Hi all, been a while since I posted!
I'm helping a friend out with his ich battle... We've been through everything and we're pretty confident we have a strain of ich which has managed to survive 78 days without fish.
We didn't have a diagnosis via gill scrapes, but having seen a lot of fish with ich between us we're 99.9% sure that's what we're dealing with.
Fish (3 tangs) were all placed into one of the display tanks - a reefer 170, all LR / sand etc was removed and this was sacrificed as a QT. A new reefer 350 would be replacing it as a new display. The QT was dosed with cupramine to 0.5ppm over 48.hours. The infected display (reefer 250) was left fallow for 78 days, the new reefer 350 was set up and cycled. Nothing in the QT to absorb copper - regular testing and dosing (twice per day copper test, using seachem test kits) as far as we know the tank NEVER fell below 0.5ppm. in fact, the copper rose following WCs and was up at 0.7ppm at one point, then dropped to 0.6 and was maintained there for 40 days. Copper was then removed.
The QT was in a different room and absolutely no equipment was switched between the QT and the displays. He was clinical about it... He'd lost all his other fish to ich following going away on holiday - which prompted the need to eradicate initially.
All fish went back into the displays on day 80. Only one fish, a Kole Tang went into the old display (reefer 250). The others all went into the new display (reefer 350).
Within a couple of days the Kole Tang had ich spots back... The other two tangs which went into the brand new set up have showed no signs of ich whatsoever for over 2 weeks.
We can't see what else it could be other than a strain of ich which has survived 78 days fallow... Any thoughts?
I'm helping a friend out with his ich battle... We've been through everything and we're pretty confident we have a strain of ich which has managed to survive 78 days without fish.
We didn't have a diagnosis via gill scrapes, but having seen a lot of fish with ich between us we're 99.9% sure that's what we're dealing with.
Fish (3 tangs) were all placed into one of the display tanks - a reefer 170, all LR / sand etc was removed and this was sacrificed as a QT. A new reefer 350 would be replacing it as a new display. The QT was dosed with cupramine to 0.5ppm over 48.hours. The infected display (reefer 250) was left fallow for 78 days, the new reefer 350 was set up and cycled. Nothing in the QT to absorb copper - regular testing and dosing (twice per day copper test, using seachem test kits) as far as we know the tank NEVER fell below 0.5ppm. in fact, the copper rose following WCs and was up at 0.7ppm at one point, then dropped to 0.6 and was maintained there for 40 days. Copper was then removed.
The QT was in a different room and absolutely no equipment was switched between the QT and the displays. He was clinical about it... He'd lost all his other fish to ich following going away on holiday - which prompted the need to eradicate initially.
All fish went back into the displays on day 80. Only one fish, a Kole Tang went into the old display (reefer 250). The others all went into the new display (reefer 350).
Within a couple of days the Kole Tang had ich spots back... The other two tangs which went into the brand new set up have showed no signs of ich whatsoever for over 2 weeks.
We can't see what else it could be other than a strain of ich which has survived 78 days fallow... Any thoughts?