Fallow tank period

[Perth_reefer]

I have just made the biggest mistake and trusted another reefkeeper who said he had quarantined a fish before giving it to me. Of course 3 days later my tank has ich. So......I'm going to have to go through 10 weeks of quarantine and copper treatments.
My question is how much do you need to feed your tank while it is fallow? I have various clean up crew in there and also obviously need to feed the bacteria as there is no fish in there to produce ammonia.
Anyone have any advice on this?

 

[ThRoewer]

Are you sure the new fish brought it in? 3 days is kind of too short for a new fish to infect your old fish with Cryptocaryon. I would say 5 days is the minimum before you could see something on them.

As for feeding while fallow (which should be rather 11 weeks) - if it is a reef tank with corals I wouldn't feed anything beyond what the corals and cleanup crew need. If your tank is old enough and filled with live rock you should have enough little critters in the system to keep the bacteria busy.
How many and what kind of fish do you have?
If it is a lot you can either set them back little by little or start feeding more in the DT a couple of weeks before the fish return. With a many or large fish I would choose the first option as putting all in at once could crash the system, even if you had been feeding the tank.

Also I would not use copper to treat ich as there are methods that are much less harmful to your fish and on top of that more reliable than copper.

 

[Perth_reefer]

Are you sure the new fish brought it in? 3 days is kind of too short for a new fish to infect your old fish with Cryptocaryon. I would say 5 days is the minimum before you could see something on them.

As for feeding while fallow (which should be rather 11 weeks) - if it is a reef tank with corals I wouldn't feed anything beyond what the corals and cleanup crew need. If your tank is old enough and filled with live rock you should have enough little critters in the system to keep the bacteria busy.
How many and what kind of fish do you have?
If it is a lot you can either set them back little by little or start feeding more in the DT a couple of weeks before the fish return. With a many or large fish I would choose the first option as putting all in at once could crash the system, even if you had been feeding the tank.

Also I would not use copper to treat ich as there are methods that are much less harmful to your fish and on top of that more reliable than copper.

I know its the new fish that bought it in because that is the one displaying the ich! None of the other fish are displaying symptoms but it's in the tank now so I don't really have any other option than to remove them all and treat them. I was also looking at hyposalinity which obviously reduces the stress but also has problems of its own.
The tank is only 3 months old, this tang was my last addition, I have a yellow tang, flame angel, 2 ocellaris clownfish and 15 yellow striped cardinals. The tank is filled with acropora (mainly frags) and hermit crabs, sea urchins, starfish and snails.
I'm also running Zeovit so introducing a large amount of fish over a 2 week period should be ok.

 

[pyithar]

i think what THRoewer meant by less harmful method is tank transfer method. but since you have 19 fishes to treat, cupramine in a large qt would be the best option imo.

 

[pyithar]

forgot to say your flame angel might not tolerate the copper well.

 

[ThRoewer]

Hyposalinity or chloroquine phosphate (NLS Ich-Shield) would still be better than any form of copper.

Also, if the new fish didn't show symptoms when you put him in and then showed nodules 3 days later I would just remove him for treatment and see if your old fish start showing symptoms.

There is another option I just witnessed at a local fish store: To make room for new arrivals they transferred a couple of perfectly clean tank raised ocellaris clowns, which they had for months, into another tank with a healthy looking and happily spawning pair of Banggai cardinalfish. Only a few days later the clowns were sick and dying of Ich. The cardinals were likely infected and carriers but had themselves acquired enough immunity to live unaffected by the parasites.

If you are not 100% sure your system was ich free before you could have the same thing and the new fish got sick because he was clean and had no resistance or immunity to the ich strains in your tank. The 3 days to show symptoms would fit that perfectly.
In that case none of your old fish should show symptoms and removing the new fish for treatment will solve the immediate problem.
After the treatment he will likely develop enough immunity against your strains to live in the tank unaffected.

At that point you can decide if you want to eradicate the ich from your system and go fallow for 72+ days while cleaning up all your fish or if you want to take a chance and do nothing.

 

[Perth_reefer]

Hyposalinity or chloroquine phosphate (NLS Ich-Shield) would still be better than any form of copper.

Also, if the new fish didn't show symptoms when you put him in and then showed nodules 3 days later I would just remove him for treatment and see if your old fish start showing symptoms.

There is another option I just witnessed at a local fish store: To make room for new arrivals they transferred a couple of perfectly clean tank raised ocellaris clowns, which they had for months, into another tank with a healthy looking and happily spawning pair of Banggai cardinalfish. Only a few days later the clowns were sick and dying of Ich. The cardinals were likely infected and carriers but had themselves acquired enough immunity to live unaffected by the parasites.

