I am a fool bought a clown a petco and he has developed ich

[Katrina71]

I have the tank basically set up now should I still quarantine him, Or not?

I do not QT, but... I would strongly suggest getting knowledgeable opinions of others before you decide.

 

[Aidanwolf]

I do not QT, but... I would strongly suggest getting knowledgeable opinions of others before you decide.

I know its all luck and where you source your fish from. But have you ever had any outbreaks in your tank. Also how long have you been in the hobby?

 

[Bryce M.]

Same here, though most people do so I'm sure someone will know

 

[Fish_Sticks]

If the ich is not bad, you might just let him try to gain his strength and overcome it. Lowering stress as much as possible and feeding good food is a great way to help him do so. Clownfish are almost all tank raised these days and extremely hardy fish.

If hes got a life threatening amount of spots and they keep multiplying, set up a qt and treat him. Check the qt ammonia everyday...

Ive got an article coming out tomorrow on qt that you would probably find very interesting... 6am central time
Edit: NVM its coming out in a few hours...

Dont add any fish until 4 weeks after the ich goes away. It will add stress back on him, he needs time to fully rehabilitate.
You should be quarantining for 8 weeks anyways so that shouldnt matter

 

[Katrina71]

I know its all luck and where you source your fish from. But have you ever had any outbreaks in your tank. Also how long have you been in the hobby?

No. I have been very fortunate. I'm still a noob. A little over 2 years.

 

[Fish_Sticks]

The first step to graduating from a noob is registering on reef2reef, so youre not anymore

 

[Aidanwolf]

No. I have been very fortunate. I'm still a noob. A little over 2 years.

I started about 8 years ago, but I was a kid and had no idea what I was doing lol.

 

[Aidanwolf]

I just checked him and all but maybe one spot has disappeard.

 

[DSC reef]

If the fish is eating and showing no signs of stress I would keep feeding him a varied diet and save the stress of removing, new surroundings and medication. I'm not against quarintine but I feel it is not necessary for your current condition.

 

[Aidanwolf]

If the fish is eating and showing no signs of stress I would keep feeding him a varied diet and save the stress of removing, new surroundings and medication. I'm not against quarintine but I feel it is not necessary for your current condition.

I will have to get a more varity of food. What would you recommend? I only have some pellets with added garlic due to being a hour away from the closest LFS. I used to feed with mysis with garlicgaurd.

 

[DSC reef]

I would look into reef nutrition refrigerated foods and LRS reef frenzy for frozen. High quality foods will do better than pellets with garlic additives. Feed small amounts multiple times a day.

 

[Aidanwolf]

I would look into reef nutrition refrigerated foods and LRS reef frenzy for frozen. High quality foods will do better than pellets with garlic additives. Feed small amounts multiple times a day.

Thanks, I will look for some next time I am able to go to a LFS.

 

[BigRedReefer MT]

As @DSC reef has said above if he seems like he is beating the infection then just good feeding and low stress will probably save him. I myself would wait the 76 days before adding anything new just to starve out the parasite and not risk infecting new, healthy fish. That's just my two cents though. If he breaks out again then I would probably move him and treat him but it sounds like your little buddie has turned the corner.

 

[Fish_Sticks]

Here you go incase you were stil interested: WHAT IF I TOLD YOU... Rehabilitation is the most important reason for quarantining.

 

[Aidanwolf]

As @DSC reef has said above if he seems like he is beating the infection then just good feeding and low stress will probably save him. I myself would wait the 76 days before adding anything new just to starve out the parasite and not risk infecting new, healthy fish. That's just my two cents though. If he breaks out again then I would probably move him and treat him but it sounds like your little buddie has turned the corner.

So if he fought off the ich, the ich will not be able to rehost him and die off?

 

[Fish_Sticks]

So if he fought off the ich, the ich will not be able to rehost him and die off?

It depends on who you ask.

The idea is that healthy fish do not get ich. Create strong fish and you shouldn't have to worry about ich getting a foothold on your inhabitants.

Once you introduce ich into a tank be it by fish, frag, water, hermit crab/snail shell, the ich falls off and will remain dormant for up to 8 weeks. It will be dormant until it finds a weak fish to host, which is why its a good idea to let any new weak fish have time to rehabilitate in an 8 week quarantine. You may see an occasional spot on some of your fish every now and then, but a healthy fish should be able to fight it back.

If you ask someone else, they'll tell you to rip out your tank, start over, and create a 100% sterile environment. You can see why that method is a bit more difficult, and slightly unrealistic. Ich will find its way into any and all tanks. Rather than trying to avoid ich introduction, I beleive it is more beneficial to raise strong fish that can fight it back. You still need to be quarantining for an 8 week period so that weak fish have time to recover and be healthy. Otherwise you introduce them into the display and they could break out with ich, when combined with the stress from new tank mates, a new environment, and less individual attention.

