batfish with ich, how to qt?

[reefchiquita]

Hi, this is my first post ever and I could use some advice. I'm a 2 month noob, and have an ich break out in my tank. From reading the forums, I see I have no other choice but to start a quarantine tank. How and what do I need to have for a quarantine tank? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I have a 180 gallon tank, with 65 gallon tank sump with fuge.

Critters in the tank:
Batfish
Humbug damsel
Tomini Tang
Starfish
Bubble tip anemone
Coral banded shrimp
Lawnmower blennie

LR >100lbs

Temp: 78-80
SG: 1.023ish

The batfish showed sign of grains of salt on his anal fin first, and then bigger white spots on his other fins that seem to come and go everyday. The tomini doesn't show anymore signs of salt grains, but has depigmented spots on his body that appear to be fading slowly. The batfish eats well, I find him liking to be in the water current more, hardly ever scratches himself on the rocks and appears not to be highly stressed. Occasionally I see his eyes look cloudy one day and fine the next.

I have been adding in Coralvital to the tank for the past 2-3 weeks, but no serious improvement. I think I need to remove all 3 fish (blennie too?) to a qt and treat them all at the same time, but the batfish is about 6 inches tall. What size tank would I need? Do I treat all of them with hyposalinity for 4 weeks in the qt? And safe to leave other critteres in display tank for 4 weeks and be ich free? After this, I definitely will be putting new fish I purchase in qt before adding to display, so I want to make sure I have all I need for qt now for ich treatment and for future use.

Thanks for any input!!

 

[MCary]

Batfish almost never make it in the home aquarium. Too bad because they are really cool fish. I would try to keep him healthy, feed him well and hope the infection clears up on its own. A healthy fish can combat ich, at least my hippo tang did. I used melfix for secondary infections (won't cure ich) and feed the fish garlic soaked food. There's no evidence that garlic cures ich, but it did seem to stimulate the appetites and I had it on hand so I used it. BTW, if you use melefix, turn off your skimmer.

Mike

 

[reefchiquita]

Thanks for your two cents. How long should I wait to see if he'll ride it out? It's been 3 weeks now. I'll give the garlic a try!