QT issues

[reddevil14]

Good morning all,
I am experiencing a few problems with my qt.... I have a 20 gal tall with a heater, maxijet 900, and penguin biowheel filter with micron from my dt and a few bioballs in it. All parms are normal and I add water with buffer daily to keep PH up. The temp is around 76 deg.

I do 50% water changes weekly to help keep parms in check.

Over a month ago i purchased a yellow and powder blue tang. They are both only about 3" in size and don't fight or pick on each other. I have a piece of PVC piping that they like to hang out in. I feed them nori sheets daily and both eat very well. They don't breathe rapidly or appear to be stressed out.

After about of week in qt I noticed that the powder blue had ich. I decided to go the hyposalinity route and gradually reduced the SG to 1.010. I make sure this number stays constant by checking it with a refractometer every couple of days and topping off with RO/DI water to keep the level normal.

After 2 weeks the powder blue was clean, and I noticed the yellow tang had 2 cysts that appeared they were going to fall off. It has been 2 weeks now and the ich on the yellow tang is still there. On top of that I noticed that the powder blue has 2 tiny ich spots on it again.

What would be a good route to take? Should I do methylene blue baths every couple of days until all spots are gone? If ich can't live in this salinity how is it that it comes back.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I really want these fish to pull through. Thanks

 

[Jerry W]

While it sounds trivial, try dropping the salinity as bit more. Actually, 1.009 is suggested, or 14 ppt salinity. Having it even a pt too high might be thwarting the effort. It is not uncommon for the treatment to take some time. Maintain hyposalinity until the fish are asymptomatic for three weeks, then slowly raise the level over the course of a week. There are strains of ich that are resistant to hypo, but they are rare. It is, however, important to keep your salinity at just the right level, and IMO, 1.010 is a touch high.

 

[reddevil14]

Will do, would you recommend doing a freshwater dip occasionally? I haven't given them one in a couple of weeks.

 

[reddevil14]

I also just noticed that there is a tiny black spot on the yellow tang. Is it possible to have both black ich and regular ich on the same fish? Or are they related?

 

[Jerry W]

I'm not a fan of FW dips. In a lot of cases, they can simply stress the fish more than help. You're also not dealing with a situation that would require a FW dip. C. irritans (saltwater ich) and black ich are two different problems. Black ich can be treated with a series of formalin baths. Seeing one spot though is not cause to rush into this. I'd continue with the hyposalinity for now and see if the fish shows improvement. The one question that comes to mind is are your sure you're seeing ich? Any way to post a picture of it?