ick in main display question

[gary504504]

Had a bad bout with ick,in my 130gal, I have no corals at this time just crabs, snails and 7 fish before 5 died from it, now one of the remaining 2 has it, I have no quarantine set do to lack of space for it, my question is, when all fish die, I must wait a minimal of 8 weeks for the ick to cycle starve off and die, but if all the fish are dead how to I keep my ammonia nitrate nitrite, cycle going, with no fish to feed the bacteria for 8 weeks

 

[pyithar]

so your plan is to wait for the death of remaining 2 fish? you'll need a quarantine tank anyway if you wanna keep fish. a 20G tank would be fine if your fishes are not very large. set the tank up, put the fishes in there, cure them and after 10 weeks of display fallowed, you could put them back in the display. the quarantine tank will be useful for future fish additions as well. if you don't quarantine, you'll face this same problem again sooner or later imo.

you could feed the cuc if there's no fish in the tank. and restock slow after 10 weeks.(don't add many fishes all at once)

 

[Spar]

+1 with pyithar

it sounds like you are just planning to go in full circle, which doesn't really accomplish anything for you other than waste your own time. if you don't QT new incoming fish, you will just be adding Ich right back within the next couple fish you put in. you will have an outbreak again in no-time from the new introduced ich. that said, why even go fallow in your DT in the first place? if I didn't QT fish, I would skip that part. 72 days (10 weeks) is the minimum to completely eradicate Ich, but if just wanting to kill off a good part of the Ich population, just go fallow for 3 weeks. it is looking like all you really want to accomplish is the latter.

as Pyithar said, just keep feeding your tank a little less than usual (as if you had fish), and your bacteria will thrive while no fish are present.

 

[Paul B]

I am going to break my #1 rule and post in an ich thread with a little advice that you can take or leave. I don't care if you quarantine, don't quarantine, hit the fish with a blow torch, go fallow for 8 weeks or anything else as I don't want to argue, I am to old for that. But for ich in "your" tank right now you can try quinicrine hydrochloride if you can get it. 10mg/gal. It is a prescription drug for malaria so not easy to get in the US. I get it from a Vet. It will temporarily tint the fish yellow but it will not hurt crustaceans. It will kill corals which you don't have. It also does not stay in the water and in 10 days you can run some carbon and remove it. Depending on what strain of ich you have, it "may" work. I use it with copper and formalin in a bare tank.
Good luck and have a great day