Reef Safe Ich treatment?

[67RedDonzi]

Does anyone know of a Reef safe Ich treatment? Does hyposalinity really work? if so, how would I go about this and how low would I drop the salinity? Is this safe for corals and inverts?

Any other thoughts/options would be great! We have a 210 gallon DT with a 75gal Fuge. We just added a yellow tang and we have notice it has ich (also our coral beauty seems to have a few spots). The problem is that we cannot seem to catch the Yellow tang and really do not want to dismantle the tank due to all of the corals. If one fish has ich, does this mean the tank itself has it? Do we need to remove all fish?

Any other thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

 

[Mike in CT]

Others will chime in, but yes your tank is now infected. Hypo is complicated and is not invert/ coral safe. You can always hope your fish are strong enough to fight off the parasite, but unless you can take all your fish out and let the tank run fallow, your options are limited.

 

[D maul]

Display tank needs to go without a fish for a minnium of 10 weeks 12 is best for the ich cycle to die off.Treat infected fish in a hospital tank.

 

[Small triggers]

Hypo salinity is to safe for corals or inverts...
You will need to remove your fish if you are wanting to use hypo or a copper med which is what is usually used to treat ich...in a hospital tank...
And yes, a minimum of 8 weeks fallow, but 10 is better as they cryptocaryon completes its life cycle in 8 weeks ....

 

[67RedDonzi]

Dang, I was worried that would be the answer I kind of knew it but was hoping otherwise. MY next problem is that my only other tanks area 40 gal and a 10gal. We have 11 fish in the DT, so not enough QT space.

Would it be safe to wait it out a bit and see if the tang and coral beauty can fight this off? Both are eating and swimming normally at this point

 

[67RedDonzi]

Does running the tank fallow actually get rid of ich?

 

[Mike in CT]

Given enough time it will.

 

[Sobo's Reef]

Now I know I may catch hell for this BUT when I had ICH in my 150 a few months back, I couldn't catch all of my fish, lost a few, and some where fine. So what I did was remove all coral and as many inverts as I possible could into a separate tank. Then I dropped the salinity in my main tank down to 1.015, turned off my carbon and dosed Crypto Pro. Someone on my local forum recommended it so I figure I'd try it out. I also had the lights on for about an hour a day for feeding while treating, otherwise it was lights out).

Well within 2-3 weeks all of the parasites(white specks) have turned black and fallen off. Continued treatment(while feeding a good amount with a Garlic additive) and I haven't seen any sign of ICH since.

NOW I know my tank isn't rid of ICH bc I didn't allow my tank to go fallow but all of my fish show no signs, are all eating like pigs and everyone is happy

Sometimes you physically can't do the proper treatment so you have to do what YOU think is best for the situation regardless of what other people say. No one is perfect. The way I see it is, if you're fish are happy and healthy then who cares

 

[Small triggers]

This is very true Sobo...if you can do the opposite..remove all the inverts and corals and place them in another tank, doing hypo in your main tank is an option, not the best...but yeah..only problem is can't use any meds if they are really needed...and will affect your live rock for a bit because some of the bacteria could be affected...not significantly but keep up on water changes...

 

[Sobo's Reef]

That's what I did. I did a few 50% water changes after the treatment. Didn't see any I'll effects on my LR tho. I have a crazy amount of coralline growing on it now.