fighting ich and need some help !!!!

[Josecuervo1]

‎5 fish I have bought from one of my LFS and ALL have ich and three died within days !!!!! I have other fish in my 75 FOWLR that I purchased on a different store a long time ago and they're just fine. I keep testing my water thinking that it may be the water quality but here are my parameters:
PH 8.0
AMMONIA 0 PPM
NITRITE 0 PPM
NITRATE <5 PPM ( I would say 3 PPM )
PHOSPHATE .25 PPM
ALKALINITY 10 DKh
TEMPERATURE 77 - 78 F
Feeding frozen mysis and have some marine algae with garlic extract on a clip.
At the moment I do not have ( but want to get ) a UV Sterilizer. I'm running 2 Skilter 400 hang-on filters.
Not sure if to just stop going to that LFS altogether, problem is that I do love going to that store and looking at their vast variety of fish and products but if you look closely at their tanks MOST of them have either dying fish or showing signs of decease ( mostly ich ). I'm now treating my Sailfin Tang I bought from you just 4 days ago with Microbe-Lift HERBTANA. Please advise.
By the way, the fish are ALL eating and swimming good

[reefjunkie42]

you need to use copper or hypo. cuprimine from seachem. also i hope that tang isnt going into a 75...tang police will be here soon

[MrTuskfish]

Water params dont cause ich. Ich causes ich and neither UV or herbtana will cure or prevent it. You have 3 choices, all of which require a hospital tank; copper, hypo, or tank transfer. Please read the ich stickys at the top of the disease forum, they will tell you everything you need to know. You're missing the most important part of acclimating new fish; a quarantine tank. After you get this problem solved, use a QT with all new livestock, and avoid ich and many other problems. Ich is easy to cure in a QT, very difficult in a DT. I'm afraid your're in for a lot more than just adding a med and it could have been prevented by a simple, inexpensive QT. All of your fish need to be treated and your DT left fishless for 8+ weeks. Also; I'd never consider buying fish from the LFS you describe. I'd bring it to their attention and tell them to give you a call when they start paying attention to their fish.

[Josecuervo1]

Thank you so much for your input. Thing is I do not have a spare tank now to set up a hospital tank. How would I get rid of all ich from my display (if that is even possible ) ??

[MrTuskfish]

If you don't have any coral or other inverts, hyposalinity can work. A well calibrated refractometer is a must (not a swing-arm hydrometer) an ATO is a big help. Read about it on the sticky and it has to be done precisely...there is no room for error. Copper can also work, but its tough to keep proper copper levels because of the LR & substrate.

[Josecuervo1]

Thank you MrTuskfish !!
Just an update: this is day 4 using that Microbe-lift Herbtana and while it is getting the water a bit cloudy it seems to be working. I can see less white spots than I did last night and water params are still all good. Do you think I should buy a Heater to maintain the water at a certain temp all the time ??

[GrendelPrime76]

ur seeing less ich on ur fish cause there dropping off the fish into the substrate, regrouping and getting ready for another assault on ur fish

[sandwi54]

As MrTusk suggested, please read the sticky on ich and its life cycles. you will need to gain better understanding of ich before you can successfully battle it. like the above post mentioned, you're seeing fewer spots because those ich have just fallen off the fish to reproduce, and when they finish reproducing you will see an explosion of ich population, as each ich parent gives rise to hundreds of offsprings. if your fish are healthy and fed nutritious diet, they will be able to fight off some of the ich, but not all. some fish may acquire temporary immunity after they have been exposed to ich, but that is not guaranteed.

please stop using herbtana. it won't work and you'll be wasting your time and money. the only two scientifically proven methods are hyposalinity and copper, both of which should be administered in a quarantine tank (while the DT needs to be fallow for 8-10 weeks). if you don't have any invertebrates in your DT, you may treat the display with hyposalinity, but not copper since you have LR/LS, as the LR/LS will absorb copper and make it difficult to hold the dosage in the correct range.

If you decide to do hypo in DT, prepare for ammonia spike since all the critters in the LR/LS will die and pollute the water. you must monitor the water quality very often (~ twice a day) and do water changes as needed. you must also use a calibrated refractometer to achieve the target specific gravity of 1.008-1.009. the refractometer must be correctly calibrated (google for refractometer calibration if you don't know how). if you are above 1.009, ich can't be killed; if you're below 1.008, the fish may die. so you see the range is quite narrow and that's why your refractometer must be calibrated correctly.

in the future, use a QT for all new fish and you can avoid this big hassle of treating in the display. ich is very easy to cure in a QT but rather difficult in the DT, as hypo is the only practical method for treating in the DT. the downside is it kills everything in your live rocks, which leads to water issues and all the work you've done to grow good algae and the critters are now wasted. the clock pretty much resets.

[Josecuervo1]

Thank you GrendelPrime76 and specially you sandwi54 for your very informative answer.
I do have a few questions, so, I only have a spare 20 gal tank i could use as a QT to treat my fish, but, do i have to transfer all fish there to let DT without fish for a while ??
Can i leave my cleaner shrimp, hermits and 2 red bali starfish there without harming them ??
I would love to just get rid of ich in my DT, so does that mean take fish out, do major waterchange, treat fish ALL fish in QT and them return to DT ??

