help! I'm new and now have "ich"

M

MDK007

New member
Hello everyone, I'm in trouble
My 2" hippo tang has one piece of "ich" on him.

Little bit of history
Bought a second hand 200g Marineland DD with a 90 remote refuge, and a 60g sump. I'm guessing somewhere around 300g of water in my system. This is my first crack at this hobby other than my 3yr olds 10g tetra tank.lol
I have 130lbs of dry rock epoxied, 2 lbs of live (just to give the impression I am growing coralline algae), 100 lbs of sand.
I cycled the tank with a couple dead shrimp took about a 1.5 months with small additions of bacteria in a bottle ( may or may not work, figured it couldn't hurt). Got a bead on 4 tank breed clowns 2 ocerallis, 2 darwin and a bullethead goby. Non of these fish have ever spent time in dirty water or around other fish. I put them in my Dt then a couple weeks later went to my LFS (1hr drive) with my 3yr old daughter, who is just jacked about the possibilities. Needless to say, I brought home dori (one of the last fish I planned on putting in my tank), 6line wrasse and a fire goby. I put them in my qt which had been cycling two weeks longer than my DT. I had issues cycling it, as in nitrites wouldn't fall until I finally added a bunch of bacteria in a bottle. Three days later nitrites fell to 0, added the fish and 2 days later my nitrites spiked. I panicked because I didn't want to hurt the fish, I already felt bad enough for buying the hippo. So I turned my idiot switch on (again) and netted them all and put them in my display, everything was going great, fish look awesome, I love this freckn hobby. 2weeks pass no traces of ammonia or nitrite, just a little nitrate. Do a water change and headed back to the LFS and picked up a baby lemon peel mimic tang, copperband butterfly and a cleaner wrasse. In the qt they go, been in there a week and looking good, nitrite went up again but learning from prior stupidity I added some bacteria and a little prime. Tonight I noticed 1 white speck on my hippo in the DT, a bead of sweat dripped down my fhead...didn't say anything for about 20min, just trying to pretend I didn see it. Lol. Then the swearing started, then the fish net came out and wouldn't you know it my hippo went behind the rock. He normally sticks with me at the glass hoping for food but he saw the net. could this be possible that these fish are that smart?
I finally caught him, and the clowns, no luck with the gobies or wrasse.

Started treating all fish in QT with copper, plan on keeping them in there for the rest of the summer.

I guess the question is..do I break my rock apart to catch the gobies and wrasse (to ensure crypto can't repeat its cycle), or just leave them in the DT while I medicate the rest?

Thanks for the advice in advance
Matt
 
Man that sucks. Sorry to say all the fish have to come out. If you dont take them out the parasite will continue its cycle. You can go months without seeing a single symptom and then boom all your fish are dusted with parasites. You should leave the tank empty for 10 weeks.

Just so you know nitrite isn't toxic to marine fish however it will kill freshwater fish very quickly. Its good that you have some prime for the future but if you get a positive for nitrite don't sweat it.
 
Thought so!

Thought so!

Think I'll try some sort of trap before tearing down the rock...or is there any such thing for gobies, they don't come up to high in the tank.
On a side note, do you think my bullet goby would be eating the cysts in the sand as it cleans it?
This thing just mows sand all day

Thanks
 
I don't recommend doing hypo salinity in your DT. You will have a die off of bacteria and any inverts you have in the tank. Just run the fallow period for at 72 days. Hippo Tangs are known to be ich prone.
 
The hands down easiest way to rid yourself of ich is TTM. There is a sticky at the top of this forum on how to complete it. This is what I did, and have 7 more days of fallow before my fish can go back into my DT.
 
I've been there where you are as like most people on here. Save yourself the aggravation and tear your tank down put rock in sump and refugium and then get your fish out. It's by far the easiest way to go about it. Believe me my wife was ****ed at me for a day after yelling at her to help catch the fish, lol!!! For some reason she is easy to blame!!! She's a good wife lol! Okay back to business I am in process of doing it again and decided to tear down the proper way and it went smooth. And I utilize TTM
 
No need to tear down the tank(unless you need to catch fish), just leave it up and running and fallow for 72 days.
 
ive tried chemicals before to treat ich and did not turn out well at all. All i do now adays is feed mysis shrimp mixed with garlic from seachem. Works awesome. Every fish that had ich fought it off after that. Havent seen it in almost a year.
 
Moray26 said:
ive tried chemicals before to treat ich and did not turn out well at all. All i do now adays is feed mysis shrimp mixed with garlic from seachem. Works awesome. Every fish that had ich fought it off after that. Havent seen it in almost a year.
Click to expand...

Still present in your tank, add a new fish and see what happens. There are only 3 known ways to rid ich, and food with garlic isn't one of them. You may have helped them through, but I will guarantee your fish still have ich.

Ich is a parasite, food with garlic doesn't kill ich. Hypo salinity, TTM, or copper are the only known ways to kill the parasite. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean its still not present in the fish's gills where you can't see.

You might want to read a bit before posting nonsense about curing it with mysis shrimp laced with garlic.
 
I just didn't want someone to get confused. Removing your rock is sound advice while catching the fish. I just didn't want someone to think they needed to completely tear down their tank to clear ich.
 
I'm going to try the 2L pop bottle method, cut the spout end off, turn it Around, put frozen brine shrimp in and hope all three fish are in there in the morning. Didn't feed the DT today hoping they will more easily go in to the trap. I fear busting the rock in my tank may lead to damage or scratches.

I'll give it a try tomorrow before I raise the copper concentration in the Qt. Or I'll buy a seperate Qt just for the 3 when I catch them.



Coralife uv sterilizer was bought today and will be intalled tomorrow.

Thanks everyone, I'll let ya know how it goes!
 
homer1475 said:
Still present in your tank, add a new fish and see what happens. There are only 3 known ways to rid ich, and food with garlic isn't one of them. You may have helped them through, but I will guarantee your fish still have ich.

Ich is a parasite, food with garlic doesn't kill ich. Hypo salinity, TTM, or copper are the only known ways to kill the parasite. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean its still not present in the fish's gills where you can't see.

You might want to read a bit before posting nonsense about curing it with mysis shrimp laced with garlic.
Click to expand...

Does it look like I said it kills ich or cures it? Maybe read what i'm saying before posting. Just stating that doing the mysis shrimp and garlic helped the ich not be deadly or visible and the end result is no fish were lost.
 
Couldn't catch them...put all fish back in the DT while I set up a fish hospital in the unfinished part of my basement. Have one 40g qt tank which is too small to keep all my fish in for two months. This is going to be a fall project, hopefully I can keep ich at bay till then. My lemon peel tang did not like being in the qt with all the other fish (HLLE), so I put them all back until I can do this proper. What a pain in the ***!
My original plan was to stock all my fish prior to stocking any coral, but now I might start buying coral while my DT already has ich. Don't have to worry about transferring ich while adding new coral...that is the only silver lining I can come up with! Lol
 
Other option is to wait to buy coral and run my DT at hypo salinity to kill the ich and screw the fish hospital. Any thoughts on this? I do not have any inverts other than one colony of button polyps that I'm willing to take back if hypo salinity would be the easiest. This way I don't have to tear apart my rock to catch fish.
What salinity should I run if this is the better course of action?
 
If you don't have any inverts, I have hypo'd my DT before, without any affect on the bacteria, causing a cycle, etc. I sure watched my ammonia close, but it never spiked up.

It's by far easier than catching all of the fish.
 
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