- Alright, maybe you watched the Which White Spot video
and diagnosed Ich or velvet in the display.
We have some medicated treatments today.
They're nearly the same as the 80/20 QT,
or the prophylactic treatment,
but today what we're talking about
is I identified it in the display tank,
how do I treat for it?
And there's some subtle differences.
Alright, we have Elliot from Marine Collectors again today
to tell us how to medicate for both the Ich and the velvet.
There's a lotta different ways to treat for these things,
but medicated is what he does.
Why is that?
- So medicated is kinda just this way to put an entire
all-encompassing blanket over protozoan parasites.
We're treating for a lot of things
that would essentially crash a tank.
Medication is the easiest way to do it
with the least amount of errors that you potentially make,
especially if you're new to this
and it's gonna actually allow you
to do it really effectively as well.
- The alternative treatment to medicated treatments
is typically the tank transfer method,
which is something that we'll explain in a future episode.
But there are some pretty big pros to medicated,
starting with...
- Alright, so the first of it,
it's really hard to mess it up.
It's actually gonna be an extension
of the 80/20 QT that we already went over.
Especially if you're novice,
you're gonna have a lot higher chance
of success rate doing this
because it's not as dependent on being as accurate
with sterilization, sanitizing.
The other thing is that if you are already working
with a fish that is infected to the intermediate
or end-stages of the actual parasite outbreak,
you're gonna have a lot higher chance of actually
recovering that fish opposed to doing tank transfer,
which is, one, it's gonna be stressful moving the fish,
but it also has a lot less margin for error.
- A lot of the time when people,
especially people who are doing this
for the first or second time,
the times when you notice Ich and wanna treat for it
is actually closer to the end-stage.
And so while the tank transfer method
you'll learn about in the future
is a little bit more gentle,
gentle might not be what we're looking for at that stage.
And again, we're looking for hard to mess up, easy.
And because it's just an extension
of that 80/20 QT that we've already taught,
this should be that.
Alright, just like anything,
there's cons to approaches as well and medicated has one.
- Alright, so the first of which
you gotta have that stuff on hand.
Have Copper Power, have a copper checker on hand.
Don't wait till you have an outbreak.
Order it in the mail.
Maybe it takes a week to get it
and then suddenly that fish has to endure that infection
for a week's time.
It's not ideal for the fish
and it's not ideal for your chances
of actually recovering that fish either.
- The copper checker is just
'cause the accuracy counts when you're using medications,
but there are a lot of different coppers out there.
Why Copper Power over the rest?
- Yeah, so Copper Power is just what we use
at the Marine Collectors warehouse.
I know it to work
and I know what concentrations it's safe at.
Chelated copper sulfate is what Copper Power is
and it's actually a lot more forgiving to fish.
It's a lot more user friendly.
That way, if you are novice doing this,
it's a little bit more forgiving
just in case you mess up a little bit.
- So it's important to note
that there's multiple types of copper.
There's the chelated copper sulfate,
there's other types.
So we're focusing only on the chelated copper sulfate,
but there are brands of that out there also
that have the same essentially chemical inside
but they don't always produce the same results.
- Yeah, so we're gonna really just try to stick
to what we know.
We've used some in the past that were a different brand,
but due to manufacturing changes or whatever,
they seem to not be as effective.
So just save yourself trouble.
Get some Copper Power, use that and a checker.
That's what we know to work.
- All right, so let's treat some Ich.
And the first step of this is actually observation.
Why is that?
- All right, so with Ich, you do have time.
The actual amount of duration it takes for the life cycle
to accumulate into a actual outbreak
that'll be lethal to fish takes a while,
which means that you have the time to watch the fish,
see how they handle an outbreak.
If you happen to look at your fish, you notice that,
hey, they've got a lot of spots,
but the actual infection isn't getting worse.
It seems to be around the same number.
It's not progressively getting worse and worse
week over week,
maybe management's the way to go.
If it is getting progressively worse,
then treatment might be necessary.
- So we actually did a whole episode on Ich management.
This is basically just accepting
that this is gonna be in your tank.
And a lot of times, it will visually just go away.
It will still be in there, but it's not causing
like a visual problem to the fish's health.
A lot of that's focused on the population control,
the parasite, the diet, water quality,
but the first step here is
if you see Ich and it's not actually getting worse,
you may want to consider
at least go watch the management video
and see if that might be a better solution for you
because treatment is going to be a lot of work,
you're gonna see that in just a second,
and it may be totally unnecessary.
All right, for velvet, there's also first step,
which is way more aggressive than watch it.
- All right, so unfortunately, unlike Ich,
you have no time.
