reality re ich, the "should I hypo" question

[ReefPharmer]

Before you flame my head off, let me put out there that I have qt'd all of my fish and still have an active QT tank running. My main tank has 5 tangs, 1 angel and 2 clowns in a 180. Tank is barebottom mixed reef.

At no point did any of the fish show ich so I really dont know for sure whether I have it in the system or not.

Recently I picked up a batch of fish from the store and stuck them into my qt. They are undergoing the standard 2 month hypo/observation.

My issue however comes from the fact that I did not QT corals / anem which came from different sources. Sure, I dipped corals (not the anems or shrimp) and tried my best to get livestock from reputable places, but I would guess there are at least 7 samples in my tank. Thats 7 different systems which were not qt'd. I did not have the ability to run a separate system for coral qt, fish qt, and a dt.

While I sit here and look at my qt, I am wondering if i am doing this all for nothing since there is a very good posibility that I've introduced ich into my DT via corals. I never dumped foreign water into the DT but obviously some protozoans probably were on the plugs when I placed them into the tank.

Am I paranoid? Should I continue to hypo or just raise salinity, do a 2 week observation and move the fish into DT?

 

[Hal]

You're a little paranoid. I don't agree that "obviously some protozoans probably were on the plugs."

In order for you to have ich in your tank, you would need two things to happen:
1. the store tanks that you bought from had (alive) ich in them
2. the ich was in it's non-free-swimming, non-fish-attached stage, i.e., in it's tomont stage (roughly 50% of it's lifecycle.) Sources vary on how long this is, anywhere from 3-12 days seems pretty typical out of a 28 day life-cycle.

If it were me, I'd say the odds are in your favor that you DON'T have ich in your tank, so don't do the hypo. But then I also subscribe to the theory that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[ReefPharmer]

Thx for the reply . I am doing hypo on a new batch of fish in a qt . My old fish are in the dt never having shown any signs of ich after their qt period . I'm wondering whether to continue to hypo the new batch or give it up, do observation w regular salinity and move them into the main tank