ich issues

[gottyboy22]

so, right before xmas was my anniversary and my wife thought she would surprise me by buying some fish for me that I have been wanting. she went to my LFS and got me a emperor angel, a pair of blue throat triggers, and a magnificent foxface. apparently she hasn't paid attention to what I do when I get new additions because instead of putting them in my quarantine tank she put them in my main display tank. come home from work 16 + hours later and see the new additions....and see the ich on the emperor. next day, ich on the triggers. since then I have raised temps, and have used a few different products, with no results. I first tried medic polyp lab, then tried ich x..finally last night I resorted to kordon copperaid. is a all fish tank and have to sacrifice the cleanup crew for my fish I guess. since she put the new ones in I have lost my queen angel, algae blenny, dogface puffer, and a hippo tang. I still have a desjardini sailfin tang, a porcupine puffer, scopus tang, the pair of triggers, the emperor, and the foxface. I am looking for advice or a backup plan if this kordon copper aid doesn't work.

 

[DOGGIE750]

I feel you man. I am assuming your tank is FOWLR, i would do Hyposalinity versus the copper treatment approach.
Also, unlike Freshwater ich who dies off when temp is higher than ideal, Marine ich loves heat. Hope that helps.
BTW, are you sure it's ich and not Marine Velvet?

 

[ThRoewer]

1. reef safe medications do not work against ich, velvet and all the other real nasty things.

2. raising the temperature only makes it worse for the fish (less oxygen in the water and higher metabolism).

3. all treatments in the display tank are a very bad idea and may cause all kinds of complications and losses - treatments have to be done in a hospital tank.

4. copper in the display is an especially bad idea and bound to fail due to the usually large amount of calcium containing materials (rock, sand, ...) - it binds copper and lowers the copper concentration below the required level. Even if the treatment doesn't fail it will likely cause a lot of long term issues as the copper bound by the rocks and sand will slowly leach out again and then may cause health issues with the fish. Sensitive inverts won't do well either.

5. fish (and all other livestock) as surprise gifts are a very bad idea for too many reasons to list here (I guess this one has sunk in already)


Your best option is to remove the survivors from the display and treat them in the QT/HT.

At the same time you may want to clean up your rocks (there are some threads how to do that) and replace the sand with new to get the copper and the parasites out of the tank.