How dangerous are frags from ick infected tank?

[iamwhatiam52]

I know there is still ick in my tanks even though no fish show symptoms. A neon goby died of it recently while no other fish have had spots for about a month and a half.

I do not have a seperate tank to keep them in without fish for two months.

How likely is it that ick would infect someone elses tank if I gave them frags?

 

[sostoudt]

im no expert but it is a small risk. chances are with the goby it was stressed from start neon gobies have trouble adjusting to food. id suggest pimafix, it says it cures fugus but it works on ich too. dont be alarmed if your corals close up on dosing they take a couple hours to get use to it. saved my lopezis life

 

[paulamrein]

Not to contradict but there is no reef-safe treatment. Only treatments that work(copper & hypo) are those that kill invertebrates (which is what it's designed to do) And those treatments are ONLY to be done in a QT. Could it be possible to close off the 5 small systems from the sump and run at least one or more as a QT depending on how many fish you have? I know it's a pain but it's a necessary evil to have a parasite free system. That is assuming that you still have the set-up you have in your description. I second that there is a small risk of transferring parasites system to system with frags. If you do end up QTing any frags, rock or anything else wet will need a QT time out of the main system as well. No treatment just isolation. I realize that you only asked of the risk, but it's a goal of mine to try to get more hobbyist to utilize QT.

 

[heuerfan]

I once had a bad case of ick in my display so decided to hypo. Gave corals to my friend and 2 weeks later all 3 of his fish had ick and died one by one. He had those fish for a year with no health issues.

 

[paulamrein]

Again, not to contradict, but could it be possible that it was the ich that killed the fish and not the hypo? You said it yourself that it was a "bad case" and ANY treatment is only effective on 1 stage of the life-cycle of the parasite, and therefore the ich killed them BEFORE the treatment could do it's job. There have been NO reported cases of the actual hypo treatment (done correctly) has killed a fish. There are unforeseen salinity miscalculations and secondary infections (again not the treatment itself) that lead to demise. But not the treatment.

 

[fittiger]

I think he was saying that corals given to a friend from his ick infested tank, killed the friend's fish.

 

[paulamrein]

Oh, well that makes more sense.

 

[iamwhatiam52]

Thanks for the responses.

I do intend to set up a separate tank off the main system to isolate frags even though the risk is minimal. How long an isolation do you think will be needed?

As for a parasite free system, I've given up. It would require COMPLETELY breaking down three of my tanks to catch all my fish. When I moved to a new house several months ago I never found all my fish. I thought I'de lost some gobies until they popped out of the live rock after the move. A pair of tiger gobies are still in separate tanks because I can't catch either one!

My fish are fine now (resistant? strong enough to fight off the parasites?) but I do not know what the chances are that new fish will be able to resist the infection.