The Puffer Forum

I'm guessing my GSP has ich...Still cant find any spots but he is rubbing up against anything he can in his tank every few hours. No other symptoms...

Should I leave it alone for a few more days to see what happens?
When would I treat Ich (I know there is only a certain time to treat)?
What would you recommend I use?

Unfortunately I currently am using my hospital tank, Will it be OK to medicate the main tank?

Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated!

He is in an SG. of 1.019, so I would need to use saltwater medication...

Also, the water has been tested many, many times in the last few days and its great...so no problems there...

Thanks Again!

In the hospital forum there is a sticky about Salt Water Ich. Take a look if you havent already.

Yeah I saw that but Im still not sure if I should treat the whole tank and if so, when? Im just wondering how treating the whole tank will effect the good bacteria. I am going to quarantine the mollies anyways, so the GSP is the only fish in the tank. And I guess if I use copper in the main tank then I will have to also remove the hermit crabs...

I just thought I should add some other info...

Amm. 0, Nitrites 0, Nitrates 5, temp. 81, sg. 1.019, ph 8

water changes once a week (40-50%)

recently had a spike in temperature for a few days (went up to 86!) Returned to normal temp for a few days but spiked again for a day...

sorry, just thought of one more question....

When Ich becomes free swimming and is looking for a new host will it go back to the original host or only new ones? Im assuming it will go back to the original but am not sure...And how long does it live in the tank if it doesnt find a host?

Ich will attack any fish in the tank. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but ideally, you'll want to keep your tank fishless for at least a month to ensure the removal of the parasite.

I believe there may be (better) alternatives to copper. You could try the hyposalinity method (drop your salinity below sg 1.011 for a month). There are probably many people on this sight with experience doing this (I am not one of them... the only time I battled ich was in a non-puffer tank and it was a nightmare to get rid of).

If you use copper, you'll have to be very careful (puffers are very sensitive to it) and you'll need to buy a copper test kit. My copper of choice is cupramine (it saved my porcupine puffer from velvet a few months back and helped my poor tang battle ich when I first started in the hobby). I would not, however, recommend putting copper in your display tank. It can absorb into your substrate as well as some of the decorations/rock, etc. and release at anytime, thus wiping out your inverts (and possibly your puffer). I have also heard that GSPs have a stronger reaction to copper than some other puffers, but I don't know if that is true. You might want to try to talk to Puffer Queen... she seems very knowledgable about this stuff.

It is possible that there might be something else going on. Temperature fluctuations are not good (they made my poor tang get sick recently after they shut off the air conditioner in my apartment). I'd monitor him over the weekend and see if he starts showing signs of anything.

Anyone else have thoughts or ideas?

Dan