Treatment recommendation and followup

jmm

jmm

New member
My quarantine/observation tank:
20 gallon with sand and canister filter, pvc, surface skimmer and airstone. Caulerpa grows barely under fairly dim freshwater leds. No fish for 13 weeks, no disease on last fish kept there, kept cycled with ammonia and or brine shrimp juice. Fifty percent water change before new arrival added.

Butterfly added 12 days ago. Ate immediately and still eats like a pig 3 times a day. Today, for the first time showed a few salt sized white dots which I assume is ich.

Will tank transfer method work and if so where can I put him afterward? I can do the ttm in 5 gallon buckets with fresh saltwater (can't I?) but the 20 gallon is now a no-no land, right?

I have a 40 gallon that hasn't had a fish in it for more than a year. Inhabitants are zooanthids, snails, bristle worms, several kinds of macro algae and two blood cleaner shrimp and a bubble tip anemone. This is not the intended final destination for the butterfly, but it could be the quarantine after the ttm couldn't it? This tank has a light amount of live rock and some aptaisia which doesn't bother me since it doesn't have any expensive corals to get overrun.

What do you think?
 
So, yesterday there was no ich at 8 am. It didn't show up till noon. By 6 pm it had increased slightly. Today at 8 am there was no ich. Also at noon there was no ich. Butterfly is active, begs for food, follows me from one side of the tank to the other, clear fins and skin.

I'm all set up to do ttm with 30 gallons of fresh saltwater and three clean salt buckets. But I don't want to start until the butterfly shows signs again. It just kills me to put it through that much stress and fright if it's not necessary.

How long should I wait? I know ich comes and goes but there is also the possibility that what I saw was sand from chasing food along the bottom. Wishful thinking?
 
you need to do it now or it can stop eating. You are not seeing the ich because it is falling off into the sandbed to reproduce. So the whole observation tank has ich.
 
Not that I don't value your advice, but I haven't followed it yet. No ich yesterday and none today. I'm hesitant to start the ttm but also to trash the observation tank. If it shows back up I will get right on it.
 
jmm said:
Not that I don't value your advice, but I haven't followed it yet. No ich yesterday and none today. I'm hesitant to start the ttm but also to trash the observation tank. If it shows back up I will get right on it.
Click to expand...

It will show back up, more importantly it will give any new fish your trying to "QT" ich. Read up on ich and you will understand what is going on
 
Today is the third day without any sign of ich. I hope what I saw March 1 was sand.
 
Still no re-occurrence after 6 days. No scratching, no loss of appetite, and best of all (so far, knock on wood) no spots. Maybe I really did dodge the bullet this time.
 
By not doing it you could risk infecting other fish in display. I mean you can be lucky but eventually all it takes is once and it's too late.
 
Thanks Chris. That little butterfly loves me. I don't want to terrify him or make him wild with a bunch of chases and catches unless it is necessary.

I know most of you don't think ttm is stressful to the fish but it is stressful to me.
 
Here's my experience: Bought a fish. Put it in the display tank. It looked like it had ich or a few grains of sand on its body. One day, it had some spots. The next day, no spots.

I TRICKED myself into thinking it was fine. It died in the night or was killed by a gorilla crab. I figured I was fine. My two clowns did not have any signs of ich, after all.

A month later, I added a new fish without quarantine. (Yes, bad idea! I'll quarantine from now on!) The new fish got ich immediately. It was all over and very obvious this time. This fish was out in the open all of the time, unlike the last fish, which hid a lot.

I had to catch and perform the tank transfer treatment for all of my fish (two clowns, one blenny and the infected fish -- a royal gramma). There's no doubt in my mind that the first fish had ich and because I was lazy/optimistic, I didn't treat it and the new fish fell ill.

It's easier to do things right the first time. TTM isn't that difficult. I used plastic buckets. I ended up losing that sick fish, though.

I plan to do TTM for all new fish as part of their quarantine. No way I'm going through catching and treating all of my display tank fish ever again if I can help it!

Good luck to you.
 
jmm said:
Thanks Chris. That little butterfly loves me. I don't want to terrify him or make him wild with a bunch of chases and catches unless it is necessary.

I know most of you don't think ttm is stressful to the fish but it is stressful to me.
Click to expand...

It's your decision, of course. All I can say is that every one of my fish has been through TTM without any problems with stress. Even my kole tang, who was extremely shy throughout the entire QT period, went through TTM like a champ. One way to reduce chasing is to lower the water level in the aquarium to a few inches, then carefully capture the fish. To me, peace of mind is more important than risking an infection. But, everyone has their own levels of risk aversion.
 
Deinonych said:
It's your decision, of course. All I can say is that every one of my fish has been through TTM without any problems with stress. Even my kole tang, who was extremely shy throughout the entire QT period, went through TTM like a champ. One way to reduce chasing is to lower the water level in the aquarium to a few inches, then carefully capture the fish. To me, peace of mind is more important than risking an infection. But, everyone has their own levels of risk aversion.
Click to expand...

I agree. All of my fish will go through TTM from now on followed by 6 week observation. I also use Prazi and I'm considering adding formalin baths and chloroquine phosphate (ich shield) to the med cabinet.
 
I do formallin bath 45min then into 1st ttm with nitrofuracin green, do prazi on the 2nd and 3rd transfer then finally into quarantine tank for observation.
 
scuzy said:
I do formallin bath 45min then into 1st ttm with nitrofuracin green, do prazi on the 2nd and 3rd transfer then finally into quarantine tank for observation.
Click to expand...

This sounds like a good protocol. Where do you get the nitrofuracin green?
 
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