This hobby is very discouraging.

[kilnakorr]

Why did you use all of the medication when you got them? Were they sick when you purchased? If not the copper Probly stressed them out causing ick

Ich is a paradite. It doesn't magically appear.
Is either there or not.

 

[Icryhard]

Why did you use all of the medication when you got them? Were they sick when you purchased? If not the copper Probly stressed them out causing ick

That's a massive doubt. Copper wouldn't cause it, regardless of the amount of stress. Copper kills itch. So how could it not kill itch now?

 

[elysics]

I actually transferred all my rock and bio cubes from my nano tank into the Red Sea, along with 5 nano fish which were in my nano tank about a month before the quarantined fish. Also note that all the fish are 1.5” or smaller.

Did you quarantine these too before? Maybe I missed it in all the comments but just because they look healthy doesn't mean they are not disease carriers.

Same goes for snails, crabs rocks, coral, tools btw, if you want a sterile tank and not just a chance at it you need to qt EVERYTHING.

Whether that's worth it instead of managing the disease or just doing something in between an hoping for the best is up to you.

 

[hunterallen40]

Did you quarantine these too before? Maybe I missed it in all the comments but just because they look healthy doesn't mean they are not disease carriers.

Same goes for snails, crabs rocks, coral, tools btw, if you want a sterile tank and not just a chance at it you need to qt EVERYTHING.

Whether that's worth it instead of managing the disease or just doing something in between an hoping for the best is up to you.

+1. If you were using liverock from before, you likely needed to let it go through a full fallow period before using.

@Sordfish It sounds like you did a lot of things correctly, and I want to commend you for doing that. Also, I'm very sorry to hear about your tang. Hopefully this disease will not take any casualties, and this will just be the first bump along the way. In the future, I would recommend you spread out your fish introductions a bit more.

QT is very easy to mess up, even if you do everything else right.

Side note... I am honestly surprised with the number of anti-quarantine posts. If OP has the patience and the discipline to do it right, that's 100% best practice. Yes, some people do just fine with ich management, but I am really shocked to see people calling a medicated quarantine abusive. It certainly isn't a fun experience for the fish, but neither in dying of ich (nor is being trapped in a glass box after being ripped away from it's home, I'm sure).

 

[brandon429]

Post #16 shows a disease vector that shortcutted the quarantine efforts. And that’s only one…there are more ways the good job in qt effort was circumvented but that means on the positive note with tighter bio security controls you can win on round two since you were willing to begin the disease prep process at the start


where was 90 day fallow for transferred items, or anything wet added from a pet store like snails, crabs cuc or corals

your fish went in first here in the new build, they should have been absolute last after the fully stocked Red Sea tank was fallowed, see this thread to minimize your losses on round two

Has anyone done coral/inverts only and no fish at first?

Fish seem to be the main cause of disruption in a display tank, given the current circumstances in the hobby with pests (ich, velvet, parasites, etc.). I have been in this hobby for 18 years, and the amount of pests that are showing up lately is much more (could also be the fact that we have...

www.reef2reef.com

too early fish addition did it, but not by cycling issues, by vectoring issues

 

[Borat]

Won’t happen as they will fight each other to death. Salt is nothing like fresh… so there’s really no reason to your madness as it will it work

they will single out one chromi at a time and bully it to death.. what a waste of efforts with those "never shoaling fish"..

 

[Borat]

If fish are compatible and not stressed - they should be OK. My fish do scrape their sides against rocks every now on (have been in the tank for the last 4 years with only 1-2 fish additions about a year ago), whether it's itch or not - I don't know, but that's surely not the reason to panick.

Happy tank = healthy tank, it's not the disease that kills fish, it's the stress. I believe ich remains present in small quantities in most tanks and only reappear when fish get stressed.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

So I waited 1.5 years to set up my Red Sea P500 - my ultimate dream tank (that I can afford). Bought the tank used and slowly gathered all the equipment I needed. In the meantime I ran a nano to learn reef-keeping, which had some corals and a coupe of fish.

2.5 months ago I set up a quarantine tank. Bought all the fish I wanted - about 13, all very small fish. I quarantined them for 45 days. First 30 days in copper, then 2 weeks in prazipro. Finally I observed them for 2 weeks after all the medication. Made sure they are all eating like pigs.

