VELVET MISERY

[manfish]

Hi everyone
I recently setup my first tank in 20 years. So excited to be back in the game!
Dilligently went through cycling and quarantining first fish, added them to display and all was going well.
Added my first corals 2 days ago, after quarantining them for a month too.

Woke up this morning to the early stages of velvet on my kole tang!!!
Spent my entire morning getting everyone back out and back into quarantine. Such a disappointment!

Going Fallow now with corals in there means i need to keep lights on, so i was wondering how long this is going to take to be sure its DEFINITELY GONE!!!
Some say 6 weeks, others say 76 days?
Does having lights on make a difference?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hi everyone
I recently setup my first tank in 20 years. So excited to be back in the game!
Dilligently went through cycling and quarantining first fish, added them to display and all was going well.
Added my first corals 2 days ago, after quarantining them for a month too.

Woke up this morning to the early stages of velvet on my kole tang!!!
Spent my entire morning getting everyone back out and back into quarantine. Such a disappointment!

Going Fallow now with corals in there means i need to keep lights on, so i was wondering how long this is going to take to be sure its DEFINITELY GONE!!!
Some say 6 weeks, others say 76 days?
Does having lights on make a difference?

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

I think the first thing you want to do is confirm that it actually is velvet (Amyloodinium). The typical first symptoms (and sometimes only symptom) is rapid breathing. If you see spots first, it is some other issue. I'm guessing it won't show up in a photo, but can you describe it?

The corals were probably not the vector here, seems too short of a time frame.

Velvet is not photosynthetic, so lights don't matter.

Fallow periods have only been studied in Cryptocaryon and Neobenedenia flukes as far as I know. The extreme instance, in a petri dish, with no bacteria was 76 days for ich. Martin Moe writes that Velvet is shorter than that, but doesn't have a study to reference, just his experience.

What quarantine schedule did you use?

Jay

 

[manfish]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

I think the first thing you want to do is confirm that it actually is velvet (Amyloodinium). The typical first symptoms (and sometimes only symptom) is rapid breathing. If you see spots first, it is some other issue. I'm guessing it won't show up in a photo, but can you describe it?

The corals were probably not the vector here, seems too short of a time frame.

Velvet is not photosynthetic, so lights don't matter.

Fallow periods have only been studied in Cryptocaryon and Neobenedenia flukes as far as I know. The extreme instance, in a petri dish, with no bacteria was 76 days for ich. Martin Moe writes that Velvet is shorter than that, but doesn't have a study to reference, just his experience.

What quarantine schedule did you use?

Jay

Thanks for your reply Jay.
Fish were quarantined for a month and all seemed completely healthy. A kole , a yellow tang and a red coris.
I dipped and quarantined corals for a month too, looking for aiptasia etc.
I noticed tiny white specs on the koles head and pectoral fins at first, then seemed to clear overnight . Next day they’re back and on the yellow tang too, although only really visible on his pecs against a black background. Looked too small to be ick. Neither of them seemed particularly stressed , and were eating well .
At first I was hoping it was just micro bubbles, but as they multiplied, I figured best to be safe than sorry.
Ive lost fish to velvet before, which is why im so paranoid about it and don’t want to take any chances.
I guess if its ick or velvet, the protocols are the same?

 

[MartinM]

Some have seemingly had success with H2O2: https://humble.fish/community/index.php?threads/peroxide-h2o2-dosing-for-parasites-in-reef-tank.725/

IME, I keep ich controlled with H2O2 and UV, because it’s simply not possible to avoid it in any system, especially in my case with puffers and several boxfish. Also in my experience in public aquaria, it was kept under control with UV, Ozone, and dilution (where I worked had direct access to NSW piped in) but never ‘eradicated’ (potentially possible, but again, not practically possible, IME).

Note that UV has to be done right, not simply some low wattage unit with a a few hundred LPH going through it. In my case, I’m running 120 watts 24x7 on a system that’s ~750 lites.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Thanks for your reply Jay.
Fish were quarantined for a month and all seemed completely healthy. A kole , a yellow tang and a red coris.
I dipped and quarantined corals for a month too, looking for aiptasia etc.
I noticed tiny white specs on the koles head and pectoral fins at first, then seemed to clear overnight . Next day they’re back and on the yellow tang too, although only really visible on his pecs against a black background. Looked too small to be ick. Neither of them seemed particularly stressed , and were eating well .
At first I was hoping it was just micro bubbles, but as they multiplied, I figured best to be safe than sorry.
Ive lost fish to velvet before, which is why im so paranoid about it and don’t want to take any chances.
I guess if its ick or velvet, the protocols are the same?

That sounds like ich to me. The ich trophonts can be pretty small at first, and seeing them on the fins is a good clue (velvet would be more like a dust, and on the sides of the fish). Coppersafe is my go-to treatment, but you need to get them into full strength copper ASAP, each day that goes by lets the disease become more firmly entrenched.

Jay