Help!!! All 3 tangs have ich....

K

kahkaw

New member
I have 3 tangs, yellow, purple and blue and all of the sudden (within the past 2 days) all 3 have ich. The newest member is the blue tang which I added 2 weeks ago. All three are still swimming around and eating but I did notice all scratching a little. They are housed in a 120 gallon cube with a few other small fish and several sps and lps corals. What can be done?

Please help.

Regards
Eric

PS, feeding is a clip of either seaweed or romain lettuce with a small amount of cyclop-eeze in the morning and a cube of mysis shrimp in the evening.
 
If you can quarantine all your fish for six weeks that is best. Treat the quarantine tank for ick and let you display go fishless for six weeks.

If that is not possible then you need to keep up with your husbandry, keep the tank stable, feed them foods that entice their appetite and hope they can fight it off.
 
QT would be pretty hard. Lots of hiding places. I do have several extra tanks but catching my lil fellers might prove to be a challange. To make thing a little more difficult my wife is going to be induced this sunday so i wont be able to give the QT the required attention till next Tuesday. What is the time frame im looking at to get the fish into QT?
Water quality is pretty spot on for everything except nitrates which is around 15.

I did, 10 days ago, start dosing vodka. Currently at 1.3ml. Should i Quit? could this be a cause?

regards
Eric
 
Don't panic! While quarantine is best, it is not always (as in your case) very practical. As long as they are still swimming and eating, and otherwise healthy, there is a very good chance that they will fight this off. Remember, this is not a death sentence. Add a UV sterilizer and perhaps soak the food in garlic to stimulate feeding. You can get thru this without ripping your tank apart and putting the fish under more stess.
 
Sorry for the panic attack. This is just the first time ive owned a more expensive fish (Purple tang).

So chop up a clove of garlic and soak the shrimps (mysis) in it?
 
Here is my Purple Tang:

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/steelhead77/3526844642/" title="Prince_Ich2 by steelhead77, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3402/3526844642_841f746b6a.jpg" width="500" height="343" alt="Prince_Ich2" /></a>

He survived this bout of ich almost two years ago and is still going strong. I never qt'd him and none of the other 8 fish in the tank came down with it at the time. Despite two tank upgrades and the addition of 9 more fish, I have not had an outbreak since. Some guys will argue this, but I think it's safe to say I'm ich free.

I would recommend Kent Garlic Extreme or get minced garlic and soak your food in the juice before feeding. Some will say this is bad for the fish. Whatever. If it get's them to eat and you don't do it forever, it'll be fine. This isn't rocket science, although some like to make it that way.
 
wow steelhead, thats a pretty intense case of ick. I think your pretty lucky that things worked out. hopefully many other will have the same results. Certainly proves that it can be overcome and all hope isnt lost for those unable to quarentine
 
KashAlp said:
wow steelhead, thats a pretty intense case of ick. I think your pretty lucky that things worked out. hopefully many other will have the same results. Certainly proves that it can be overcome and all hope isnt lost for those unable to quarentine
Click to expand...

I don't think it's luck. It's a matter of keeping water parameters healthy and making sure the fish are not stressed. Chasing sick fish around a tank with a net is a recipe for disaster IMHO.
 
Dang Steelhead! That tang is insane. My 3 havent (knock on wood) gotten nearly that bad yet. Just maybe 10 to 15 specks on each side of the fish.

Since the wife is going into labor in a few days i think ill just have to wait and see if they get worse and if the other fish are going to get it.

Any thoughts on continuing vodka dosing?
 
kahkaw said:
Dang Steelhead! That tang is insane. My 3 havent (knock on wood) gotten nearly that bad yet. Just maybe 10 to 15 specks on each side of the fish.

Since the wife is going into labor in a few days i think ill just have to wait and see if they get worse and if the other fish are going to get it.

Any thoughts on continuing vodka dosing?
Click to expand...

Yup. He literally looked like he had been dipped in sugar. It took over two weeks for him to kick this.

Good luck with the new baby, you'll have your hands full for awhile. If you can, I would add UV, I think this helped my tank not get worse.

Sweet tank BTW.
I think vodka is not an issue with this situation. I wouldn't have a problem continuing with it.
 
Thanks Steelhead. looking forward to another baby girl (at least till they turn teen from what i hear) And thanks for the advice. You calmed me down for now and i will definalty bee looking at UVs for the very near future.
 
No Problem.

Just for full disclosure, many on this site will flame me for this advice. Many will say that the ONLY way to rid your tank of ich is to remove all fish for a period of at least 6 weeks and quarantine said fish in a tank (often times 1/4 the size of your display) and treat all fish, sick or not, with copper. Some will say that ich is lying dormant in my fishes gills and only a temp spike or other stress event is all it will take to wipe out all my fish. To that I call B.S. My fish have seen a bunch of stress with two tank upgrades and the temp fluctuations and other stresses that go along with that. Ich will die off if it doesn't find a suitable host. I believe that I was able to keep my fish healthy enough to not become host fish and eventually the parasite died off. Hopefully you will have the same success.

Good luck.
 
Kahkaw, I know this post is a little old, but I was wondering if the three tangs made it or if the ich spread to other fish? Did you end up following hte garlic method or QT?

Steelhead77, is the garlic used to get the fish to eat? What if the fish are already eating?

I just noticed ich on my sailfin tang this evening. He eats like he has been, so not sure if he needs enticement to eat?
 
UV's won't help really once they get Ick, only to prevent it, and the water flow has to be extremely slow to kill most things. Also if you reply on Pods this could kill off them.
 
Fishfish0001 said:
UV's won't help really once they get Ick, only to prevent it, and the water flow has to be extremely slow to kill most things. Also if you reply on Pods this could kill off them.
Click to expand...


It won't remove the cysts from the fish but it will kill the free-swimming parasites, preventing them from attaching to the fish.

You're right though, there either needs to be enough wattage or enough exposure time for it to be effective.
 
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