Meanwhile I set up my hardscape and cycled the display tank. 10 days ago I finally transferred everything to the Red Sea. The tank looked awesome to me. I was giddy with joy.

This morning I wake up and notice that the baby hippo tang is scratching against the rock work. Sure enough he has ich. How the heck? All that work with medication quarantine etc. and 2 weeks into setting up my tank I face loosing all my fish or breaking it all down and try to medicate once again.

Needless to say I could literally cry. This is a kick in the gut. I just don’t see what else I could have done. I do have UV of sufficient power and flow set up (according to BRSTV). I guess I’ll ride it out and hope the UV contains it (all the fish, including the hippo are active and eating well). Maybe it is wishful thinking but I just don’t have it in me to break down the tank.

After all that time money and effort this is so disappointing.

Thanks for letting me vent

Sorry to hear. Some observations:
1) Hepatus tangs are prone to developing mucus plugs that resemble ich, but are a bit larger and stay in one place longer.
2) Sounds like you ran a proper quarantine. That method is about 95% effective, mostly it is flukes that get through that.
3) Scratching is more a symptom of flukes than of ich.
4) biosecurity can derail the whole process - adding an invertebrate from an infected tank can circumvent the whole quarantine process.
5) Ich management can work for light infections, but you are in a great position because you already have a quarantine system available if you need to pull and treat.

Jay

 

[Sebastiancrab]

Every one of my fish has had ich the day I put it into my tanks. Every one of my fish gets rid of the ick after about a week of me aggressively feeding them and making sure my water quality is good. I will never quarantine a fish I never have quarantine a fish and I think it’s ridiculous for people to have to do this.

#((Fordtech)), I have lost more fish than I care to count to all the main parasites/diseases and that is attempting to deal with them in quarantine. It is a tragedy that so many fish are killed because our supply chain folks don't deal with it. I think posts like yours mislead newbies and lead to more deaths. Your tank may have the history to live with ich but new ones do not.

 

[jimk60]

Like I said, and I will repeat myself if their environment was ideal, the Ich would go away on its own

I understand the management aspect but how does ich just go away on its own if it has host fish to keep the cycle intact?

 

[Sebastiancrab]

I understand the management aspect but how does ich just go away on its own if it has host fish to keep the cycle intact?

It doesn't go away.

 

[Sordfish]

Here are some pics. The hippo tang moves fast so was tough to catch. However my yellow tang has it now as well. The rest seem fine.

Everyone is active and eating well.

 

[Sordfish]

And here is a full shot of the display - excuse the diatoms on the glass.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I understand the management aspect but how does ich just go away on its own if it has host fish to keep the cycle intact?

In established aquariums with a light ich parasite load, people can employ "ich management" to keep the infection in the chronic phase. Eventually, the fish build some temporary acquired immunity to the parasite, and if you are really diligent with the management methods, the parasite can die out. I've had my best success with this in large reef tanks that have been established for quite some time.

Running the skimmer very "wet", offering the fish the very best diet and water quality, using a very strong UV and siphoning to bottom each night to remove some of the tomonts all work together to keep the infection in the chronic phase...and then it can die out....but sometimes not (sigh).

What we see here a LOT, and what @Sebastiancrab is referring to, are cases where the tank is new, with many new fish, and "ich management" techniques are not fully employed - then, all bets are off, and the process usually fails.

The trick is to know when to bail on the management idea and go fully into treatment mode. IMO, the tipping point is seen when many of the fish show more than about 30 ich trophonts (the white spots) at any one time - then, something called propagule pressure comes into play - the ich parasite itself becomes a stressor, and the geometric progression of the reproductive phase takes over...the number of trophonts increases and the fish get sick and start to die.

Jay

 

[((FORDTECH))]

If fish are compatible and not stressed - they should be OK. My fish do scrape their sides against rocks every now on (have been in the tank for the last 4 years with only 1-2 fish additions about a year ago), whether it's itch or not - I don't know, but that's surely not the reason to panick.

Happy tank = healthy tank, it's not the disease that kills fish, it's the stress. I believe ich remains present in small quantities in most tanks and only reappear when fish get stressed.

