Help! Purchased Flame Angel and I'm pretty sure it has ICH!

[heathlindner25]

Looks like Justin tapped out ?

 

[gjustinj]

Thanks everyone - I'm sorry I'm on edge... I'm just not feeling well from this because I really was falling in love with this and already spent 3K, on my way to 4K...

With that said, I went out and bought the ICH reef safe medication. I know this will not remove ICH like you guys said, but at least this will help add a slimy coat for the fish and help things be less stressful while I try to figure out what I can possibly do.

I just don't want to spend much more money at this time, and I am very afraid of doing any kind of copper, salinity or continues tank movement with my fish - i feel like I will kill them being as new as I am.. I just don't know what to do.

I feel like so many people have told me different things and I don't know who is right and who is not, and it's just really hard. I guess I really just need someone who lives near me who is successful that could help mentor me because I obviously screwed up majorly here and I don't have any way out right now.

Good night.

 

[Sk8r]

There is very likely to be a reef club in Pittsburgh. Let me look. Yep: here is a link to their thread and by all appearances it is an active, healthy club. These are people local to you that you can talk with and that can help you. Somebody in the club might even have a tank to lend. http://reefcentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=181

 

[BigBlueTang]

it sounds to me like I need two fully operating 40 gallon aquariums with filters and heaters, and ohhh ARGHHHH WHY!!! i tried so hard and listened to so many peoples advice and LFS profesionals (who i guess screwed me) The hell with ELMERS, wet pets never sold me a bad fish!

Elmers ruined my aquarium! Why did nobody tell me to QUARANTINE and build a tank and oh just forget it!

over 3K and this is what i get! meh

Hey man, starting this hobby is not easy, and you need to slow down, Sk8r just posted some really good advice about a local reef club, and I would strongly advise you follow that. I'm sure there are folks who can help you out, just be polite.

However, you 100% cannot blame "Elmer's" because they "ruined" your tank. The amount of turnover any LFS has it's impossible to keep diseases out. Some stores run a very low level of copper in their systems to mask diseases, and when you add them to your tank they rear their ugly head. All hope is not lost yet, and I would strongly recommend that you go to petco, get two 20L tanks, and start the TTM process. It's a doozy the first time, but you'll eventually get really good at it.
I think a statement that basically encompasses aquarium keeping in general is "Nothing good ever happens fast". If you quarantine everything correctly, and make sure your fish are disease free(which will take at least 6 weeks), you still have to wait the 72 days for ich to die out in your display.

It's a long wait, no one is denying that. But please keep asking questions, we're here to help you.

 

[gjustinj]

There is very likely to be a reef club in Pittsburgh. Let me look. Yep: here is a link to their thread and by all appearances it is an active, healthy club. These are people local to you that you can talk with and that can help you. Somebody in the club might even have a tank to lend. http://reefcentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=181

Thanks I will try and see if anyone is near me who is interested in mentoring me a little

 

[sde1500]

Why do you need two new fish tanks, power heads etc? Just buy two of these: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Sterilite-Latching-64-Qt-Storage-Box-14978006/206721480

An air pump, air stones, and two cheap heaters. And some random 1 or 1.5 inch pvc connectors. Thats all. You can set up a TTM system for $50. After TTM is done, you just make sure to do large water changes and keep prime handy to keep ammonia at bay while you wait out the remaining time for Ich to die off in the DT.

You throw a small rant in here about no one telling you what needs to be done, but this site has a ton of stickies, and as you introduced yourself as 37, you can be an adult and do some research. You should have prior to starting. But here we are, I know that is a bit harsh, and honestly everyone here wants to help, but got to help yourself as well. Everyone is telling you no ich treatment is reef safe, you worry about spending money yet still buy some? It doubtfully won't help more than just feeding the fish well would. Probably spent half of what a full TTM set up could cost you.

Also, should probably fix your timeline. Your first post here on 4/5 said the tank was coming in that day. How was it cycled for a month and a half?

