Ich quarintine, but what about main tank?

cwait

New member
I have a 55 gal salt, was fish only, trying to upgrade with live rock, soft corals, mushrooms. Filtration is sump (Bioball), recently built Snailman4" CC skimmer, and added homemade refugium. Refugium houses live rock and grape calurpa and a Mangrove to reduce nitrates. After all these changes, I ended up with Ich on my tang and a coral beauty. Moved these fish to a hospital tank and am treating with Hyposalinity. Still have a clown and a few damsels in main tank. Is the ich still cycling in my main tank even though the Damsels show no signs? I am worried that after 4-6 weeks, I will add the treated hospital fish back to the main tank and I will have another ich issue. Do I need to Hyposalinity the main tank? If so, then what's the purpose of QT'ing any fish to begin with. I am thinking that I need to move the live rock, mangrove, calurpa, snails, crabs to a normal salinity QT tank, then moving my Hospital fish, back to the main tank, and performing Hyposalinity on the whole main tank. Any thoughts? Can calurpa survive hyposalinity?
 
You need to treat all the fish. Leaving some fish in the infected display can permit the disease to continue. I would expect that tang and angel to become reinfected once added back to the display.
 
Yes, treat all of your fish in a quarantine, is the only way to rid the main tank of ich. Steve is 100% right on if you add the tang/angel back after 4-6 weeks they will get ich again if you leave the others in the main tank. Frustrating, but bare the 6 weeks and next time quaratine your new additions, prevention is the best method and cost less in the long run. Good luck.
 
No alage can not take hypo, and you can hypo the main but be prepared for major die off of everything, pods, worms ect. I am hypoing my old 80 gallon display but I took out all rock, coral and the top 1-2" of sand from the tank to a bigger tank and had so little critters I did not get a ammonia spike. Even my coraline on hte glass died and is white. If you went to the trouble of takeing everything out, just catch the fish then and QT them seperate and just take the oppertunity to reaquascape. Keep a close eye on your QT though if it was not cycled first!!
 
OK, thanks for the advice. I have moved all the fish over to 2 hosipital tanks (MAJOR, MAJOR pain), and am beginning hypo-salinity. I have left the display tank intact. What about all my bio-filtration in the display. There are no longer any fish to sustain anything. I still have crabs, snails and macro algae, pods etc. What will they live off of for the next 45 days?
 

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