Mickey
Active member
Night before last my Hippo tang showed what I thought were clear signs of Ich - covered in white spots that looked like salt. Last night, same thing but a little worse. Appeared to have small bumps under the skin on one side as well. Tonight he looks totally fine. Never observed any flashing behavior, nor hanging at the overflow or the surface. Never had an outbreak of Ich before and tank has been set up for 9 years. Is it possible this wasn't Ich?
I took tomorrow off work and was planning to start the Tank Transfer treatment on all my fish.
Background info: Tank is a 220 and has been set up for 9 years. Two weeks ago had a bad accident with Kalk (long story and totally my stupidity as it was preventable :facepalm
. Essentially I lost just about everything. Most coral and half my fish. Some survived in the tank while it came back to normal. Two fish, including my Hippo tang, were rescued from the display and put in a quickly set up QT for a week then moved back to the display. They were the only fish I could see at the time and found them near the glass laying on the sand. It was a very sad time for me.
Once I realized I had lost most coral, I took the opportunity to remove most of the live rock that had become encrusted with plague proportions of brown/fluorescent green palythoa. I had to break the reef down anyway in order to find the bodies of the missing fish. Anyway, you can imagine the sand storm, etc. throughout the tank. So I'm not surprised that the remaining fish were all stressed.
I've never seen any signs of Ich in my tank before and have followed good QT practice for new fish additions, though not for coral. No new additions of anything for over a year. So I was a little surprised when I came home from work on Tuesday and saw the hippo who had already survived so much just covered with white spots.
The last few nights I researched and planned and was prepared to pull the remaining fish out (5 small fish plus a 5" Hippo) and start the TT treatment tomorrow. Tonight I got home and he looks clean as a whistle.
Is it possible that it was just stress or something and not Ich? Is there something else that looks like Ich but only hangs around two days?
I don't want to leave the display fallow for 9 weeks and keep the fish in a 20 gallon QT all that time if I don't have to. But I don't want to leave Ich in my tank either.
Mickey
I took tomorrow off work and was planning to start the Tank Transfer treatment on all my fish.
Background info: Tank is a 220 and has been set up for 9 years. Two weeks ago had a bad accident with Kalk (long story and totally my stupidity as it was preventable :facepalm
. Essentially I lost just about everything. Most coral and half my fish. Some survived in the tank while it came back to normal. Two fish, including my Hippo tang, were rescued from the display and put in a quickly set up QT for a week then moved back to the display. They were the only fish I could see at the time and found them near the glass laying on the sand. It was a very sad time for me.Once I realized I had lost most coral, I took the opportunity to remove most of the live rock that had become encrusted with plague proportions of brown/fluorescent green palythoa. I had to break the reef down anyway in order to find the bodies of the missing fish. Anyway, you can imagine the sand storm, etc. throughout the tank. So I'm not surprised that the remaining fish were all stressed.
I've never seen any signs of Ich in my tank before and have followed good QT practice for new fish additions, though not for coral. No new additions of anything for over a year. So I was a little surprised when I came home from work on Tuesday and saw the hippo who had already survived so much just covered with white spots.
The last few nights I researched and planned and was prepared to pull the remaining fish out (5 small fish plus a 5" Hippo) and start the TT treatment tomorrow. Tonight I got home and he looks clean as a whistle.
Is it possible that it was just stress or something and not Ich? Is there something else that looks like Ich but only hangs around two days?
I don't want to leave the display fallow for 9 weeks and keep the fish in a 20 gallon QT all that time if I don't have to. But I don't want to leave Ich in my tank either.
Mickey