 

[gjustinj]

Why do you need two new fish tanks, power heads etc? Just buy two of these: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Sterilite-Latching-64-Qt-Storage-Box-14978006/206721480

An air pump, air stones, and two cheap heaters. And some random 1 or 1.5 inch pvc connectors. Thats all. You can set up a TTM system for $50. After TTM is done, you just make sure to do large water changes and keep prime handy to keep ammonia at bay while you wait out the remaining time for Ich to die off in the DT.

You throw a small rant in here about no one telling you what needs to be done, but this site has a ton of stickies, and as you introduced yourself as 37, you can be an adult and do some research. You should have prior to starting. But here we are, I know that is a bit harsh, and honestly everyone here wants to help, but got to help yourself as well. Everyone is telling you no ich treatment is reef safe, you worry about spending money yet still buy some? It doubtfully won't help more than just feeding the fish well would. Probably spent half of what a full TTM set up could cost you.

Also, should probably fix your timeline. Your first post here on 4/5 said the tank was coming in that day. How was it cycled for a month and a half?

Thanks for the advice on what I can purchase to do this much cheaper - I will look into it.

As for the smart *** remarks you are making toward me I will just not respond to that because I am no child and no adult should talk to me like that, they wouldn't do it in person and they shouldn't do it here. It's uncalled for.

I am learning and frustrated, and I am doing my best to figure this all out and I am putting in hours and hours a day trying to learn more and more. Everyone's advice is appreciated, but their back talk is very much not. I am doing all I can.

 

[sde1500]

You should be open to both advice and some constructive criticism. I personally would tell you the same in person. You are open about how much you spent, that's fine. However having made a decision to keep animals, and spend that much, research should have been done prior, that's what the stickies on this site are for. There is a ton there.

Its been about 48 hrs since this thread has started. You've been presented options, and hopefully have read up on your own regarding treatment. Probably time to take action. You could:
1) Do nothing, there are those on here that don't QT, and fully acknowledge their tanks have ich. A healthy fish should be able to survive ich without much issue. Your tank is relatively new, and fish are stressed from recent moves, probably not a good choice.

2) Hypo the tank. Inverts will die, most of the bacteria will die, you may have ammonia issues. Somewhat tough to manage, need to make sure you keep that salinity spot on.

3) Set up a hospital tank. 40 breeder, big rubbermaid storage container, heater, airstone. Treat with hypo, or some other method like copper. Also tough, not suggested. Could treat with Cloroquine phosphate, it has shown to be successful after two treatments at killing ich. The hospital tank won't be cycled so you would need to keep ammonia tests handy, test daily and treat for ammonia.

4) TTM. Probably the easiest, but still will require a holding tank after the fish are done with TTM. No medication though, so can keep ammonia down easily through large water changes and prime/amquel.

 

[gjustinj]

You should be open to both advice and some constructive criticism. I personally would tell you the same in person. You are open about how much you spent, that's fine. However having made a decision to keep animals, and spend that much, research should have been done prior, that's what the stickies on this site are for. There is a ton there.

Its been about 48 hrs since this thread has started. You've been presented options, and hopefully have read up on your own regarding treatment. Probably time to take action. You could:
1) Do nothing, there are those on here that don't QT, and fully acknowledge their tanks have ich. A healthy fish should be able to survive ich without much issue. Your tank is relatively new, and fish are stressed from recent moves, probably not a good choice.

I am not here to argue with anyone - it's not worth it. There are nice ways to help someone and there rude ways to do it. I am only concentrating on the nice ways for now on. I do appreciate you helping me so lets please stick to the nice way.

My fish all look really healthy, and not only that but my water is very good, although the nitrates are creeping up to 20 so ill be doing another water change soon, etc. I test the tank nearly daily with test strips, and if something is wrong I do a full liquid based test.

