little white spots on tang?

[scarpenter]

Our brown powder has little white like sand granular spots on each of his sides. He is rubbing on rocks trying to get it off. Our hope was that my cleaner shrimp would take care of it, but no such luck yet. My wife looked it up in our disease book and said it was a parasite, not ick. The way to treat the parasite is to put the tang in freshwater for 10 minutes. What????? That is really scarry to me. Wouldn't it be to you?

 

[billsreef]

Ich is a parasite. A FW dip will work for some parasites, but not ich. Cleaner shrimps don't work for ich either, as you've found it. If it is ich, the parasite is Cryptocaryon irritans, than treating the fish with either hyposalinity or copper in quarantine tank is the best way to go.

Here's some good reading on the subject.