Hospital Tank and Salting "Furry" Barramundi"

[Yabbies4me]

My Barra have been going okay, not growing as quickly as I would've liked, but I put that down to one of two things, either the pellets I'm using are crap or the fact they're indoors. Norm's barra were out of the same batch as mine but his are bigger... because they're outdoors I believe, they must benefit from sunlight, suicidal bugs etc.

Anyhow, my water has been fine, normally NH3/4 = 0.0, N02 = 0.0, N03 = 0.0... Occasionally I would get a "trace" of N03. But recently one of my Barra has developed "furry" fungal patches. I salted the water to 3ppm, it helped for a while (furry didn't disappear completely), but as I diluted down the salt in the FT water with regular water top-ups (ie: each week when I siphon out the poop I replace about 60-80Ltrs with fresh "aged" water), the furry came back.

I don't want to keep salting the FT, it's hammering the plants. So I've built a hospital tank using a 300Ltr aquarium I haven't been using for a couple of years. It has an Eheim pump/filter, as well as a second pump sitting in a sump that sits under a home made bio-filter.

I placed a 50Ltr tub on top of a 30Ltr tub. The top tub contains 3/4 bag of exp clay, the water trickles through the clay and through holes in the bottom of this tub into the 30Ltr sump tub below, which contains a pump that pumps the water back to the FT via a spray bar for aeration. Can all be seen in pics below.

The system has been running for a week and I "seeded" with water from another aquarium and I'm ready to treat the fish. I've salt bathed fish before over the years when my Murray cod were smaller and with Black bream, but I would like to get this right first time, in the shortest, most stress free way... so I have a few questions that I would like to find out the general consensus on:

I was thinking of salting the hospital tank to 6ppt, but the Barra can handle much higher... should I go higher?

Should I salt the hosp' tank first, then add the fish for that instant "shock" effect... or should I add the fish to the hosp' tank then salt?

Should I just put the furry fella in the hosp' tank, or should I treat them all?... just a bit concerned about unnecessary stress, I think that may be what caused this fungal attack... a few weeks ago I transferred them into another tank while I emptied theirs to move it.

How long should I keep them in the hosp' tank? (the healthy ones)

Cheers, Yabbies.
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[Yabbies4me]

Not all at once!... we don't want to crash Murray's server!
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[RupertofOZ]

I was thinking of salting the hospital tank to 6ppt, but the Barra can handle much higher... should I go higher?

Barra can handle up to seawater... 32ppt...

Should I salt the hosp' tank first, then add the fish for that instant "shock" effect... or should I add the fish to the hosp' tank then salt?

Yes... and I'd got to 10ppt, with plenty of air, for an hour.... then 50% water change, and leave them at that for a fortnite...

Keep your tank temp above 20C at all times.... if you can't... then cull them... otherwise the cold will kill them off anyway....

Should I just put the furry fella in the hosp' tank, or should I treat them all?... just a bit concerned about unnecessary stress, I think that may be what caused this fungal attack... a few weeks ago I transferred them into another tank while I emptied theirs to move it.

I'd do them all in one hit.... you'll stress the others chasing around trying to catch the one anyway... and chances are all are infected to some degree...

How long should I keep them in the hosp' tank? (the healthy ones)

As above... two weeks....

[trout]

Well, I was hoping some one else would jump in.

I'm probably not the best to comment ( I treated my fish with H2O2)

But If you are going to salt, don't play around go for 10 ppt.

Put them straight in for 2-3 hours then back into freshwater.

couple of days later do it again.

Now comes the hard part.
Taking the fish in and out of these baths will stress them even more.
I think that was the cause of some of my SP death late last year, hence
I no longer keep fish in the floating baskets.

My hospital tank is separate and if I salt bath my fish
I add the salt to the tank (10ppt) then in a couple of hours I drain the tank
leaving only enough water in it for the fish to stand upright and fill with
fresh water. But the fish don't leave the tank.

I personally think this is a better method.

My hospital tank is 150 litres and it's a pain doing the water changes.


cheers Lou

[trout]

beaten by Rupe yet again

[Yabbies4me]

Thanks guys!...

I had actually gone ahead and salted the tank to 10ppt anyways, after reading bone of Murray's posts about his hospital tank. I couldn't wait, needed to do it today.

My initial idea was to salt to 6ppt and leave them all in there for about a week.

Then after reading Murray's post I decided to treat it more like a salt bath, go for the "shock" treatment, salt it to 10ppt and only leave them in there for 24 hours, then take the healthy ones out, do a 1/3 water change and leave the Furry one in there for a week or so.

So you have answered my questions... Cheers.

I will give it 10ppt for an hour then 50% change etc. Is the two weeks essential for the process, especially for the healthy ones, or is that just you erring on the side of safety? The reason I ask is I was planning on putting some other fingerlings in that tank next week, I may have to re-plan things.

Cheers, Yabbies.
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[Yabbies4me]

Just for reference sake Rupe, if you have a spare minute, what would the salt levels and time frames be if doing the same for trout, and even Silvers, Jades etc.

Cheers, Yabbies.
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[Castaway]

Double check Yabbies that your barra do indeed have symptoms of "fungus" as often when they are little fingerlings the "fungus" is deceiving to the eye.

When another little barra takes a bite out of his mate, generally around his side, the flesh has an odd way to bloom out and resemble a light fine ball adhering to his sides that very much resembles furry fungus in appearance as he swims about lethargically. He wont be interested in food and generally float away from his mates to the quiet end of the tank and die after a few days. Take him out with a net and examine him under a magnifying glass for bites. The bites will be tiny but enough to shock and kill him.

Something to think about as I noticed the "fungus" on my barra which wasn't fungus - but just their normal cannibalistic nature of fish this size. Cannibalism will clear up when the fish get bigger around 3 or 4 inches.

[Yabbies4me]

Cheers Castaway,

They are between about 15-20cm long now, and have been in since late November. I can't really get a good look at him unless I pull him out and put him in the hospital tank. My FT is black, it's indoors and it sits directly under the GB, so there's not much light there. Also, when I lift the second half of the lid they go mental and race around the FT.

I'll have to get them into the hospital tank and have a good look at them all, I may even leave them there and over-winter them, I should have my bigger system finished in my backyard by spring (don't hold your breath though) and I'll stick them in there.

Cheers, Yabbies.
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[trout]

Just for reference sake Rupe, if you have a spare minute, what would the salt levels and time frames be if doing the same for trout, and even Silvers, Jades etc.

Cheers, Yabbies.
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Yabbies, that's a very good idea but can I suggest once such data is
gathered, can we put it in a separate section that is closed to normal
posting so that we can build a data base.

The advantage would be that people won't need to search through
mountains of posts to find good data.

other topics could be:

fish weights to size
fish feeding rates to size
fish optimum growing temperature ranges
fish safe pesticides
successful alternative fish food idea

you get the general idea.


cheers Lou