and running with my two gsps happily living in it for the past month or so. I finally got the guts to go out and buy a pair of percula clowns to be tank mates with the puffers. They looked nice and disease free in the fish store when I got them. Well I got them and now I have them in a 20 gallon quarantine tank. After taking a good hour to acclimate them they looked nice and happy swimming around in the tank. Within 5 or so hours of me putting them in I noticed that both of them were covered in ich! So here we go! Is hypo salinity the best way to treat saltwater ich? If so how do I go about doing hypo? Do I have to drop the sg by .002 a week until it reaches about 1.010 or can I take a bigger jump than that? I don't want to kill the bacteria on my filter and then have even bigger problems with horrible water conditions. Any help on the process would be great! Also do I need to use copper or anything if I am doing hypo?

I have read through that a few times and feel pretty comfortable with the information there. I would just like to know how I go about getting to 1.009 sg while still having some sort of biological filtration. I seems like I will a couple of months to get to hypo salinity levels by dropping the sg .002 per week and then another month for the parasites to die off. Am I really looking at a good 3-4 months in quarantine?

You won't. It takes close monitoring of the parameters & lots of huge WC, to keep the parameters stable. AT at 1.009 is only 1 month (I believe 10 days after the last spot is gone but RTR knows better), as long as the fish haven't been in the DT.

Okay thank you! A part of me wanted to just put them in the DT since they looked great and I was anxious. I am so glad I decided not to and do this the right way. It is saving me a huge headache in the long run.