A different sort of ich question

[phaedraeos]

Here's the dilemma I'm facing:

I KNOW I have ich in my main tank. About a month and a half ago, it walloped my Royal Gramma and put a few spots on my Foxface. I managed to get the Foxface out to a quarantine tank, but for the life of me I couldn't catch the Gramma or my Wheeler goby (who is giving me the proverbial fishy finger from his pistol shrimp burrow.)

SO, for a month and a half my Foxface has been in quarantine with a couple of Killis, and a dwarf angel. None of them have shown ich in this time and all are eating happily. Furthermore, the ich cleared up nicely off my Gramma and the Goby and false percs never even showed a spot.

Tomorrow I'm breaking down the 45g display and setting everything back up in a 50g. This will be the perfect time to finally catch the wayward fish. However, at this point, do I even treat for ich since I haven't seen any scratching or any spots in over a month?

Furthermore, if I do treat should I use copper or hypo? I'm leary about using hypo since, if this is a hypo-resistant strain, I won't know that hypo failed due to no active spots. So, I'm leaning towards copper, but does it even make sense to put the fish through this if they're essentially healthy?

Please let me know your opinion and why; I'm really not sure what would be the best action to take here. Thanks for taking the time to read yet another ich thread!

 

[k.shep]

if the fish in the display aren't showing signs they're probably resisting the parasites or an antibody response has been provoked by the paracite. the paracites will probably still survive in the system and on the resistant fish in low numbers. once the quarinteened fish are introduced back to your display they will most likly be infected again as well as any new fish. i would definatly quarinteen all of your fish. hyposalinity is not a good choice for quarinteen unless its your only option. moving to your new tank is a perfect oportunity to medicate properly. a formalin and mallichite green combo or a copper teatment are the way to go. as for your display tank, if you will be transferring its contents over to the new tank, it will need to be paracite free as well. since the paracites are in low numbers, four weeks whithout fish should do it but to be safe i would wait six weeks. keeping your fish out of the tank will only work if your dealing with ich or cryptocaryon. many people confuse crypt with amyloodenium. if you have oodenium it can survive without a host because its a paracitic single celled algae and can pull energy from light, even ambient light. most strands are even resistant to low salinitys. so if you have oodinium your options are likly to start over or only keep fish that are resistant or have the antibody. most fish will develop antibodys as long as they are healthy and are fed well, with the exceptions of the pacific blue tang and most of the acanthrid tangs. these tangs can become resistant its just less common.

 

[phaedraeos]

Well, it unfortunately appears that this poll was a massive failure. However, in the interests of disclosure, I'm going to treat with copper. I really don't want to, but I just don't feel comfortable knowing that ich is in that tank and not doing anything about it. It just seems like a ticking time bomb to me.

Fish will be out of the display tank for 8 weeks total

Thanks for your response, k.shep, and I completely agree with you.

 

[REEF-n-Chicago]

I had the same thing happen to me. I removed the healthy fish and let the tank sit for 8 weeks but I did not treat the healthy fish.
I would not treat a healthy fish but thats just my opinion

 

[phaedraeos]

How long since you did that have the fish been back in the main tank? No signs of ich?

 

[REEF-n-Chicago]

This has been six months ago and I have since added a new tang and goby with no return signs of ich....

 

[phaedraeos]

Of course, as fate would have it, I saw a few spots on my Foxface last night.

I'm pulling the salinity down to 1.015 and then coppering it up. From my understanding, going slightly hypo can help by 1. making it easier for the fish to osmotically regulate, and 2. making it harder for the ich to osmotically regulate.

 

[limitdown]

Whatever you do, DO NOT use hyposalinity and copper at the same time. The lower salinity level will make copper much more toxic.

Choose one or the other.

If you want to do hypo, you'll need to drop it down to 1.009 or else it will not be effective. Make sure you use a calibrated refractometer to monitor salinity.

If you do copper, go for Cupramine from Seachem and follow the directions. Make sure you have a proper test kit (I use Seachem's copper test kit) to make sure that you keep copper concentration at 0.5mg/l. If the concentration is lower, then it's not effective, and if it's too high, your fish could die.