You see it, you pull the fish out.
Best course of action is formalin,
which means catch all the fish in your tank one by one,
formalin dip.
I wouldn't do them all together
just because formalin does actually strip the oxygen,
sorry, the water of oxygen.
So hydroaeration is definitely gonna be a must.
The dip is consisted of 30, 60 minutes, one mil per gallon.
What we're using is 37% formaldehyde or formalin.
Always match the temperature.
Make sure that all the parameters match
so it's as least stressful as possible.
And then in terms of if you don't wanna do formalin,
next best option is gonna be fresh water.
You can do one for three to five minutes.
And again, just make sure that the temperature is the same
and also you have good aeration.
- So important point is that you're not gonna pull out
just the sick fish in the case of velvet.
You're gonna pull 'em all and all of 'em will get this bath.
I noticed that he has two different baths there.
One of 'em is probably best practice
being the formalin and most effective,
and the other one is just fresh water.
So here's the deal.
The formalin is absolutely gonna be better,
but it's harder to find.
It's not gonna be found in most fish stores,
certainly not in the 37% that is required.
Usually it's like mixed in small amounts with other things
and fish products.
But the other part is that
it has a carciogenic warning on it.
I personally am not equipped to be able to tell you
how carciogenic it is or how to deal with it safely.
I have to do a little bit of research on it.
But to be frank, it's not the kind of thing
that I would like to keep around my house,
around my kids and pets and stuff.
But there is another emerging option out there
which might actually fit the gap
in between these two things,
which is hydrogen peroxide.
I'd call this a little bit experimental.
Have you used hydrogen peroxide before?
- I have not.
That's also why I can't recommend it.
'cause I only use what I know works.
But anecdotally, we have seen other people
in the industry recommend it.
- In fact, I think I've seen a good number of people,
specifically, Humble.Fish talks about it a lot.
He's a thought leader
inside of the fish disease and parasite community.
He has a forum fully dedicated to this.
And one of the things they use for velvet there
is actually the hydrogen peroxide.
So if you wanna go learn more about hydrogen peroxide
as a solution for the bath and velvet,
I'd go check out Humble.Fish's website
because it'd frankly be awesome for home use
if you could find something you get readily available
at every drugstore and is effective and much safer.
All right, past step one,
which is observation or do that bath
'cause you think it's velvet,
everything else is now the same for velvet and Ich.
And it starts with following the 80/20 QT.
The method is the same.
Go watch that.
But basically, what is it?
- Basically, what we're doing
is we've got premedicated water
that we're doing water changes every three days.
Basically, what we're gonna do is just run out the clock.
As soon as you don't see symptoms
of the parasites on the fish anymore,
count the clock 14 days from then,
no symptoms for consecutive 14 days and you're done.
- Yeah, so the difference between this one doing
like proactively trying to avoid it
is I didn't see signs of Ich
and that's why I did the quarantine.
In this case, we're seeing actual sign of Ich on the fish.
So the clock, again, starts not when we start the treatment,
but when the last time that we see Ich or velvet
on the fish, 14 days from then,
if you can do a handful of water changes
and add copper to a bin.
Anybody can do this and be successful.
All right, there are a couple deviations from the 80/20 QT
when we're actually gonna treat for it
starting with we're gonna run the water a bit cooler.
What is that and why?
- All right, so we're actually gonna be shooting
for 70, 72 degrees.
The reason why is colder water
holds a lot more dissolved oxygen.
It's gonna slow bad things down.
It's gonna reduce energy burn,
but the most important thing is it's gonna reduce the chance
for secondary bacterial infections.
Just like in the 80/20,
we are gonna be running nitrofurazone,
but if you already have a fish that is end-stage,
it's covered, completely coded in parasites,
what you can basically envision is that you have a bunch
of parasites penetrating the epithelial layer.
It's like a fish that's covered in small wounds
and then that fish is also sitting
in a finite amount of water that has waste accumulating
over the next three days
until you're waiting for that water change to come.
And basically, what we wanna do
is prevent that as much as possible
so that the fish can actually outrun parasites life cycle
of the feeding stage.
That way, we can actually get to the point where that fish
can handle the treatment a lot better
- More or less bad things that happen much slower.
We increase the oxygen, which helps the fish.
We reduce that energy burn,
the fish is a little bit more docile.
And all those little hundreds or even thousands
of little bites on it are much less likely to turn
into bacterial infections.
So 70 to 72 degrees, slight deviation.
Another deviation from the 80/20 prophylactic treatment,
which is 14 days.
We mentioned this earlier.
This one's gonna be a little bit longer.
