Follow the Tang's Trip to the Hospital-Live or Die Take the Poll!!

[DaFishHead]

Alright people. My poor, poor, poor tang. I have no idea how it happen. But it did. My powder has ICH!!!!! Look at my poor baby!!!

So it is time to set up the hospital tank...
Never done this before...
Here is my plan...

First I got my Hospital tank Ready...
I am using a 55G tank with 20G of water in it

Double checked the amount of water in the tank...
48" x 12" x 8" / 231 =~20G

I dosed the tank with Copper

Tested the copper at .15 milligrams/liter using this test....
And I would not recommend this test. It is very hard to read.
Anyone recommend a better one?

Then DA TRAP was set!!!

I used fishing line and a old frag plug to help set the trap

The next day I caught the little guy....
And a flame angle at the same time!!
HA!!

Day one......3:00 PM on 4-12-2010 The tang is in Da Hospital

The directions on the copper say that I should keep the tang in the hospital for 14 days.
That does not seem long enough because Ich can live longer than that. We shall see what people's feedback is.


Now you take the poll....Will the Tang make it

 

[AMDphenomx4]

Personally, I had my powder blue and it had a little ich, less than yours, and feeding it helped it recover well. I kept it in the main tank which like yours, still has ich, and it recovered fine. Yours, aslong as you keep it well fed and unstressed, looks like it will be fine.

 

[DaFishHead]

Personally, I had my powder blue and it had a little ich, less than yours, and feeding it helped it recover well. I kept it in the main tank which like yours, still has ich, and it recovered fine. Yours, aslong as you keep it well fed and unstressed, looks like it will be fine.

FALSE!!!!

Or so I have read.
I hear the only true way to get rid of ich is to QT the fish. However usually Ich is in every tank and when a fish is stressed it will get the ich.
With that said I hope I am wrong because I would love to see fish make it.

 

[Untamed12]

Well...the flip side is that my achilles tang has ich all the time. (Of course, it varies in severity from time to time, but never disappears completely)

I've done nothing in particular to treat it, or the tank...and it has been over three years now.

Yes...I'm very sure it is ich. There are many other fish in the tank and the only other one that sometimes shows sign of it is my Atlantic Blue.

So it is my personal experience that ich is not necessarily an automatic death sentence if untreated.

What has been said already is that if you "cure" your tang in the HT, he will just become re-"infected" when you return him to your DT.

 

[Recty]

Unless the tang is doing HORRIBLE, I would leave it in for three weeks with the copper treatment and then leave it in quarantine for a couple weeks to see if it shows signs of any other problems.

 

[Untamed12]

I would guess that the parasites that the ABT is carrying are goners within a short time of the transfer into the medicated HT. There would NOT be an established population of parasites living in the HT, so 14 days seems more than enough time to ensure that the ABT is parasite free.

 

[DaFishHead]

what has been said already is that if you "cure" your tang in the ht, he will just become re-"infected" when you return him to your dt.

doh!!!

 

[DaFishHead]

I'm sure that if I can get rid of the ich that is on him he will not get re-infected. If I leave him out of the tank for a while, 90 days, it will break the ich cycle on the tang.

 

[Untamed12]

I'm sure that if I can get rid of the ich that is on him he will not get re-infected. If I leave him out of the tank for a while, 90 days, it will break the ich cycle on the tang.

Sorry....it doesn't work that way.

While you may see the parasites on your PBT, the other fish will serve as hosts enough to keep the parasite alive and well in your tank. You just happen to see them on the PBT because that particular fish is more susceptible to the parasite.

The ONLY way to remove the parasite from your display (assuming you can't medicate the reef), is to have NO fish in the tank for an extended period of time.

 

[lougotzz]

I'm sure that if I can get rid of the ich that is on him he will not get re-infected. If I leave him out of the tank for a while, 90 days, it will break the ich cycle on the tang.

You're confused.