Despite missing the quarantine tank issue I have been really doing a lot of research. Each time I added a fish i performed an ammonia test to make sure my nitrites could turn to nitrates quickly so i could dispose of them doing a water change. This is what the LFS told me to do, and this is how I have been going about it.

I did miss the fact I need to have a quarantine tank - now granted that issue was a big issue, and please keep in mind that all the fish i put in this tank are very small and do not grow very large at all. We are talking about a few clown fish, a few green/blue chromis, a begaii cardinal, a shrimp, 20 hermit crabs, 1 azure damsel. I did add two slightly more expensive, and larger fish, a coral beauty and flame angel who are getting along great. They grow slightly bigger than the others, but still there are no large fish in this 125 gallon aquarium that I'm doing water changes on every time my nitrates hit 20 (10-15% water changes). So please don't think that a lot of care is not going into this and that I just threw a bunch of fish in a tank with bad water and they are going to die - that's not the case - they are doing great.

The problem is once i put the flame angel after 6 sessions of the dixie cup acclimation method, he showed a fuzzy white mark (long ways but still very small) under his fin which could be an injury, and then a few minutes later he hit the light at an angle that showed lots of little white crystalized spots on one side of his body (i thought maybe this was granulated salt since i had just performed a water change the day before of 10-15%), went online and studied and heard it might be ich which scared me! The next day I checked the fish and in the morning i could barely see it, but it seemed to be still there a little bit.. by noon I could not see it at all anymore and he looked perfectly healthy.

So I am sitting here not sure if it's Ich or not, not sure what to do - many people have given me different things to try and I'm not sure which one i feel most comfortable with yet, and that's why i ran out and spent 21 bucks on a ich medicine and even though it may not get rid of ich if it exists in my tank, it will definitely add a stronger slime coat to my fish putting less stress on them while I figure out which method I want to use.

There has been a lot of assumptions made on many of my posts, and others making comments that make no sense showing they barely ready my post on here such as that my nitrates and nitrites were sky rocketing after putting in a few fish - this is not even close to true. The LFS tells me to stay off of these forums and that their fish live for years and sometimes over a decade or longer with the systems they use. My fish store says they do not run copper through their system at all. Wet Pets has been great to me, despite everything else all the fish I got from them were healthy and had no problems.

Again I am really working hard at this. I am not rich by any means - i refinanced my house and got some extra money to play with so I went on Craigslist and found a 125 gallon tank with a stand, some cheap lighting and some heaters and glass tops. A week later after buying it I noticed a small scratch at the top left, but very little and shouldn't be an issue, then yesterday my girlfriend peeled back the black bg it came with and found a nice chunk taken out of the corner of the glass, it's still not deep enough to cause issues I don't think, but I am going to get some epoxy and acetone and see if i can repair it like a car window using a uv ray or something.

So my stress level is really high right now because as I mentioned earlier I did fall in love with this, ever since I was a kid about 8 years old I wanted saltwater fish and my parents never got me one, now 37 going on 38 next month I have finally got one and a gf that supports it and things were just going really good until now. The RB Photon V2 50 light I bought really brought the entire thing to life, and I added to small beginner coral to it when i got the flame angel too.

So again, thank you for trying to help - but at this point I think my best bet is to do this treatment and see if any of the fish show any signs of it again (because maybe it wasn't ich). I won't be introducing anymore fish to this for several months so I can make sure it's not ich, if it is then I will definitely perform a treatment of some kind that was given to me as an option. I will also make sure I setup a quarantine tank before introducing fish in the much later future.

I also took Sk8ter's advice and I went on FB and joined a group, and also requested some more information about joining the Pgh group on here - I have a lot to learn, but I am definitely learning as we go too.. like a sponge, but I am trying to do things that seem the most logical.

Thanks everyone - any other advise is welcome as long as its constructive and made in a pleasant manner.

