Marine Velvet

suiso man wrote: Mark Callahan said that velvet will stay in the tank for six months without a host so even if your fish live it will kill others in the tank unless you get everything out of the tank asap. If there are signs of velvet on the fis no amount of medecation will save them. You have to treat the fish before the symtoms show. I will find the link to his video about it

From my research velvet doesn't have a dormant stage and has to have a host in order to survive. I'm pulling ALL of the fish out today. Also my tank runs at 80F which will speed up the life cycle of the parasite so without a host it should be gone after a month or two. I may end up running fish-less for 6 months anyways just to be sure that ich and all other fish parasites are out of the tank.

How long does everyone think I should go to rid the display tank of parasites?

suiso man wrote: If there are signs of velvet on the fis no amount of medecation will save them. You have to treat the fish before the symtoms show.

This is incorrect. It's more difficult to treat at this stage, but it's not impossible. I've successfully treated at this stage, and so have many others.

You don't. You have to treat the fish in a quarantine tank. Since Velvet can be transferred in a single droplet (or can even be aerosolized in rare cases), I have fishless coral QT systems. That prevents Velvet (or other parasites) from coming in on my corals to attack my healthy fish.

ReefdUp wrote: You don't. You have to treat the fish in a quarantine tank. Since Velvet can be transferred in a single droplet (or can even be aerosolized in rare cases), I have fishless coral QT systems. That prevents Velvet (or other parasites) from coming in on my corals to attack my healthy fish.

suiso man wrote: I was looking through your steps and had a couple of questions. what is methylene blue? how did you clean up the infected tank rocks, sand and water?

Ok...I'm no vet, so I'm treading into some deep water here. Methylene blue is a redox dye medication that is used in the fish hobby (and many other medical/hobby fields) to treat for a variety of issues, including cyanide poisoning, high ammonia/nitrate exposure, oxygen deprivation, tissue injury staining, some fungal infections, and it is somewhat effective against some protozoans (like ich, velvet, brook, etc.)

These properties are why I use and encourage its use in a combination with freshwater dips on nearly all new (and injured/sick) fish. Many new fish are oxygen deprived, have cyanide poisoning, or were exposed to high levels of ammonia during shipping/handling. Plus, it'll knock off the majority of parasites when used with a freshwater dip.

I never had to "clean up the infected tank rocks, sand and water" because I treated my fish in a QT before I introduced them to my main display. If I somehow got velvet/ich/whatever in my main tank, I would remove all fish and treat them in a separate QT tank. I would let the main tank run fallow for 6 weeks, during which, the parasites would die from lack of a food source.

I don't know the treatment protocol for cyanide poisoning...sorry. But, yes, fish are still caught with it in some cases. I'm sure some of our LFS carry methylene blue...and sometimes the big box pet stores carry it as well. If not, I know Marine Depot and other online fish stores have it.

So sorry! It is a horrible disease.

Everybody is in quarantine and survived the night. Hopefully it'll be uphill from here.

Just a suggestion but maybe put some PVC pipes or something for the fish to hide in and feel secure while they are in the qt. would help a lot with stress.