Pretty sure my whole tank has ich

Some background:

I purchased this aquarium RS-170 off craigslist, live stock and all. At the time every swim bladder enabled inhabitant looked disease free. After a few weeks, the Kole tang started flashing and swimming more erratically. A few days go by, I notice white ovals on fins, head etc.

I'm pretty sure this isn't velvet, because this has been going on for about 4 weeks and from what I read, if it were velvet all of the fish would be dead.

Inhabitant list:

Yellow Tang
Kole Tang
Blue Spot Watchman
Scooter Dragonet
Ocellaris
Lawnmower Blenny

The only fish that have displayed flashing have been the Kole and Lawnmower. I have observed some spots on the yellow tang.

Next Steps:

I want to let my reef go fallow. If I could I would like to sell/give away everything but the clownfish. My kids named him Fred. Sigh. I know the inhabitants are too many/big for a tank this size.

That being said, I want to quarantine everything and let the reef go fallow for 80 days. I've read humble's posts on setting up QT but seems to be for one/two fish. What about 6? More water changes? Go through the trouble of cycling an aquarium with sand?

-Tom

 

In healthy fish their immune system will help them fight ich, hence why they appeared to be healthy and disease free. Once stressed (probably moving them to your home) they got stressed and ich showed right away.

If you want to go fallow, then you need to start treating the fish for ich with CP or copper.

Depending on the size of the tangs I think you can set up a 40 gallon long tank and start medicating. If they are old tangs you need a larger tank to reduce the stress and provide swimming distance. From what I see you have RS 170 (35 gallons) this won't work in the future with tangs (assuming they are currently small) and will likely cause stress and aggression. My suggestion is to sell the tangs after treatment and get some fish that can happily live in a 30 gallon.

You can use a seeded filter to avoid ammonia spikes, also you will need seachem ammonia alert to monitor ammonia and ensure its 0. If ammonia went above 0 you will need to do WC.

You don't need sand in a quarantine aquarium. Usually small bowl of sand is added so wrasse can sleep in it.

 

I'm not a big fan of tangs... so would be happy to sell them or give them away. The problem is I live at 9600 feet, so not too many reefers in Summit County ;-). I was hoping to get away with a 20 Gallon long as I simply don't have the space right now for anything larger. I suppose I could run a HOB filter with bioballs or something of that nature to get the cycle going. I would rather deal with nitrates than ammonia (if that's possible in a QT). Would hyposalinity work in this case instead of meds?

 

How big are the tangs, I would say anything more than 3-4" would be risky in small tank.
For filtration you can add it, whether its HOB or sponge filter they work fine, the problem is too many fishes in small tank you will definitely have ammonia problem.
Hypo might not work because there are ich strains that can withstand hypo. Meds are your best option if you want to be sure that you eradicated ich.

 

Ich is easy to treat. Remove all the corals and inverts and drop the salinity to 1.010 in one or two water changes. Monitor you r ammonia level closely for the first two days and if you see a spike just use some microbactor 7. After that you should see improvement after 3 days. The white spots will gradually disappear. After all white spots are gone keep the salinity at 1.010 for another 30 days then gradually raise the salinity back to 1.026. Spread it out to 7 days are usually very safe.

 

As mentioned earlier hypo is no longer considered effective for ich as there are strains that can survive it,

 

I have done this many times when QT new fish. There is also a YouTube video by R2R regarding how to use hyposalinity to treat ich. The best thing is you don't lose all biological filtration. Some bacteria remains active and reproduce under low salinity so the ammonia level is undetectable.

 

again, some strains don't get effected by hypo, I'm not saying hypo won't work, I'm saying there is a chance it won't work. Some fellow reefers tried hypo and still ended up with ich. Also each case is unique, many people had hypo work for them, while many had kick-ich work for them. Copper or CP will probably have the highest chance of working on all strains.

 

IMO, I don't think it's worth the risk to try hypo. Especially since the OP wants to then sell the fish, it's a pretty crappy turnout when you infect someone else's tank because your treatment method failed. CP or copper is fool proof if you watch your levels, hypo there are so many things that can make it harder, not to mention the tank is only 35g that SG can swing in half a day if he doesn't have an ATO. I would know because my DT is a 40 and it gets swings daily. Also it is so much easier to set up a QT for fish then to have to set up a new tank that is stable enough with proper lighting, flow etc for corals.