Why's that?
- All right, so what we're looking for
is 14 days clean or 14 days without symptoms.
And that's a consecutive 14 days.
So if you've got a fish that
it's been in quarantine for three days
but it's had signs of parasites for that entire time,
you haven't started that 14-day clock.
The 14-day clocks starts from the last day
that you saw symptoms.
- So if it took five days to get 'em all off there
where you can't see 'em anymore,
it's now a 19-day cycle instead of 14.
Another note from the 80/20
is we suggest using nitrofurazone
and show how to use it in that QT process,
but here it's really critical because...
- All right, so nitrofurazone,
it's an antimicrobial,
not to be confused with an antibiotic.
But basically, if you think about a fish that is end-stage,
it has a lot of parasites on the body.
That's a lot of wounds where it actually penetrated the skin
and the slime coat.
Basically, what we're trying to do
is prevent all of those sites of entry
from being infected and keep them clean.
So that way, the fish can recover a lot better.
- So nitrofurazone, we suggested FURAN-2
I think from Seachem.
- API.
And that actually is like off the market,
but from behind the scenes,
I hear that they're testing another option.
So if you like to see the FURAN-2 come back to market
so that we're not having to scour Amazon for nitrofurazone,
send API a little note and say, hey, I'd love to see that,
maybe social or somewhere,
or even just note it here in the comments
and I'll share that with them as well
because we'd like an easy-to-use version of that
'cause the nitrofurazone,
protecting against those bacterial infections
is a really important step.
All right, so here's the killer.
The big difference between the quarantining and treatment.
In quarantining, when I'm done,
I'm just gonna add 'em to the tank.
In this case though,
if I'm treating for disease from a tank,
what do I do?
This is a case of an ounce of prevention
versus a pound of cure.
- All right, so it's gonna look
a little bit different, right?
We're pulling all the fish outta the tank.
Unfortunately, just because we treat the fish
outside the tank does not mean
that we can immediately then put them back into the tank
once they're done.
We have to fallow the tank unfortunately,
especially if we're gonna be shooting for eradication
especially with velvet.
So with velvet, we're gonna be leaving the tank
without fish for six weeks.
That means you're gonna have to find a place
to put those fish for six weeks
outside of your display tank,
ideally 10 feet away or in a separate room.
And then for Ich, it's actually 11 weeks.
- So there are some people that will tell you
that I could be as short as six weeks.
That doesn't really work with every strain
and it doesn't work with lower temperatures.
So I'd stick with a six weeks for velvet
and 11 weeks for Ich.
But that's the big difference here is with quarantining,
the ounce of prevention, I can throw 'em right in the tank.
If I'm treating it,
'cause I didn't do the quarantine to begin with,
now I gotta find a place to put these fish for 11 weeks.
And I also need to think about their health,
meaning that if they came out of a 120 gallon tank
and it was heavily stocked,
I probably need another 120 gallon tank to stock 'em.
It could be a horse trough or some other container,
but this is long term,
months that they need to be housed in there
in a healthy fashion.
So big, big deviation there that at the end here.
We need to actually house these fish,
let all of the process of Ich get out of our display tank.
All right, so with Ich, there is an alternative
to the 11-week fallow period 'cause to be frank,
for a lot of people, setting up a second tank
and doing an 11-week fallow period isn't realistic
and the fish are just gonna die if that's the only option.
So we have to create second options that are not as good
but better than just letting 'em die.
What is it?
- Yeah, so that's gonna be Ich management.
We actually already made a video on it.
Go watch it in its entirety
and make sure that you understand all the facets of it.
But when you have the fish out, you medicated them,
you can go ahead and put those measures in place.
ID, UV, sediment filter, get those in place.
That way, you can actually
put a really big dent in the population
before you put those fish back in the tank.
- So we're gonna focus really primarily
on health of the fish and maintaining healthy fish,
and then we're also gonna focus on
ways to reduce the overall population
of parasites in the tank.
So I would suggest really considering
doing the sediment filter method,
which will actually capture a bunch of the free swimmers,
and then also consider using the UV
to actually sterilize them
and prevent them from replicating
while we're doing the initial QT here
because we're going to reduce those populations of tank,
get the fish healthy, and then we're gonna add 'em back
and we're gonna use those management methods.
And yes, not as perfect as the total eradication
and the 11-week fallow period,
but you have to decide for yourself,
am I just gonna let it die?
Am I gonna do the fallow period?
Or am I gonna do something in between?
I mentioned earlier
there is another method as an alternative
to the medicated method.
It's called the tank transfer method,
and that's actually next right here.