 

[Sk8r]

By your description it really is ich, unless you're looking so hard with good eyesight you see the slight glisten some fish skin/scales have. And with the good care you describe, you're very likely to become quite good at this. Let me give you a little advice on water: first, dose until you reach the conditions in my sig line. Those readings are good for fish and lps coral and will tend to stay stable until and unless you have a stony coral (lps or sps) or a clam sucking calcium out of the water. Once stony coral begins to feed, (they often come in shocky and take a while) you can supplement calcium, and when you get to where you can't supplement it fast enough, you can add lime powder to your topoff water (ro/di) and that will automate the process. Any member of the club can show you how to rig this. Sounds as if you've got a good system, and it'll work. Ich is nasty, but it isn't a calamity if you have the smarts to get your water in balance and help your fish keep their slime coats in good condition. Think of it as more like fleas than a disease, and the slime coat is the fishy equivalent of a flea collar.
Joining the club is your route to help, the loan of equipment, and good info---not to mention occasional coral frags and such traded about. A good move.

 

[gjustinj]

By your description it really is ich, unless you're looking so hard with good eyesight you see the slight glisten some fish skin/scales have. And with the good care you describe, you're very likely to become quite good at this. Let me give you a little advice on water: first, dose until you reach the conditions in my sig line. Those readings are good for fish and lps coral and will tend to stay stable until and unless you have a stony coral (lps or sps) or a clam sucking calcium out of the water. Once stony coral begins to feed, (they often come in shocky and take a while) you can supplement calcium, and when you get to where you can't supplement it fast enough, you can add lime powder to your topoff water (ro/di) and that will automate the process. Any member of the club can show you how to rig this. Sounds as if you've got a good system, and it'll work. Ich is nasty, but it isn't a calamity if you have the smarts to get your water in balance and help your fish keep their slime coats in good condition. Think of it as more like fleas than a disease, and the slime coat is the fishy equivalent of a flea collar.
Joining the club is your route to help, the loan of equipment, and good info---not to mention occasional coral frags and such traded about. A good move.

Thanks sk8r! I don't know much about anything about corals. I know one thing is for sure I do not want to get involved in sensitive and toxic corals in my tank. I have been buying very cheap and easy to deal with coral for around 25-30 per little piece of it (i only have 2). One is really awesome it opens up with tentacles and has an eye in it. I bought clam blended stuff and I drip some in the water every 2 days, and have my reef breeder on a day and night cycle starting at a dim red at 5am and turning into dark dim blue at 10pm and off from 11m til 5am. My coral seem to be doing well, and my coral beauty has not bothered them (yet). I have to be careful about doing coral with her in there (my daughter named her blossom).

The coral I put in I did acclimate, but the LFS told me I don't really need to worry about acclimating the coral I bought. So I can just drop them right in. Is this true? I know some coral are really a lot harder and toxic to care for so im staying away from that stuff. Just adding enough to make it look like it's underwater , you know? Attached is a pic of one of my coral i just got for 25 bucks.

Secondly, I am feeding my fish pellets, cobalt and another higher brand but only some fish will eat them. I also bought 3 different frozen foods, brine shrimp and an extra large pack of a variety of stuff - i've been feeding the fish two times a day, two cubes each time and trying to stay away from pellets since i had a fish who would not eat them - worried he would die. I havea very small blue/green chromis baby in there that came in my bag and it's barely swimming around and will not eat - i don't expect it to make it, but im trying (any ideas)?

