Possible ICH

[dstipple]

Today when I woke up and turned my lights on I noticed a small, clear, slug like thing on my glass about 1/4 the size of a pencil eraser. As I looked closer at the glass I saw a lot of little white spots moving. The only fish in my tank are a 14" chainlink eel, 4" blue line grouper, and a 4" lawnmower blenny. None of the fish have any obvious white dots on them but the grouper and eel hide most of the time. I did however see the eel rub on a rock as if he was scratching his side which I heard was a symptom of ICH. If this is ICH what should I do? I do have a small qt tank but it is only 5g which I could put the eel and blenny in and I guess i would buy another for the grouper. I know it's beat to qt and treat the fish individually but is there any other ways to treat for ICH without qting?

 

[sandwi54]

an ich cyst is microscopic and not visible to human eyes, and it cannot stay on the glass (it would just fall). So the small, slug-like thing on your glass is not ich. without a photo, all i could guess is one of the lifeforms in your live rocks, possibly copepods, though 1/4 of a pencil eraser sounds too big to be pods). can you take a photo and post it here?

a single incidence of scratching does not necessarily mean presence of parasites. we humans get itchy and scratch ourselves too, so do fish. however, if the scratching is frequent, then it is certainly a parasite. when fish scratch chronically without visible external signs, most commonly it's either flukes or ich, both of which generally attack the gills first since gill tissues are soft and easily penetrated.

if you see reoccurrences of scratching, i would start with treating for flukes, since that can be done in the DT. use prazipro and follow the dosage, but instead of just treating once for 5-7 days like the instruction says, do a second treatment for another 5 days after the first. if after the treatment the scratching ensues, then you may have to think about removing all of the fish into a QT for ich treatment. you will have to use hyposalinity and not cupramine since eel is highly sensitive to cupramine.

by the way, are all the fish in your 46g DT? the grouper gets to 14" big and will outgrow the 46g very fast.

 

[dstipple]

i finally got a good picture (using a spatula as a background) of the organism in question.

there are about 4 or 5 more of this size or a little smaller on other parts of the glass and too many to count that are just barely visible. if anyone can ID this I would greatly appreciate it.
sandwi54, the grouper was given to my by a friend who bought it for his 210 DT, but it was getting harassed by a larger miniatus. when he gets to large for my tank he should be big enough to hold his own in the 210

 

[dstipple]

i finally got a good picture (using a spatula as a background) of the organism in question.

there are about 4 or 5 more of this size or a little smaller on other parts of the glass and too many to count that are just barely visible. if anyone can ID this I would greatly appreciate it.
sandwi54, the grouper was given to my by a friend who bought it for his 210 DT, but it was getting harassed by a larger miniatus. when he gets to large for my tank he should be big enough to hold his own in the 210

 

[snorvich]

Definitely not ich.

 

[Meshmez]

I believe that is an Acoel Flatworm. I saw ONE once on the glass in my tank. My clown came over and ate it right off the glass befere I even had a chance to take a picture of it.