Help me come up with a plan to treat my large fish and tank

[BrettDS]

I've had a 220G reef tank set up for nearly a year now, and some of the livestock came from a 75G reef that had been set up for about 8 months before that. I had been doing very well so far as disease and such goes until December last year when I added a powder blue tang. It was quarantined, but obviously something failed in the quarantine process and it showed signs of ich shortly after it was added to the display tank. Unfortunately it died not long after that and since then I've been seeing small signs of ich on some of my other fish. Perhaps even worse, this morning I noticed that one of my clowns is also showing signs of brook.

I suppose I've been living in denial for the past few months hoping that the symptoms would go away and the fish would live in an uneasy truce with the parasites, but clearly that doesn't seem to be happening. I think at this point my option is to get the fish out of the DT and treat them while I leave the DT fallow to kill any remaining parasites.

So, right now the tank is stocked as follows:

5" spotted face tang
4.5" sailfin tang
4.5" bicolor foxface
4" yellow tang
3" kole tang
2.5" blue hippo tang
2.5" matted filefish
2.5" true percula clown
1.5" true percula clown
2" firefish
2" Valentini puffer
2" bangaii cardinal
(2) 1.5" green chromis

The trick at this point is going to be finding somewhere to put these fish for a month and a half or so while they are treated and the DT remains fallow.

Right now I have a 55G and a 20G tank to use for quarantine, however, I'm not sure that will be enough. Obviously I'd like use what I have, but I'm definitely not against buying additional tanks to do this right and try to stress the fish the least during the treatment.

Do you think the 55 will be sufficient for the 4 or 5 larger fish? If not should I get a second 55 or something even larger? Either way I'm thinking I'll probably need at least a second 20 or maybe a 40 for the remaining smaller fish.

Next, what about filtration? Right now all I have is a small HOB filter for the 20 and nothing for the 55. Should I get a larger HOB filter for the 55 or is there something else that would be effective and reasonably inexpensive?

Finally, what treatment do you recommend for these fish while they are out of the DT?

Any other thoughts or suggestions to help make this as successful as possible would definitely be welcome. I'm hoping to get the tanks and equipment purchased and set up as soon as possible... hopefully I can get the fish out and moved this weekend. The clown seems to be in the worst shape right now, so I may try to get her out and into the 20 today or tomorrow.

 

[BrettDS]

Well, just to follow up on this, it's been a pretty long 3 days, but at this point I finally have all of the fish out of the DT (And I didn't have to move a single rock to get them out). I have divided the fish among two 5 gallon buckets and two 37G totes and intend to use the TTM to get rid of ich, then I'll transfer the smaller ones into the 20G tank and the larger into the 55 for the rest of the time that the DT must remain fallow. I'll probably do a prazipro treatment while they are in the tanks.

The (reasonably) good news is that it looks like it probably wasn't brooklynella on the clown. From what I read, if it was brook it should have killed her before I was able to get her out of the DT. I showed some pictures of her to my LFS and they seemed to think that it was just a bad case of ich.

On the first night I got out the clown and a spotted face tang that was starting to go downhill pretty quick and gave them both a freshwater dip for some temporary relief. The tang still seemed to be struggling in the morning, so I gave him a second freshwater dip on Saturday, but I'm happy to report that both the clown and the tang are still alive and seem to be doing much better.

I'm trying to figure out how to best handle my TTM transitions as right now I have four containers that have had fish added at different times due to the fact that some of them were difficult to remove from the tank. I have one 5 gallon bucket and one 37G tote that have the first fish I got out on Friday night. They are ready to transition tonight. There is another 5 gallon bucket and 37G tote that had fish added to them Saturday, Sunday, and then the last two just a few minutes ago.

I think I'll probably transition those containers today as well so I can get everything on the same schedule. I believe it will need to be transitioned less than 72 hours from when the first fish went in on saturday, but the overall transition period timer doesn't start until the last fish went in today. So these two containers might wind up getting an extra transition in the end and finish a few days after the first ones, but I'm OK with that.

 

[ca1ore]

BTW, it may not be that your QT of the PB failed. It may simply have revealed latent ich that was already in the tank and triggered a full blown epidemic. I have had this happen on at least two occasions in the past.

 

[BrettDS]

BTW, it may not be that your QT of the PB failed. It may simply have revealed latent ich that was already in the tank and triggered a full blown epidemic. I have had this happen on at least two occasions in the past.

You may be right. The fish that were originally added to my 75 more than a year and a half were not quarantined. I suppose it's possible that it's been in the tank since then.

Well, I guess the good news is that 72 days from now I will know that the tank is ich free

 

[BrettDS]

I did my first transfer last night and went ahead and transferred everything, so technically one group of fish is just starting the TTM and one group is on their first transfer, but given the fact that I have all of the temporary containers in close proximity I figured it would be best to keep them on the same 3 day cycles in the event that there is aerosol transmission or something.

I want to dose prazipro before the fish go back into the DT because I have seen evidence of stringy poop and I've seen a lot of people talk about doing that during the TTM period. I'm sure that helps to reduce the quarantine time in normal circumstances, but in my case, I'm going still going to have 8 or 9 weeks after the TTM finishes before I can return the fish to the DT anyway, so I'm planning to do prazipro after everyone is done with the TTM and in their long term holding tank.

Is there anything else I should plan to dose during those last few weeks. At this point I'm 80 or 90% certain that what I'm fighting is ich and the TTM should take care of it, but there was some question about whether it was velvet or brook. Is it safe to assume that if I don't see any additional symptoms during the weeks the fish are in the holding tanks after the TTM is complete that I was fighting ich and I don't need to worry about brook or velvet?