Ick in Reef Tank

[saabore]

Need some help here. I am new to this forum. I set up a reef tank 3 months ago with 180 lbs of live rock and 80 pounds live sand. I have sofies and about 12 fish in theis 120 gal tank.
Yesterday I discovered that my fish have ick. How can I treat them as I am unable to get them out of the tank without tearing it all down? The fish are 2 tangs, 4 anthias, 2 clowns, 1 goby, 2 chromis and 1 wrasse.
I also have 2 cleaner shrimps aout 30 snails and 20 various crabs.

Please help...

 

[Osmotic Shock]

You are going to have to get the fish out to treat the ick. Treat them with copper or hyposalinity in a separate tank or tanks and let your main tank go fallow for 8 weeks. It is so much easier to quarantine the fish than to treat the disease after the fact.Good luck.

 

[Mariner]

Unfortunately, Osmotic Shock is correct. There is no sure-fire ich cure that's reef safe. You're in a tough spot. With twelve fish, you would need quite a large hospital tank to be successful treating them with hypo or copper. You could possibly use a standard 55g, possibly smaller if your tangs are small -- while there would be some expense and a lot of trouble involved, it might be cheaper than having to replace all or most of your fish. IMO, your only other viable option would be to let things play out in your reef -- feed the fish well, maybe supplement with vitamins (Selco, Zoe) and garlic and see if you can keep some of them strong enough to fight off the ich themselves. The trouble with this approach is that even if some of your current fish beat the ich and develop somewhat of an immunity (which is theoretically possible), you'll still have ich in your tank and every time you add a new fish, it will get it.
Good luck,
Mariner

 

[jafish26]

isnt copper bad for tangs???

 

[saabore]

Thanks, I do have a hospital tank set up. It is a bare bottom with a little live rock. I have an emperor acting as the filtration and biowheel and has been cycled I keep a couple of chromis and a goby to maintain the nitrification going. The tank is a 34 gal cube. I do have a habit of incubating any new specimen for 14 days prior to moving them to the display. all was fine until yesterday. Not sure what brought it on, maybe it was there a couple of days earlier and I just did not notice. Someone recommended "KORDON-AQUA HERBALS" called ICH ATTACH and claims it is safe for reefs aad liverock setups including inverts. But I am apprehensive about using it. Anyone out there experience this product? it is a division of novalek

 

[saabore]

What is hyposalinity? how do I prep for it? Any suggestions on how to trp the fish out?

 

[fingersdlp]

Hyposalinity:

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/hyposalinity.html

 

[Mariner]

This article will help you a lot. It also contains a link to an explanation of hyposalinity.

jafish,
Yes, copper can be bad for tangs; it disturbs their digestive tract. However, if copper is dosed carefully and a quality product like Cupramine is used, tangs can endure it ... I have one that did, 4 years ago, and he's still swimmin'
Mariner

 

[handapanda]

I would recommend hyposalinity over copper. It kills the ich without the other potential problems. However, you need to get a refractometer. The swing arm type hydrometers are not accurate enough to do hyposalinity.
Also, make sure you do very frequent H20 changes in the hospital tank and check your water parameters religiously. The fish are under a lot of stress, so bad water conditions will only make it harder for them to fight the ich.

 

[stanlalee]

My two tangs went thru Seachems culprimine copper treatment without issue. Thats the only copper treatment I trust. Unfortunately everyone's right if you want to be done with ich for good you will have to remove all the fish otherwise you'll be fighting ich off and on forever.

 

[ILLBEEDAT]

Had the same problem with Ich in my 55gal reef so went and installed a 8watt Uv sterilizer and no more Ich and no harm to any other fish or corals.

 

[alexb518]

here is what i do to help prevent against these diseases in the first place, but it may help you out still if you find no other alternative. i soak the food in garlic (yes garlic) before i feed it to them. this will help boost the immune system and also is thought, in theory, to scent off parasites. unfortunately, copper and hyposalinity are not options for you. copper will kill everything in your tank, as will hyposalinity. hyposalinity is where you drop the specific gravity to 1.009 in order to breakt he life cycle of the parasites. your live rock will survive this but your inverts and corals will not. so, if you're going that route, you can simply remove the corals and inverts and put them into the QT tank(obviously w/o copper) and let the fish rid themselves of the parasites. good luck

 

[alexb518]

sorry, i forgot two things. first, if you're going to go the garlic route, you can use garlic oil, since it will not stink as bad and it doesn't leave a film in the surface of your water like chopped garlic. second, if you're going the hyposalinity route, this needs to be done for at least 3 weeks. in my opinion, i would do both and just take the corals and inverts out of the tank for a while if at all possible.

 

[saabore]

Thank you all for your guidance. I will be attempting the suggested cure but I know I will need a significant amount of time to breakdown my reef.

 

[fingersdlp]

Just to play devils advocate... if you are going to the trouble to treat your fish in a QT and leave the display fallow you will obviously need to QT everything wet going into the tank in the future - live sand, rock, corals, etc. This is not too bad if you can QT them in a seperate tank with no fish for 6 weeks (some say 8).

Fish are another problem. If you keep them in a seperate QT tank for some time this is no guarantee that a low level ich investation is not present but unseen. To be really sure you would have to use Hypo or copper on any new fish.

If you are commiting to treating the ich you are also commiting to keeping it out otherwise it makes no sence.

An unpopular alternative is to feed them well and keep the water quality high and understand that any new fish you add in the future may have to battle with ich.

Keeping ich out is tough. I choose to treat and deal with the pain of QT for my large fish only tank. However, I know I have ich in my reef tank even though no fish have symptoms as they all were able to fight it off.

I have heard people say ich is in every tank. Obviously that is not true but I bet it is in a lot of them. It is the newer setups that it tends to decimate.

One interesting theory I heard about ick is that with no new additions to a tank the ich will die off on its own in 12 -16 months due to cell aging. Interesting if true because I don't add anything to my reef anymore (too full) so maybe some day it will be ich free as well.