HELP! Ich / QT-Hospital tank.

[padair]

Here's my story. I am new to the hobby and have a new tank that has been up and running almost 3 months now. It is a 150 gal with sump. I set it up the aquarium and purchased 175lbs of good active live rock. The rock was moved from a good aquarium in several large tubs with the same salt water and put in my aquarium in < 1hr along with some live sand, some new salted RODI water and some aragonite (about 2"). The sump was setup with mineral mud and 1-2" of aragonite on top in a refug area . It also had 2 firm sponges and some filter floss at the incoming end. A protein skimmer was setup as well. I think we avoided any die off because from what I read about setup everyone goes thru a 'cycle' but I think I avoided that with the live rock being moved in water because for about 2 weeks I tested the water daily and ammonia and nitrite and nitrate all zero with good salinity. LFS said I was good to start adding fish, went with 2 clowns, waited 2 weeks. All was going well, LFS said ok to add more. Couple more fish and a small coral, waited 2 weeks, all going well, etc etc... this went on a little 2 weeks cycle building up adding only 2 fish at a time every two weeks and sometimes with another small coral or anemone. Throughout this process the aquarium stayed nice and clear, had a small diatom algae bloom around 1 month but cleared up with a 20% water change and less light hours and kept going. Ammonia always 0, Nitrite 0 and Nitrates after about week 4 or so would bounce around 5-10ppm depending on the week. pH was always good around 8.1-8.2. I also got a reef test kit after the first couple corals and the calcium was always a tad low around 360-400, dKH was 9-10 on avg and phophates around .5 at start so I started cutting back on food allotment per fish and they around .25 on average since then.

All seemed normal , the tank always looked good, did weekly 10% water changes and everything seemed to be going smooth as described above until this past weekend. One of fish was a basic blue tang. Started to show some white spots and it was scratching at rocks. The cleaner (bluestreak) wrasse seemed to pick at it a lot and I did some research and found out about the Ich. By Sunday night the tang had larger white patches and the black blenny and a flame angel, tomini tang all had some spots on them too. So in my quick research on Ich I decided to setup a hospital tank for the fish.

I bought a 55 gal Marineland LED all in one kit that had a biowheel filter and some I setup the aquarium Monday night by pumping water from my main DT into the QT tank and then I filled up the DT with more good salted RODI. I also put the HOB biowheels from the 55gal kit into the DT sump in an area to seed that had water movement around the protein skimmer output. After several cycles of over filling DT/sump, letting it mix for a few hours and then pump into QT tank... thru Monday night to Tuesday until the QT was full. Heaters seemed in sync with about 76deg C, identical salt level and so on Tuesday night I added the fish (well the 9 of 12 that I could catch) and moved over the biowheels, 2 sponges in the DT sump and bought a few pieces of PVC elbows etc. The fish seemed ok, went to bed Tues night thinking all was well for now with them. The 3 fish I couldn't catch were all wrasse's. On Wed am I got up and started moving live rock from main DT into the QT to help catch my 3 wrasses. Figured this would help seed the biowheels as well. I pretty much emptied my entire DT by pumping water into large rubbermaids and moved all live rock into DT sump, QT tank or rubbermainds. In the end, got all the wrasse fish raked out of the sand (little buggers!) and all were in the QT. I put all the live rock back in the DT along with the inverts, corals and anemone's. By wed afternoon I had sand levelled in DT level again and water pumped back in from tubs and I added the live rock from the QT back to the DT but left the 2 brick sponges from the DT sump.

I now started the cupramine treatment in the QT for the fish with Ich. They all seemed happy, swimming in the PVC, they ate their normal breakfast Wed am and wed evening. So far I am happy with how things are going but I decided to test the QT water before bed tonight. ph a tad low around 8.0 but the ammonia is starting to go up. It is around .5ppm after 24hrs with fish in it. Nitrites are 0 still and the nitrates are going up too, around 30ppm now.

So... what do I do? Looks like ammonia on the rise, not sure how long I can wait and make no action?

Here are the options as I see them.

1) Abandon the QT and put the fish back in DT and either wait for QT biowheels to establish better cycle bacteria or hope the fish pull thru the Ich in DT tank?
2) Partial abandon QT, leave only fish with visible Ich symptoms in QT to lighten the bioload and put others in DT... and eventually put back in QT?
3) Sacrifice some DT live rock to the QT and hope it handles the ammonia quickly? I understand though once you have live rock with cupramine treatment it can never be used in DT tank with coral/inverts ever again.
4) Start water change again? Should I overfill DT and pull from DT or put new RODI salted to temp in QT? Any advantage or disadvantage of using new RODI salted or DT mixed with new RODI water at this point?

My apologies for the long post. I have done some emergency QT reading and talked to several LFS and I'm confused as to where to go from here. If there is an option other than the 1,2,3,4 I've though of above by all means I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance for help.

Cheers.

 

[Dr. Reef]

use a product called stability in the qt this is boost the bacteria and keep ammonia at bay.

 

[Dr. Reef]

this is what Seachem has to say about the process.

Re: Stability & Cupramine
You can certainly use Stability to quickly cycle a newly established QT tank. You will want to use the following instructions for best results:

Use 1 capful (5 mL) for each 40 L (10 gallons*) on the first day with a new aquarium. Then use 1 capful for each 80 L (20 gallons*) daily for 7 days. Fish and other aquatic species may be introduced at any time as long as dosage is maintained for 7 days.

You should start the 7 consecutive day treatment the day you add your livestock. It is also very important that these bacteria have a place to colonize, such as our Matrix. Matrix is a porous biological media that will house both the aerobic, anaerobic, and facultative bacteria that is contained in Stability. Both of these products work hand in hand with one another.

Cupramine can be used in conjunction with Stability in order to treat for ich. However, my recommendation would be to dose the Stability at least several days before beginning with the Cupramine treatment, especially since this is a new system. This is because medications tend to slightly deplete bacterial colonies, thus you will want to make sure you have established a good amount of bacteria before using the Cupramine. Make sense?

Furthermore, if you happen to test for ammonia, depending on the test kit you are using, the reading of ammonia you're getting is most likely a false positive. This is because Cupramine contains an organic amine which is very similar to ammonia in structure and the test kit is likely not able to distinguish between the two. You could use our MultiTest: Free and Total Ammonia test which does not have this issue and will not give a false positive... or you can use our Ammonia Alert badge which works on the same principle and will continuously monitor free ammonia in your tank.

Sorry for being so winded, but I just wanted to make sure that I touched on everything that you might need for your new set-up. Let us know if you have any further questions.

 

[padair]

bnumair, thanks for thru quick replies! I wish the LFS told me about stability when I bought the 55 tank kit and cupramine. Do you think I am ok to wait until tomorrow night to get the stability in? I leave for work out of town early am and can't be back at LFS until 5pm-ish. I'm hoping you are right that my initial cupramine treatment is showing false positive on ammonia now, but if its not, how long until fish are in trouble? In my previous post I made of sounded worried about LR and used the term sacrifice. I have no issues with putting a few pieces in to help now if it will? I can buy more live rock for DT or I can buy stability? same/same? Any issues with leaving LR long term in QT that has gone thru cupramine cycles?

I like the sound of matrix product. Think I will get some of that in the DT sump should I ever have to do this again. I will get the better ammonia test kit as well and know if ammonia is an issue as soon as possible. False positive kind of making since now that I about it. Water was 0,0,5 24hrs ago and now its showing .25 ammonia with 0 nitrites and nitrates 30. I may of panicked too quickly here, very glad I learned about the stability product as well as the possible cupramine false positive issue.