here we go again. ich again. round 2

[mos90]

i just purchased a blonde naso tang from my friend who has a small lfs. he "supposedly" had it quarantine with cupramine and prazi for 3 weeks. he was 100% positive that it was ich free. he was wrong. now i have a fairly large ich outbreak in my 300 gal reef tank. i dont know what i am going to do .

it would be nearly impossible to get all my fish out without removing almost all of my rock and corals. and i would need at least a 125g quarantine tank which i do have laying around.

i am willing to take some advice before i loose $2000.00 worth of fish.

do i definitely have to rip all the fish out and quarantine with copper? i would rather not if i have a choice.

a little voice in my head told me to tank to tank the new naso tang. which does work great and worked last time.

 

[mos90]

also. i have a mandarin goby. what do i do with him?

 

[MrTuskfish]

Nobody but God can tell if a fish has ich after 3 weeks of QT. Treating in a HT/QT is your only option. Treat the mandarin with tank-transfer. Lots of folks take their chances with mandarins and treatment---they are very ich resistant. But I wouldn't. I tore down a big tank years ago, never again. And...nobody but me quarantine my fish. (Except my assistant, helper, new American, expert Aquarist, Hector. )

Is it me, or do topics of this nature run in cycles? Lately its been many "but so-an-so quarantine my fish".

 

[Nemeziz_za]

Hi,

first of all don't panic. lets get all the information first.

Are all the fish covered?
How long have the fish been displaying symptoms?
Is your water temp stable?
Do you have cleaner gobies, shrimps? If so how many?

Ive had 2 Ich outbreaks in my reef tank, I have always overcome it by feeding slightly more frequently and adding food supplements to the food.

this has always cleared it up for me in a few days with no drastic dosing of copper or the likes.

 

[hkarmy25]

Ive had 2 Ich outbreaks in my reef tank, I have always overcome it by feeding slightly more frequently and adding food supplements to the food.

Such as? It'd be nice not to have to use copper anymore...

 

[mos90]

that is my new rule for sure tusk. it would have been easy to tank to tank this guy if there was any question. and for only 12 days.

ohh im panicking!!

i just noticed signs yesterday. it is definitely ich .

1/2 the fish are covered and my yellow tang has it bad.

temp stays 78.5-79.1 every day.

cleaner gobies or cleaner shrimp wont help. but i do have 2 cleaner shrimp

i have never heard of beating ich with more feeding.

 

[Nemeziz_za]

It's more about healthy stress free fish, with strong immune systems.

Ill look for a link when I'm home later about it. In fact I think paulb wrote about it here in RC

 

[jimmyj7090]

Hi,

first of all don't panic. lets get all the information first.

Are all the fish covered?
How long have the fish been displaying symptoms?
Is your water temp stable?
Do you have cleaner gobies, shrimps? If so how many?

Ive had 2 Ich outbreaks in my reef tank, I have always overcome it by feeding slightly more frequently and adding food supplements to the food.

this has always cleared it up for me in a few days with no drastic dosing of copper or the likes.

This is NOT how you cure fish of ick. This is management, ie living with it and giving the fish their best chances of fighting it off / tolerating the infection.

Plenty of people go this route, many do well for a while until something bad happens. A few even do well long term.

Read the stickies above in this forum. Uv, cleaner shrimp/fish, feeding garlic, any reef safe medication, good feeding, and minimizing stress are all ways to attempt to "manage" ick. None will cure it in any reliable way. Many tanks do live with low level/dormant infections, that doesn't mean that it won't become a critical problem down the road.

 

[MrTuskfish]

This is NOT how you cure fish of ick. This is management, ie living with it and giving the fish their best chances of fighting it off / tolerating the infection.

Plenty of people go this route, many do well for a while until something bad happens. A few even do well long term.

Read the stickies above in this forum. Uv, cleaner shrimp/fish, feeding garlic, any reef safe medication, good feeding, and minimizing stress are all ways to attempt to "manage" ick. None will cure it in any reliable way. Many tanks do live with low level/dormant infections, that doesn't mean that it won't become a critical problem down the road.

Well said; if only folks would listen to the facts regarding ich from day 1 in the hobby; this forum section would almost disappear. I'm guilty too, years ago I tore apart a big tank to cure ich.....never again.

 

[extra3d]

IF it was me, and had $2,000 in fish, ill take all the corals, inv. ect. out and treat the Display with Cupramine! BTW im doing it right now on my 150g and its working out great!! Im almost finished with the treatment, havent lost a fish and they look awsome! When i finish ill put some carbon and cuprisorb online and a couple of water changes. This has been done with great succes! Please look it up on the web. Good Luck!

P.S, cuprisorb is an organic ionic copper, and some say it will not stick to the rock or sand.

Mike

 

[mos90]

I'm wondering if the Ich may have been present before I added the new tang. I don't think so but it is possible.

 

[Nemeziz_za]

i am willing to take some advice before i loose $2000.00 worth of fish.

do i definitely have to rip all the fish out and quarantine with copper? i would rather not if i have a choice.

mos90 did not specifically ask for a routine to cure his Marine Ich ( White Spot)

I have offered advice to him if that offended anyone I apologize. It is not what I have heard about or picked up in a gossip column.

My management routing has been soaking dry pellets (New Era Marine) in the following:


Garlic is only used to flavor the food, there are many studies showing it to be potentially harmful to marine fish. A separate discussion though.

For some links I found useful, you may want to go read these:

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/m/#publication?id=FA164

http://www.marineaquariumsa.com/showthread.php?p=619714#post619714

If you have never owned a 800gallon reef you will never understand how daunting the scale of it can be.

All the best mos90 I hope you win this.

 

[jimmyj7090]

I don't think anyone is or was offended, it's just an issue of being clear about what we are talking about and what advice we are giving.

These threads get very confusing when people are given totally contridictary advice without any clarity that the different advice is attached to different goals and outcomes. It happens over and over, OP asks "what to do, I have ick in my tank?", then gets some replies talking about how to eliminate the problem "treat with copper, hypo, or tank transfer, and keep the display fallow for 12 weeks". Then the next post says "I got a UV and my fish are doing fine". A lot of those exchanges leave people totoally confused about what to do or what decisions they need to make, and often the fish pay the price.

Those links both apear to be a accurate and useful, I agree, everyone should read them.

 

[mos90]

i agree. i dont think anyone was offended.

im not sure of my plan yet. i may move my corals and inverts out and turn my tank into a fowlr and move all my corals into a coral only tank. no plan yet. just tossing around ideas. i have an extra 125 and 75 laying around

it seems that keeping sps corals with the amount of fish i have is fairly difficult to maintain optimal nutrient levels.

 

[extra3d]

i agree. i dont think anyone was offended.

im not sure of my plan yet. i may move my corals and inverts out and turn my tank into a fowlr and move all my corals into a coral only tank. no plan yet. just tossing around ideas. i have an extra 125 and 75 laying around

it seems that keeping sps corals with the amount of fish i have is fairly difficult to maintain optimal nutrient levels.

Ill do that! And treat the whole tank.
Mike