If you are not 100% sure your system was ich free before you could have the same thing and the new fish got sick because he was clean and had no resistance or immunity to the ich strains in your tank. The 3 days to show symptoms would fit that perfectly.
In that case none of your old fish should show symptoms and removing the new fish for treatment will solve the immediate problem.
After the treatment he will likely develop enough immunity against your strains to live in the tank unaffected.

At that point you can decide if you want to eradicate the ich from your system and go fallow for 72+ days while cleaning up all your fish or if you want to take a chance and do nothing.

That's an interesting point. How can you ever be sure your tank is 100% ich free? Mine is 3 months old and I have quarantined all fish for 4 weeks before adding, with no problems arising so far. This was the first time I didn't quarantine and the first time I've seen ich in the tank. But like I say can you ever be 100% sure?
Strangely, and I'm not sure if you've seen my other thread but when I got home from work last night all visible signs of ich had disappeared, no scratching, no spots nothing. I just checked again this morning and it looks fine. I know ich works in cycles but to go from no symptoms to obvious ich back to no symptoms all in 24 hours, can that happen?

 

[ThRoewer]

A quarantine of only 4 weeks is for sure not enough. I had ich showing up 6 weeks into quarantine and then it went away by itself. Often fit and otherwise healthy fish get a handle on the infection by themselves, sometimes before you even notice it. So it is very easy to get ich into your tank without even noticing it.
It also may not show for a long time if ever. But if anything stresses or weakens the fish you may get a major outbreak.

To get your tank with 99.9% certainty ich free (I don't think 100% is truly possible unless you dump a bottle of bleach into your tank) you need to leave your tank fallow for an absolute minimum of 72 days. Though I would go full 11 weeks just to be sure.
During that time and after nothing wet (live rock, corals, crabs, shrimp,... can be added to the tank that hasn't gone through the same fallow time in a separate tank.

At the same time you process your fish through TTM. I personally would probably combine it with hyposalinity to be on the really safe side.
After that you hold them in a separate tank until the fallow period of the display tank is over.

From there on all new fish have to be handled through the same process plus some other medications to deal with other possible infections. After TTM and at least 4 weeks of observation without any findings you can add the new fish to your tank.

All inverts (with a few exceptions) and all wet items have to spend 11 weeks in a separate tank before going into the main tank.

That's the way you can get and keep your tank ich free.

I'm kind of torn if I want to do that or if I rather train new fish during their quarantine on the possible ich strains I have in my tank.

 

[Perth_reefer]

A quarantine of only 4 weeks is for sure not enough. I had ich showing up 6 weeks into quarantine and then it went away by itself. Often fit and otherwise healthy fish get a handle on the infection by themselves, sometimes before you even notice it. So it is very easy to get ich into your tank without even noticing it.
It also may not show for a long time if ever. But if anything stresses or weakens the fish you may get a major outbreak.

To get your tank with 99.9% certainty ich free (I don't think 100% is truly possible unless you dump a bottle of bleach into your tank) you need to leave your tank fallow for an absolute minimum of 72 days. Though I would go full 11 weeks just to be sure.
During that time and after nothing wet (live rock, corals, crabs, shrimp,... can be added to the tank that hasn't gone through the same fallow time in a separate tank.

At the same time you process your fish through TTM. I personally would probably combine it with hyposalinity to be on the really safe side.
After that you hold them in a separate tank until the fallow period of the display tank is over.

From there on all new fish have to be handled through the same process plus some other medications to deal with other possible infections. After TTM and at least 4 weeks of observation without any findings you can add the new fish to your tank.

All inverts (with a few exceptions) and all wet items have to spend 11 weeks in a separate tank before going into the main tank.

That's the way you can get and keep your tank ich free.

I'm kind of torn if I want to do that or if I rather train new fish during their quarantine on the possible ich strains I have in my tank.

Yeah it's a big job thats for sure. The White Cheek is still looking pretty good and I've had some advice from a coral propagation farm close to where I live. They use a home prepared seafood mix containing garlic. They have not had any disease in their fish for years feeding this. Another person they gave the recipe too had a bad outbreak of ich, started feeding this and all fish recovered, they're still ich free 3 months later. Obviously this isn't a cure but if I can strengthen the immune system of my fish then hopefully they'll all be fine. Started feeding it today so I'll see how I go.
Thanks for your advice mate.

 

[ThRoewer]

Well, garlic won't kill any of the Cryptocaryon stages (neither will holy water nor hanging crucifixes around your tank).
The only thing garlic may do is enhance the fish's immune system which then enables it to keep the parasites in check.

BTW: has that coral farm some good methods to kill coral eating parasites like AEFW or red bugs and whatever else likes to take a bite out of a coral? I start fearing those now more than most fish parasites.