Treating ich in DT and moving corals to temp tank

[sprouseod]

Hi have my first ich infection on a copperband butterfly. My tank in a RS reefer 350 with 7 med-small fish. Currently I only have a few beginner coral plugs (GPS, polyps etc) not yet glued to live rock. It would definitely be easier to move the few plugs I have to a temporary tank and treat the display tank than vise versa.

My plan is to setup a temporary tank 10 gal, Move one of my Kessils over add a heater, add a large piece of live rock and put a powerhead in for for circulation.

Treat the DT for 6 weeks then run carbon.

Your advice is welcome,

Richard

 

[Sk8r]

You'll kill all your rock and sand if you treat the dt. Your better move is to leave everything in place and get the fish out to a bare glass qt and treat them only. Leave the tank fishless for 72 days. Hopefully the ich that's in the sandbed will die out with no chance to reproduce and that's that. Corals don't get ich, so they and your snails and such can stay in the DT during the 72 days. Only fish can get ich, so they're the ones that have to be treated.

 

[billdogg]

Exactly what sk8r said.

What were you planning on treating them with? Copper is toxic at even very low levels to any invertebrates (corals/shrimp/crabs/etc) as well as to the bacteria needed to maintain biological filtration. The DT is, by far, the worst place to try to treat Ich. And FWIW - there are exactly ZERO reef safe treatments that actually work.

Remove the fish (even if you have to remove rocks to do so) and treat them in a proper QT. My personal preference is TTM. It requires NO medications of any kind and will be 100% effective if done properly. See the sticky at the top of the forum.