The ich is a free swimming parasite, that will find other fish in the display to use as a host to survive. If you arn't treating your entire tank and keeping the tank fallow for 8 weeks, this is basically all for nothing unfortunatly.

 

[sikk50]

It doesn't look bad, but I'm a pesimist and voted no. Sorry

 

[lougotzz]

It doesn't look bad, but I'm a pesimist and voted no. Sorry

Yeah I think putting the tang through copper treatment is what is going to do him in.

 

[shorty53538]

Sorry....it doesn't work that way.

While you may see the parasites on your PBT, the other fish will serve as hosts enough to keep the parasite alive and well in your tank. You just happen to see them on the PBT because that particular fish is more susceptible to the parasite.

The ONLY way to remove the parasite from your display (assuming you can't medicate the reef), is to have NO fish in the tank for an extended period of time.

I agree with this 100% you have to leave the tank fishless for the extended amount of time in order for the parasite to completly be gone....

 

[Raf1985]

i had the same problem, my first tank had a fish with ich and it never went away. every fish i put in afterwards (butterflies and tangs) would get ich. I started a new tank now and I'm hoping that if I quarantine each fish and put them through hypo, I will never get an outbreak. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[DaFishHead]

I know that tangs are more likely to get ich. That is the only fish in my tank that has displayed signs of it. I know that it is in my tank. However if the fish (perc clowns, wrasses, gobees and angles) don't get stressed it is possible that they will never show signs of it. Correct?

I had a hypo tang in my fist tank that had ich off and on for a year and it always pulled through. This tank is the tank I am going to be with for a long time. Will Ich always come back as strong as it was before?

The ich is not really bad in my tank so I was not going to treat all of the other fish. Maybe I should pull all of my fish and treat them before I go forward? I guess there is no good answer.

 

[DaFishHead]

It doesn't look bad, but I'm a pesimist and voted no. Sorry

HA!!!
That motivates me to make sure he lives!
I love a challenge.

Besides, it is a beautiful fish and no one wants to see him go.

 

[lougotzz]

The point is simple, if you treat this tang, but don't treat your tank, the PBT is just going to get ick again. Just because you don't see white spot on your fish doesn't mean it doesnt have ick. Or ick isn't in the tank. If you want to get rid of it, you need to treat all the fish in the tank, and run your tank fishless for 8 weeks.

FWIW, ive seen several tanks with ick with no ill effects from it. A healthy fish will fight it off or build an immunity against it. A lot of people see a white spot and just flip out then they end up stressing the fish and it dies as they try to treat it. I'm part of this group.

 

[AMDphenomx4]

FALSE!!!!

Or so I have read.
I hear the only true way to get rid of ich is to QT the fish. However usually Ich is in every tank and when a fish is stressed it will get the ich.
With that said I hope I am wrong because I would love to see fish make it.

Whats false? I said that my tank like his has ich in it.

 

[Ynotme4886]

I had to leave my tank Without fish for 12 weeks to get the ich bug out when I had it.

Was a pain to get it out. Tried 6 weeks fallow the 1st time and failed. Tried 8 weeks the 2nd time and had the same results. 12 weeks without fish did the trick for me and havent had it back since.

On the bright side while I had no fish in the tank I worked a bit on aquascaping and my corals so when it was time for fish everything was in place and looked nice.

 

[DaFishHead]

I had to leave my tank Without fish for 12 weeks to get the ich bug out when I had it.

Was a pain to get it out. Tried 6 weeks fallow the 1st time and failed. Tried 8 weeks the 2nd time and had the same results. 12 weeks without fish did the trick for me and havent had it back since.

On the bright side while I had no fish in the tank I worked a bit on aquascaping and my corals so when it was time for fish everything was in place and looked nice.

I think that I will have to do this. Did you give all of your fish a copper treatment?

DAY TWO- The tang is doing well and is eating. He does not even look like the copper is hurting him. Infact I think I saw him smile at me!!