Salinity 1.024-6;
My Saltinity is at 1.024 (raised 1.025 the other day so I topped it off with a small bit of water w/ prime mixed and it went back down a little bit). I have been watching this like a hawk.

alkalinity 8.3-9.3 on KH scale I have not measured this much, is this the same as PH? It's my understanding my PH will even out in a little bit more time but as long as i am keeping the ammonia 0 / nitrite near 0 / nitrates 20p or below I will be good?

calcium 420 Never tested for this, correct me if I'm wrong but this is only a problem for coral that are hard to keep?

magnesium 1300 Never tested for this, correct me if I'm wrong but this is only a problem for coral that are hard to keep?

temp 78-80 it was 76, but I got it to 78 last night as it was a requirement for the medication oils for ich/slime coat.

nitrate .2. does this mean 0.2 or 20? I use a red sea marine kit so I only know them by numbers that are associated to colors - both my dip stick and my liquid red sea marine testing kits are showing them closer to 20 today so I'll probably change the water friday after work (but if i see it raise before then I will do it sooner)

Ammonia 0 Yes the ammonia is at 0, and the nitrites are pretty close to 0

No filters Unfortuntately I do not have a sump or the room to put one in so I am using a fluval fx4 filter, but it seems to be doing the job right - also i ordered an octo 2k classic protein skimmer (first one came broke from BRS, but at lunch I spoke to them and they are expediting the new one out today)

lps tank. No idea what LPS means.

Alk and cal won't rise if mg is low. Never tested for Calc and MG and the Alkalinity I only tested once, it seems less important than nitrites/nitrates because if their count is low it seems to be in good order - is this untrue?

Thanks Sk8r!

 

[sde1500]

You shouldn't keep any corals without knowing Alk, Calc, and Mag. They are important for most any coral. Nitrates as well. Now that your tank is cycled, nitrite tests are pointless. PH, you can measure, but it really isn't a big number to care about, unless you are having major issues with it.

LPS is large polyp stony. Biggest thing is knowing what corals you actually bought. Can you identify the corals you have?

 

[gjustinj]

You shouldn't keep any corals without knowing Alk, Calc, and Mag. They are important for most any coral. Nitrates as well. Now that your tank is cycled, nitrite tests are pointless. PH, you can measure, but it really isn't a big number to care about, unless you are having major issues with it.

LPS is large polyp stony. Biggest thing is knowing what corals you actually bought. Can you identify the corals you have?

Nope, the guy at Elmers said they were just 'beginner coral' - I can take a picture of them for you and post.

 

[heathlindner25]

You shouldn't keep any corals without knowing Alk, Calc, and Mag. They are important for most any coral. Nitrates as well. Now that your tank is cycled, nitrite tests are pointless. PH, you can measure, but it really isn't a big number to care about, unless you are having major issues with it.

LPS is large polyp stony. Biggest thing is knowing what corals you actually bought. Can you identify the corals you have?

Well said.

 

[gjustinj]

Pics to go with the post:

Coral #1

Coral #2

Chunk of glass i found broken behind black tape black background:

Flame Angel I am worried might have ich:

this picture was taken when I seen the little granulated white spots on one side fading the morning after.

 

[nereefpat]

Coral 1= Duncan
Coral 2= zoanthids

 

[gjustinj]

Coral 1= Duncan
Coral 2= zoanthids

Thanks Nereefpat! Are they easy to keep?

 

[nereefpat]

Duncans are among the easiest stony corals to keep. Zoas in general are pretty easy too, provided good parameters and lighting, which you should have.

 

[Sk8r]

Posting pics: get a photobucket free account, then use the picture icon in the comment box to install the url photobucket will give you for each pic. It automatically sizes them for the web.
sps (colored sticks) small-polyp-stony, very touchy, bleeding edge of reefing. Eat mostly light.
lps (fluffy corals with stony bodies) large-polyp-stony, pretty forgiving if kept at the parameters I recommend above.
Softies, corals with no stony body, forgiving but tending to spit discouraging chemicals at near neighbors. Running carbon to absorb these is a good idea.

 

[gjustinj]

Duncans are among the easiest stony corals to keep. Zoas in general are pretty easy too, provided good parameters and lighting, which you should have.

Thanks nereefpat! Is there perhaps a list of 'easy to keep' coral, and a list of 'hard to keep' coral I could obtain anywhere when purchasing coral?