Danger in the tank, killer snow flakes!

AquaWave523

New member
I see 4 white dots on his tail which looks like it has been nibbled on. I'm not 100% sure it's ich but anytime you see white dot, you assume it is. I got the fish yesterday! I didn't see this yesterday, how do I get rid of ich or will it go away on its own? The temp is 81F right now...i dont want him to infect the entire tank.

Do i take out all the fish and put them in a 20 gallon? and what happens to the mushroom and live rocks?
 
If the fish is already in the tank, I think the safest bet is to pull every fish out of the tank, and treat them all for ich in a quarantine tank.

If you just pull the one fish out, and treat it in its own quarantine tank, you might get lucky. Chances are, though, that the fish had ich parasites that attached at various times, and some of them infested your tank in the last 24 hours. Read up on the life cycle of the saltwater ich parasite, and you'll see that it has several distinct stages. The parasites live attached to a fish, free-swimming in the water, and attached to the substrate at different times in their lives. If any parasites are now growing on your gravel, the other fish will be infested with ich all too soon.

Edit: Not everything that looks suspicious is actually ich. It could be that this fish is clean, and another fish in your tank attacked it. Posting a picture will help us guess whether it's ich.

The snails, corals, etc. will be fine, as long as you don't add any anti-ich medication to the main tank. One of the best ich-fighting ingredients is copper, which is deadly to many invertebrates. If there are ich parasites in your main tank, the best strategy is to wait to put the fish back in until the parasites have probably all died for lack of hosts.

A few fish, like mandarins, tend to resist ich very well, and can stay in the tank. Most mandarins also require live pods to survive, which makes life in a quarantine tank very hard on them.
 
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what about mushrooms and softies. if i took those fishes out , the corals, live rocks and hermit crab, emerald crabs will be ok in the tank? how long before i put the fish back in?
 
everything will be fine in the tank except the fish. the ich will stay dormant on the rocks for a certain amount of time so get all your fish in the 20gal and go get a couple more 20/10 gals and set up 2-3 QT tanks for all your fish and wait till the ich dies out.
 
The ich parasites won't hurt the softies, the mushrooms, or anything else. They only attack fishes.

Before you run out and buy a bunch of quarantine tanks, it would be a good idea to make sure that the fish really does have ich. Buying and setting up one quarantine tank is still a good idea, though. Whether or not this fish has ich, you can use it to quarantine future purchases and avoid this kind of anxiety.

I'm not an expert on ich, so I won't quote any waiting times, but there are plenty of other threads about ich in this forum. Look over the 3 or 4 most recent pages, and I'm sure you'll find some of the answers you're looking for.

Edit: The sticky thread at the top of this forum links to a great introduction to saltwater ich. It's called New-First Time on RC-Look Here for Answers.
 
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go get some metronidazole mix it with frozen mysis its reef safe I have used this and im now using it to treat a powder blue tang. Removing him will just cause more stress BUT if you just have to pull him out.. since its the first day you can just pull the one fish out, because the ich probably have not dropped off yet even if they did ich is not that big of a deal. Velvet on the other hand can wipe out a tank and is mistakin for ich ALOT if it turns into more than a few spots and the fishes slim coat starts to look hazy then its probably not ich but velvet. Also IMO 20 gal tanks stress fish your moving them from stress TO stress. 30- 40 gallon tanks are better for the stress factor, just quarantine first before dumping fish in the display, it will save you alot of trouble.
 
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Until you know what's wrong with the fish, I wouldn't add any medications. Treating a problem that the fish doesn't have won't help it. Diagnose, then treat.
 
Here are pictures...ok, by looking at these photos, I don't really see them....:confused:

Maybe its the bubbles in the tank? It doesn't seem like much here but wheN i watch him swim, you can see little specks. I would say 4 of them lined up on his tail.

What do you guys think?

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Personally, I don't know whether that's ich or not. I haven't had a case of marine ich, yet. I'm just passing along what I've read about it.
 
ya and dont use copper unless you pull him out that will hurt your softies. but really im a wait and see guy, like KarlBob said make sure its a problem first before you do anything
 
if they line up it not ich, ich is random it will show on fins first but it looks to me he either is or has been picked on. Take this to the disease forum just to make sure its not fin rot or something like that.
 
I hope and pray it's not ich. I just posted in the disease forum... well from the photos, does it look like ich? anyone?
 
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