 

How far do you live from a LFS that might let you trade them in for store credit?

If you have one fairly close you can talk to them about the following plan. Set up your 20g tank. Add 2 or 3 of the fish and ramp up copper levels over 3 days using Coppersafe. Keep it as close to 2.0ppm for 10 to 14 days and then bring the fish to the store in the copper treated water. The fish would be clear of Ich if done this way. Do a 100% water change, add the remaining fish you don't want or aren't going to work in your tank, and repeat the process. All the fish you don't want would be gone, then you could keep the fish you do want to keep and treat them in this tank while your 35g system is fallow.

Or, if you have a Petco near you, you can probably just bring the fish in and they will take them. You might not get store credit, but it is less work on your end. No reason to treat them first since most Petco's have all sorts of diseases living in their tanks.

 

LOL, Petco is the ONLY LFS within 15 miles of where I live. All of their fish have ich/velvet/parasites etc. It might be more merciful to flush the fish rather than sentence them to death in Petco's infested waters. I've thought about it though.... I think I would rather do it the hard way, and then bring it down to a reputable LFS in Denver. I would love to be able to stock the aquarium myself after a fallow period with more appropriate specimens. Luckily, QT is cheap, after spending all money on the display I'm pretty weary about buying more equipment. So I think I'll take care of the tangs first since I will have to do it at some point in the future anyway before they get too big. Other than the ich the fish are pretty healthy.

 

Yellow tang is 4"-5" Kole is 3 1/2" . I think I might try to do one or both tangs at a time (it's the long road) vs. dumping all the fish in a 20. Then I can eradicate the ich in 2 weeks with treatment take them down to a good LFS in Denver. Then I can treat the other fish. If I'm reading correctly, dragonets do not tolerate copper at all... @Humblefish was talking about chloro something or other that you have to get a script from a vet to get. I may try that instead of copper on the other fish.

 

Important thing is to keep the tank fallow for 76 days since ich can still be present in it.
And yes for ich you can treat with copper or CP (chloroquine phosphate) which needs a vet script or sometimes you can manage to get from fellow reefers. Make sure to get a pharmaceutical grade of CP so that treatment works, the ones available on eBay or online might be contaminated with other chemicals which might make the treatment fail

Good luck, sounds like a good plan.

 

If you are pretty sure it's ich and not velvet, TTM is another option. You could use two 20g tanks and do a few fish at a time. This would be ok for the dragonet also, but feeding him could be tricky.

 

I think this is what I'm going to do:

1. Set up a cheapo 20 Gallon long
2. Put both tangs for cupramine treatment, the Kole is the worst of the lot.
3. After two weeks of treatment, bring them in for sale or lfs credit.
4. Drain QT set it up for CP treatment
5. Treat the rest of the fish, clown, dragonet, BW Goby, and LM Blenny in CP while the tanks lays fallow for 76 days.

What do you think?

-Tom

 

That will work, but keep an eye on the ammonia spike while treating the tangs, they will produce a lot and 20 g will show it fast

 

Seachem ammonia alert badge works with copper, and will show ammonia pretty quickly. Do a waterchange if it's anything other than yellow, dosing the copper in the new water before it hits the tank to keep the copper level steady.

 

Before you do anything. Try this. I have been using it for 8 days now. Did a video about it. Simple to use. NO DIE OFF, NO TANK TRANSFER, and IN A REEF TANK. Just be there for the dosing. Ich has not returned. Use VitaChem with the fish's frozen food to increase the fish's health and slime coat so the parasite can not reattach. I seen videos of people with a yellow tang covered with ich. Now completely heathy with no ich.
I did not make the product. I just followed the directions. Now I am enjoying my tank with no signs of ich!

 

Vitamins in food is not a cure for ich. Just because ich is visible doesn't mean its eradicated, it means its managed which in this case I agree that vitamins will help manage ich. Any stress introduced to the tank will let ich pop up right again. Also vitamins will not increase the slime coat of the fish, it will help restore it to natural levels.