Ich, I think.

[soccer 24]

i recently introduced a fish to my tank that started getting white spots. he always seemed healthy and the spots started going away. i could barely find a spot on him when today, all my fish have them. my tang has spots everywhere. all the fish eat and act healthy without scratching. is this ich and what should i do? Why did it come so fast?

 

[Jerry W]

From your description it certainly sounds like ich. Describe your set-up; reef? fowlr? FO tank?
What type of fish? Any inverts/live rock? Tank size and do you have a quarantine tank you can use?

 

[soccer 24]

the tank is a reef. only 3 or four months old. Water quality good, I have a few frags of easy sps that are doing great. I have some softies also. its a 75 gallon with a refugium and 80-90 pounds of live rock. I have scopus tang, 2 oscelarus clowns, a cherub angel, yellow wrasse, false moorish idol, and a royal gramma.
I have a small quarintine tank but the guy at the local fish store said to feed food with garlic and to get a uv sterilizer instead of moving the fish and stressing them out. What do you think?

 

[Jerry W]

Neither the garlic or UV will eradicate the problem. Ideally, the fish should be isolated and treated with either hyposalinity or copper. You can treat them all together in a large rubbermaid tub. You can't expose inverts/coral or live rock to either treatment. It sounds as thought the infestation is pretty heavy, and w/o intervention it will only get worse. I'd suggest setting up a larger quarantine tank for all of the fish and prepare to treat them. The stress of catching/moving them is nothing compared to letting them be consumed by parasites.

 

[LargeAngels]

Like Jerry W stated to treat they need to be removed as either treatment will kill coral/inverts. First determine if it is ich or velvet. A quick FW dip will tell you. Ich will NOT fall off, velvet will. Ich can be treated with hypo and copper, velvet only with copper. Here is some good reading.

http://atj.net.au/marineaquaria/fishdiseases.html