Damn Ick...

:frustrat: well my new tang is got about 12 spots of ick, it is still eating really well, so i'm not feeling as though all is lost ...i'm going to the lfs to get 2 neon gobys..mabey they can help. ick is the only real downfall of keeping a reef tank.

 

Dont add more fish to an already sick tank, thats just acking for trouble IMO. Get your problem resolved before you add to it. How long has the tang been in your tank? and sick for that matter.

 

As long as he is eating, let him be. Tangs are very prone to ich and these little ich outbursts are fairly common. My yellow tang went thru a lot of them in the beginning until he really started to feel at home in my tank. It takes a while.

Ryan is correct, dont buy any new fish but you can get a fire shrimp. The tang will probably go for a cleaning session and the fire shrimp will pick off the ich from his body.

 

he's been here for 3 days and i just noticed at 8 pm....

 

stress=ich in tangs

 

been there also lost powder brown out of blue, feed garlic. i soak algae sheets in jar of minced garlic and feed minced garlic with frozen food. So far is helping me save my foxface.

 

i also have a neon gobie, cleaner wrasse, and 2 cleaner shrimp to help out since all of them clean fish.

 

I'd go with a pair of cleaner shrimp over the goby, if you can. Do you have any shrimp already?

 

from what I saw my cleaner shrimps haven't paid attention to my midas blenny with ich at all. Luckily the ich seems to be going away almost fully.

 

Cleaners will have little to no effect on the situation. Like was said stop adding fish to the tank.

Your options are limited here. Roll with the punches and don't add any thing fish wise to this tank that your not willing to lose.

Or pull all fish from the tank and let it go fish-less for six weeks. Ich is an obligate parasite and with no fish to suck blood off of will die off. Stress is not a factor here either.
A completely stressed fish will not get ick if the parasite does not already reside in the tank or had the parasite before introduction to the tank.

You can attempt home treatment on the all the fish you have but if it were me I would return all fish to LFS and demand some sort of store credit.

While your reef goes fish-less cycle a QT tank. Should take about 17 days. QT all new fish going into reef for a least a few weeks. If fish show sings of parasites while in QT hypo treatment where tangs and angles are concerned. All other species should do fine with copper treatment.

The majority of LFS will either run copper willy nilly that cause internal damage to most tangs and some angels (fish will seem healthy for a period of months and then mysteriously stop eating and waste away; likely cause liver damage from high copper exposure) or run nothing in which case parasite exposure is almost a certainty. It is a rare LFS that will take the necessary steps to assure parasite free holding tanks without causing copper exposure damage to the more sensitive species.

Cycling/qt/treatment time should coincide roughly with the the reefs fish-less period so you should be ready to add parasite free fish to your parasite free reef in exactly six weeks. Then of course any new additions to the tank includeing rock and coral will also require a QT. Cross contamination from treatment to DT is also a concern. Use seperate rooms nets and equipment and wash and dry hand after fiddleing around in the treatment tank.

Is all of this a time consuming pain in the *ss? Most definitely. That's why where reef tanks are concerned I go with option one and don't add anything fish wise that I am not willing to lose.

Toss in some damsels pack it with inverts and corals and don't bother worrying about it. The reefs water quality concerns will also diminish absent any heavy fish load to deal with. But then again that's just me; I could be wrong.

 

my lfs qt every fish they get they will not sell it for 4 weeks after they get it in. every tank they have has a uv on it. i have never had ick in any of my tanks. i will not buy a fish that is going to be sold in the first couple weeks of them receving it.

 

Although Damsluver's info is correct, not everything will go by the book and the 17 days is not going to mean the same for all tanks.

I also disagree about the cleaner shrimps. Sometimes they might have no affect and sometimes they do a great job.

In my tank, the fire shrimp gives my tang a daily cleaning and has removed ich from his body on many occasions. So its not correct to say that cleaner shrimps have no affect because they do alot of the times.

Ich is always present in our tanks. The 6 week life cycle doesnt really mean much, ich will come right back if the fish are stressed. If the fish is eating, the chances of recovery is very high and there is no need to put the fish thru more stress by removing it from the DT. In my personal opinion, i think fish that are not eating and show other signs of stress should be medicated. Just spots on the fish is not enough reason to remove him if all other signs are good (eating, acting healthy, etc.).

 

yes ich is introduced to the tank by a sick fish. it does not live in our tanks all the time. if it did we would all keep having outbreaks non stop. ich will come back if the cysts are not liked by letting the tank sit for awhile. as ich can only host to fish.

 

Nope, cant prove it, but i have had ich free tank for months (way beyond 6 weeks) and my coral beauty still got ich. So did my tang. And im not disputing that copper will kill ich. Im saying there is no need to medicate a fish if the fish is not seriously ill and ich alone is not a good reason to put the fish thru more stress if he is eating and acting healthy.

Weaker fish, stressed fish, etc. are more prone to ich. You can have ich in your tank but have ich free fish if the fish are strong enough and not stressed. Most of the time the fish fights it off on his own.


I myself am someone who advocates quarantining each new addition. I quarantine my new fish for in copper for 2 weeks. I did this with my CB and my tang. They still got ich!

So im just saying, it doesnt always go by the book. They are not robots.

 

It is true that the parasite can exist at non lethal levels in tanks with healthy well adjusted fish. It is also true however that when done properly the parasite can be completely eradicated from the system.

If the parasite is present the introduction of new specimens will be difficult. The stress from the move or aggression from existing tank mates will usually push the new fish over the edge. Once the new fish is highly susceptible to the parasite its population will increase significantly putting even established fish in jeopardy.

 

:Cheers:

Shameless post count bump.

Like it matters......................