I've written all about it in the article I linked above...

 

[Aidanwolf]

It depends on who you ask.

The idea is that healthy fish do not get ich. Create strong fish and you shouldn't have to worry about ich getting a foothold on your inhabitants.

Once you introduce ich into a tank be it by fish, frag, water, hermit crab/snail shell, the ich falls off and will remain dormant for up to 8 weeks. It will be dormant until it finds a weak fish to host, which is why its a good idea to let any new weak fish have time to rehabilitate in an 8 week quarantine. You may see an occasional spot on some of your fish every now and then, but a healthy fish should be able to fight it back.

If you ask someone else, they'll tell you to rip out your tank, start over, and create a 100% sterile environment. You can see why that method is a bit more difficult, and slightly unrealistic. Ich will find its way into any and all tanks.

I've written all about it in the article I linked above...

I read the article. So if that is true I could use the tank that I set up as a observation tank maybe add a few corals lol, and if the fish in the observation tank gets severely ill put him in a medical tank.

 

[Fish_Sticks]

If you want to try a low-stress quarantine method, yes, that would work. I would wait at least 2 weeks before doing anything to the tank, such as adding corals. He needs time to get rehabilitated. Once you start adding corals, moving rocks around, you open a whole new can of worms and there are no guarantees that your fish may become stressed in this critical 2 week period and begin relapsing. After he has been in there for 8 weeks, you should be fine to add another fish. You must also make sure to rehabilitate any new fish you plan to add for 8 weeks in a separate tank before you add them to your main display, so you could at least use these next two weeks to read up on setting up a quarantine system, managing ammonia in a quarantine system, and get all that going before adding corals. Use atleast a 20g tank for QT

Managing the ammonia is a very important part of the QT process. I test it every day when QT'ing. Your main display will be fine as it has live rock to manage the ammonia, assuming you cycled your tank properly before adding the clownfish.

5) Low stress rehabilitation/quarantine (8-12 weeks)
Aims to rehabilitate fish over a long 8-12 week period. Rather than providing a sterile and disease-free environment, this method prioritizes low stress techniques over absolute sterility, using medications only when necessary and restarting the quarantine period to 8 weeks when major diseases or parasites are identified.
The goal of this method is not to entirely 100% attempt to guarantee the complete elimination of all possible diseases and parasites. Notice my redundancy and emphasizing 100%. I would say that 100% is actually impossible, leading to unexpected tank crashes when a sick fish or a small spot of ich reaches the main display and hits all the sparkly clean fish.
The real goal is aimed at increasing fish strength as much as possible so that they can hold their own against existing fish and ward off low-risk diseases already present in the main display.

 

[Aidanwolf]

If you want to try a low-stress quarantine method, yes, that would work. I would wait at least 2 weeks before doing anything to the tank, such as adding corals. He needs time to get rehabilitated. Once you start adding corals, moving rocks around, you open a whole new can of worms and there are no guarantees that your fish may become stressed in this critical 2 week period and begin relapsing. After he has been in there for 8 weeks, you should be fine to add another fish. You must also make sure to rehabilitate any new fish you plan to add for 8 weeks in a separate tank before you add them to your main display, so you could at least use these next two weeks to read up on setting up a quarantine system, managing ammonia in a quarantine system, and get all that going before adding corals. Use atleast a 20g tank for QT

Managing the ammonia is a very important part of the QT process. I test it every day when QT'ing. Your main display will be fine as it has live rock to manage the ammonia, assuming you cycled your tank properly before adding the clownfish.


5) Low stress rehabilitation/quarantine (8-12 weeks)
Aims to rehabilitate fish over a long 8-12 week period. Rather than providing a sterile and disease-free environment, this method prioritizes low stress techniques over absolute sterility, using medications only when necessary and restarting the quarantine period to 8 weeks when major diseases or parasites are identified.
The goal of this method is not to entirely 100% attempt to guarantee the complete elimination of all possible diseases and parasites. Notice my redundancy and emphasizing 100%. I would say that 100% is actually impossible, leading to unexpected tank crashes when a sick fish or a small spot of ich reaches the main display and hits all the sparkly clean fish.
The real goal is aimed at increasing fish strength as much as possible so that they can hold their own against existing fish and ward off low-risk diseases already present in the main display.

I have been doing alot of research on quarantine tanks, since I was going to make the old 29g biocube one. Why 20g for the quarantine tank? I see tons of well renowned recommending 10g tanks at the beginning.

 

[Nokiaec11]

Clowns get stressed easily if the water quality deteriorates.