Polyp Lab Medic

Hi everyone!

After having another outbreak of ich on my Personifer Angels in my DT, i had a minor brain aneurism and almost gave the game away. I was ready to advertise the lot for sale and just get rid of it.

I couldnt bear the thought of having to pull my DT apart again in an attempt to remove all the fish in to a half assed poorly set up QT (which is now being rebuilt and set up correctly), and I thought my only other option was to get rid of all the corals and turn the tank into a FOWLR so that I could retreat in the future if ever required

Then I had a rant to LiquidG (lol sorry bud ) and received some wise advice back. I gave myself a few uppercuts, bent my leg at unimaginable angles and kicked myself in the ass for being a sook.

Went searching across this great forum for all the tips and tricks and read as many threads as I could on treating and eradicating this ungodly parasite!!!

Anyway, I think I have found the solution which will work best for me, after reading other peoples experiences who are in the same situation as me - not really being in a good position to pull apart at DT

I've stumbled across a product called Polyp Lab Medic, which is supposed to be reef and invertebrate safe. I messaged a few people regarding their experiences with it, and all came back with positive feedback, all using differing levels of the product.

Took me nearly half a day of calling around different shops to find it, but eventually I found a shop open over xmas which had it in stock!!

So this morning, I did a small water change, checked all the parameters, and commenced treatment.

My plan is to treat as follows:

Day 1-7: 3 level scoops twice daily
Day 8-12: 2 level scoops twice daily
Day 13-16: 1 level scoop twice daily

I know this is not the normal method of moving all fish to a QT and treating with copper based products while leaving the DT free of fish for "x" amount of time. But it works for me on a few levels, so I'm running with it.

I havent bothered posting this elsewhere, as I'm over reading other peoples unconstructive negativity, which is exactly what know I would receive.

Any comments, suggestions or feedback is always greatly appreciated

Cheers!!

Simon

Negativity, bad feed back from a forum, most of us know which one in particular that would be!

As you can imagine this isn’t negative feed back this is from lots of personal experience.

White spot is in all our tanks, more so those with substrates, now that means it is always present no matter what any one tries to do unless there is a constant treatment in the water, that would mean no inverts of most any kind in there to keep white spot from actually existing easily in the aquarium.

The thing to look at is why are the fish under stress thus enabling the parasite to get that many blister egg sacks into the fishes flesh to cause concern.

White spot is an invertebrate, so to kill it affectively all inverts have to be affected a little, or a lot or killed off!

Complete white spot removal and to never appear again, means no affective bio community as well, they are also invertebrates.

Some treatments do work a little with inverts in the aquarium that is if the stress issue giving the white spot a foothold in the first place is only very slight.

The way to fix this from ever happening again is to find what the stress inducing issues are and fix them!

If not the fish will be a bit repaired in QT and be put back into the aquarium with slight amount of stress to begin with from that move back and than if the stress situation is still on going in the aquarium,they will be back to square one.

Personifer/Meredithi are the same as blue surgeons in that their scales are very tiny and allow easy access to the flesh for white spot that makes it hard as well.

The blue surgeon starts its life in the acropora stag heads,so its mucus coating is quite robust to protect it from the corals stinging them,so white spot for them isnt a great issue,though it appears on them quite often in tanks with a little stress.

I have twelve 40 to 50 mill long blue surgeons and 8 other fish and shrimp and other things I forget what,oh some corals and sponges as well, in a 60 litre tub with a glass box(wet section),at 20 inches high,14 inches wide and 4 inches thick,nearly filled with shell grit/coral rubble.

In the tub is a 1200 litre power head with a length of condute over the intake,the codute has holes drilled all over the length of it and it is covered in 100 micron filter wool/dacron bags I make and wrap a rubber band over the opened end at the pump end to hold the filter wool bag there,that is the pre filter before waters are pumped up to the top of the glass box and down to the bottom of it and the condute goes from one corner to the opposing corner and there are angle grinder cutes all along it at its base.

Than an egg crate layer on top of it and mesh on it to keep the shell grit/rubble from getting through,the water pumps under the shell grit and is forced up through it and over flows near the top of the box holes I cut out of the glass and glued in pieces of larger codute as over flows into the tube.

I have never in 14 years that the box has been running had white spot in that tub or a sickness of any kind,there is no substrate just a couple of dead coral chunks for hiding that get moved to not allow a bio community to form on it and a couple of huge oyster shells as well,the wet section(glass box)has a hell of a lot of surface area that houses a bio community that produces an acidic environment ever so slightly breaking down that calcium media-shell grit/coral rubble, a complete stabilising system.

I have two tubes off that box now,i used to run 6 tubs off it,that was a lot of fish on one wet section,but it always coped!

You wouldn’t think so to look at it.

I do a bucket-17 litres per fortnight water change, they get fed 4 to 20 times per day and everything does beautifully with one 10 wat LED tube over it.

What all this means is if you have a good with a robust manner of maturing wet section, splashing waters or similar to break surface tension and no substrate, you do not get sick fish, well I never have since I realised what white spot was all about a long time ago!

Also when your lights in the aquarium are switched off,your PH will crash via algae in and out of corals enough to affect KH and not show on a test normaly,your fish also sit their flesh in wait scared s..t less normally on that home for white spot,the substrate,until the time for lights on has occured,there are two very serious stresses already!

Hey there are a couple of more things to factor in as well, well hundreds really, but here are two more.

When you move your live rock in any way,(to catch a fish, remove a crab, what ever) even slightly compared to its original position and you can never put it back once moved in exactly the same position, you destabilise its bio community, more stress!

This will take 2 days to two months to restabilise!

Also the change in direction current style that has become popular, one pump coming on in one direction and than later another facing the other direction, this is a destabilising function as well, though it does clean your live rock a little by this, it does not give your bio community stability!

The ocean does not run as an aquarium does via a protist bio community, it is run by mainly phytoplankton (algae)!

Mate in a marine aquarium, stability is everything, that’s why live rock as the major part of your biological filtration is just asking for trouble, eventually!

It is so easy to make your bio area out side your tank and the live rock in your tank becomes part of it, not near on all of it,thats why protein skimmers, reactors of all sorts become essential with live rock, its hoped the skimmer will reduce the organic matter because the live rock is not a robust bio filter and will not cope!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I got a bottle of aquasonic Vertonex from one of the shops i bought a lot from. It is supposed to be invert safe for use of parasitic diseases in marine fish. Not sure if it will work or is any good. I havent had to use it yet and hopefully wont have to. Anyone used it before?
It could be of help.

Yeh it contains malachite green,we used to use it and malachite blue,both do something against the invert white spot.

Its not overly invert safe,its okay,but the problem is to get rid of the white spot for the moment,it has to be used at levels far in excess of those recomended,don’t use it like that,lol,its just I have used it before and the way you would need it used to ward of a serious infestation is to kill off all or some of your inverts.

I am just saying if the infestation is great and the reason for it remains, nothing works in a satisfactory way in a reef tank on white spot.

White spot is easy to attack via treatments else where, it only has a life span from born to breeding and death of old age in 48 hours.

yep i hear you liquidg. I got it for free. I have never trusted meds with the corals. It may be harsh but if i couldn't catch a fish with whitespot out of the invert tank, i left it. It wasn't worth unpacking the tank.

I agree totaly