ich in stocked reef tank

[iverson387]

My blue hippo tang in my reef tang has ich. He has had it for the last month or so and ive been monitoring him. Throughout this time one day he will look clean, next a few spots, then a bunch. As of now it is starting to get bad and im wondering what i should do. I have a quarantine tank but it is only 20 gallons. I have approx 25 fish in my tank and all are less than 3" most around 1-2". Im conteplating letting the tank go fallow for 6 weeks but what would be the best way to do this. How large of a quarantine would i have to set up? Would i treat all fish at once? The hippo tang is the only one who i can see has ich currently. I do not plan on adding any more fish to the tank only corals. The hippo tang was in quarantine for 6 weeks and never showed signs of ich. A week after i put him in the dt he had a few dots im not sure how this happened and dont want to go through quarantining all fish then having ich again.

 

[kinlayan]

to be honest, this is very common in aquarium most times moving the fish ends up causing more stress and death, i would feed him very good food with vitamins, some fresh garlic and most of all check all water parameters are correct that the ph isnt doing something radical in the evening etc that causes stress large ph fluctuations are very stressful to fish

also if you have an ozone reactor or uv on your aquarium that may help to reduce the parasite population enough for the fishes immunity to win the battle.

 

[iverson387]

Ok ive purchased some supplements to soak the food in today. I have been thinking about getting a UV - How many watts should i get and how much flow should i allow through it. The tank has about 100 gallons of water running through it. someone told me that anything less than 40 watts wont kill ich but idk if this is true?

 

[kinlayan]

ich is a very large parasite so it needs alot of uv radiation to kill it your best bet is to go to the website of a good uv manufacturer (aquauv)and size a uv for your system, flow rate , size of contact chamber and prefiltered water all make a lot of difference to uv 's effectiveness as does the wattage of the bulb.