This is exactly it you go through all the time to quarantine and 90% of tanks will have ich in it regardless it’s all about if it’s managed or not

 

[jda]

I will also add that in super mature tanks with diverse and well established fauna, ich tomonts don't have sterile places to thrive and end up as food. While it is likely no cure or eradication, there are countless things in my sand and rock to eat tomonts and keep the infections down. My 'quarantine' tank is setup with sandbed, rock and is really a mini-reef with no corals - I can put a fish covered in ich in there and none of the others get any of it and the infested fish eventually heals.

In the olden days when tanks were started with live rock, fish got amazingly easier after the 3-6 month mark when the sand also was populated with worms, pods, etc. This takes longer now, if it ever does. These fauna are not in bottled bacteria that some seem to think can make dead rock be the same as live.

I cannot remember whom, but I was a club meeting in St Louis more than 20 years ago when one of the pHd talked about this. They had numbers and proof that pods and a few types of worms would seek out tomonts and eat on them. Maybe Fenner?

 

[((FORDTECH))]

#((Fordtech)), I have lost more fish than I care to count to all the main parasites/diseases and that is attempting to deal with them in quarantine. It is a tragedy that so many fish are killed because our supply chain folks don't deal with it. I think posts like yours mislead newbies and lead to more deaths. Your tank may have the history to live with ich but new ones do not.

Maybe I’m just very lucky with my suppliers but it makes me sad every time I hear about all these fish deaths. I guess it’s in my head thinking that somebody is doing something wrong when it really could be the supply chain

 

[Sebastiancrab]

Maybe I’m just very lucky with my suppliers but it makes me sad every time I hear about all these fish deaths. I guess it’s in my head thinking that somebody is doing something wrong when it really could be the supply chain

Nobody is doing anything wrong other than not doing quarantine as a preventive measure to save your new purchase as well as ALL of the other fish in your existing tank. If you haven't had deaths you are extremely lucky. I can't control bringing home fish with parasites or uronema. Just last week, I lost my third agile chromis from different stores because it came down with uronema. Yes, the QT tank and equipment were sterilized and the fish bought months apart. It is very discouraging.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I will also add that in super mature tanks with diverse and well established fauna, ich tomonts don't have sterile places to thrive and end up as food. While it is likely no cure or eradication, there are countless things in my sand and rock to eat tomonts and keep the infections down. My 'quarantine' tank is setup with sandbed, rock and is really a mini-reef with no corals - I can put a fish covered in ich in there and none of the others get any of it and the infested fish eventually heals.

In the olden days when tanks were started with live rock, fish got amazingly easier after the 3-6 month mark when the sand also was populated with worms, pods, etc. This takes longer now, if it ever does. These fauna are not in bottled bacteria that some seem to think can make dead rock be the same as live.

I cannot remember whom, but I was a club meeting in St Louis more than 20 years ago when one of the pHd talked about this. They had numbers and proof that pods and a few types of worms would seek out tomonts and eat on them. Maybe Fenner?

Lysmata cleaner shrimp have been reported to feed on ich tomonts. No doubt, other microfauna do as well. However, this is just one facet of "ich control", and is not a cure-all...they can reduce tomont numbers, but do not eliminate them. That is the basis for my opinion that these tanks with a mature microbiome have fewer issues with ich, but can still have acute outbreaks in some instances....

Here is a reference:

Vaughan, D.B., Grutter, A.S. & Hutson, K.S. 2018. Cleaner shrimp are a sustainable option to treat parasitic disease in farmed fish. Sci Rep 8, 13959 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-32293-6

In addition to the home aquarium "new tank issue", there is also the scenario seen in public aquariums (like the one I managed) where the fish-only systems do not have extensive microbiomes due to their operational protocols, and in those cases, a proactive, very strict quarantine protocol must be followed.


Jay

 

[jda]

I agree completely. What I do is not eradication, but I choose this method since I lose more fish to jumping than to disease and I lost way more fish with a traditional QT than I do with an introduction tank with a full ecosystem. I just wish that more people knew that this helped and used this in their calculus on how to start a tank - makes sand and real live rock not seem as expensive.

I am one who believes that a disease free tank is mostly a myth, so this works for me. I don't think that more than a few do the correct work to QT inverts, coral, etc., so nearly all of us end up with disease management tanks at some point.

FWIW, I recommend that even FO tanks have substrate and real live rock with reef salinity and low enough po4 and no3 to allow worms, stars, pods, etc. to scavenge for tomonts and the like. I know that it is more work, but it beats the heartbreak of a mass kill.