Restarting qt with ich in it

blackice

New member
Hey guys what's up? first post here. Well I have a qt tank that had a yellow tang in it for a month. First two weeks he looked good then ich showed up. Started hypo and he died after a week. I think he probably starved to death. The tank is 20g with mag canister filter with carbon and hob skimmer. My question is how to get rid of ich in tank. It is at hypo right now. How long should I wait before adding any fish? Would it be faster to dry it out start over with water from dt? Is running fresh water through the system an option?

Thanks for any info
 
If you are planning to do hypo in that QT going forward then you dont need to wait at all. If you are talking about raising the salinity and running at that way going forward then just wait fishless for 5 weeks and you will be ok.

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I usually leave it around .018 then slowly lower it to hypo if needed. If I leave the tank in hypo what is the best way to introduce a new fish to that low salinity?
 
Did you want to preserve your biofilter so you wouldn't have to cycle again or are you interested in the fastest option?

You can fill it with RO/DI and run that for a few days, then fill it with fresh Salt water, you can empty it and dry it out completely (make sure the filters are completely dry as well) then fill it again, or fill it with tap water (which I assume has chlorine it it.) All of these will likely significantly disrupt/destroy the biofilter. If you want to try and preserve it, you can leave it hypo at 1.008 for 5 weeks, just like treating a fish.

Personally, I would empty it, throughly dry it out and fill it and start over. In the 5 weeks you'd have to wait, you can likely re-cycle the whole tank. Even if you're planning on using hypo again for the next fish you buy, you'll have to have the tank at close to normal salinity when you introduce them, so it doesn't much matter.
 
I think I'm done using hypo also. If you we're to put a new tang in qt would you start medicating right away or wait. With any other fish I would wait and see what happens but every tang I've had got ich at some point in qt. I'm thinking I shouldn't wait till it shows up.
 
just use cupramine, But you should probably acclimate new fish to it. So I would get your new fish, then start treatment with the cuprimine per the instructions.
 
I would wait a couple days just to get them acclimated and eating, as long as they don't have a raging case of ich already.

to the OP - something I do is keep a sponge for my HOB filter in the sump of my DT. When I need to start up my QT tank, I move it over to speed the cycle and replace it with a fresh one. It takes several weeks to colonize in the sump, but it helps. Never move it back from QT to DT, though.
 
Thanks for the info sleepydoc, I'm running freshwater through it now and I'm going to dry it out and start over. I have a filter that has been running in my sump that I can use for qt tank and using water from dt should cycle quicker than 5 weeks.
 
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