[sandwi54]

how many and what fish do you have? if you have a large number of fish and the QT is not cycled, you will experience a lot of water quality issues in the QT for a few weeks. you will need to do large water change (most likely twice daily in the beginning) to combat the ammonia/nitrite. keep in mind that bad water is going to kill fish faster than ich, so you'll need to make your own judgement.

if it were me, i would put the sponge filter that you plan on using for QT in the DT's sump for a few weeks to seed the bacteria. then set up the QT using water from the DT and put all of the fish in there. you will likely still experience water quality issues and still have to do large water changes, but the condition should be better than if you just dump all the fish straight into a completely uncycled QT.

i'll outline the two approaches below.

1. treat in DT - set up the QT (cycled or uncycled) and fill it with water from DT. put all the inverts (shrimps, crabs, snail, etc) in there as they cannot survive hypo. take a few days to drop the salinity using RODI water. each time you replace the tank water to drop salinity, add some buffer to the new RODI water to buffer the alkalinity and pH. it should take you 3-4 days to go from 1.024 to 1.008. when you're at 1.008, stir all the sand in the tank to mix water well to avoid any pockets of water having > 1.009 salinity. either set up an ATO or top off manually at least once a day. don't ever let the tank water get above 1.009 or below 1.008. of course, monitor ammonia/nitrite once a day and do water changes if necessary.

2. treat in QT - do this if ich infestation is minor. prepare to set up the QT and decide on what power filter you want to use. buy the filter and put the sponge (or whatever biological media it uses) into the sump for 3 weeks to seed the bacteria. then set up the QT and use water from the DT. remove all fish and put into QT and leave everything else in the DT. Now you can decide if you want to do hypo or cupramine. i recommend cupramine since it's easier as you don't have to worry about pH shift in such a small tank. follow the bottle instruction but instead of dosing to 0.5ppm, i would just do 0.4ppm. if you have fish that are naturally sensitive to copper, such as tangs and angels, then do 0.3-0.35ppm only. it should take you 3-4 days to ramp the dosage. of course, monitor the water parameters very closely as there's probably not enough bacteria and copper will retard their activities for a few days. do large water changes if necessary and re-dose copper for the amount of water changed. hold at the target dosage for 3 weeks, and then do a large water change and use either cuprisorb or activated carbon to remove the rest of the copper. The DT needs to be fallow (meaning no fish) for 8-10 weeks.

[Josecuervo1]

I have 2 clownfish, 3 damsels, 1 firefish, 1 Sailfin Tang ( infected ), 1 Koran Angel ( lightly infected ) and a lawnmower Blenny. I'm planning on upgrading to 150 gal tank in the next 7-8 months.
So, if i treat all fish in the QT tank, can i then leave all my inverts in the DT with no problems ??

[sandwi54]

Yes, if you treat all your fish in the QT, then you leave all the inverts in the DT for 8-10 weeks without fish. only fish can get infected with ich.

A side note, both the koran angel and salfin tang (one of the biggest tangs) need a bigger tank than the 150g. they will need at least 7-8' of length to have enough swimming room and feel comfortable, so you should be looking at tanks of at least 240 gallons. the standard 240 gallon is 96" x 24". marineland sells a glass 265g tank with 84" x 24". of course, if you can spring for a 300g (96" x 30"), that'd be the best case.

[Josecuervo1]

great !! I may have to go bigger then because I'm not ready to let this fish die on me. How long does it normally take for a fish like that one to grow that big ??
BTW, I was reading a bit more about it and I think I'm going for the copper treatment in the QT, that way i wont mess up the salinity level on that very fine margin of error !!

[Josecuervo1]

great !! I may have to go bigger then because I'm not ready to let this fish die on me. How long does it normally take for a fish like that one to grow that big ??
BTW, I was reading a bit more about it and I think I'm going for the copper treatment in the QT, that way i wont mess up the salinity level on that very fine margin of error !!

[sandwi54]

it varies between fish of course, but it'll probably take around 2 years for a typical large angel to grow from a small size to 8-10". to get to the full adult size, the proper environment (aka big tank) and a few more years will be required. fish's growth is logarithmic; very fast in the beginning, but once it hits a certain size the growth slows down significantly. once the fish hits 10", it may take another 5 years to get to 14-15" full adult size.

please have a read on this article about large angels and its proper care requirements.

Part I: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2008/1/fish
Part II: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2008/3/fish

and also the tang sticky: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=1946079

in general, large angels and tangs need bigger tanks than same-sized fish of other species, much because they are more susceptible to stress from cramped environments. a 10" koran angel is going to need a lot more space than a 10% trigger.

copper in the QT is a good choice. run the cupramine dosage at 0.35ppm instead of the full 0.5ppm, since angels and tangs are more sensitive to copper. take 3 days to ramp to that dosage (0.12ppm per day), and test the copper once a day to make sure the concentration does not change. closely monitor the fish; if any displays distress, lower the copper concentration right away. depending on the circumstance, it may be necessary to switch to hypo if the fish cannot take copper even at 0.35ppm. though, out of all the fish i've treated for, i only had one fish that was really sensitive to cupramine.

[Tin_Whistler]

Originally Posted by Josecuervo1

I have 2 clownfish, 3 damsels, 1 firefish, 1 Sailfin Tang ( infected ), 1 Koran Angel ( lightly infected ) and a lawnmower Blenny. I'm planning on upgrading to 150 gal tank in the next 7-8 months.
So, if i treat all fish in the QT tank, can i then leave all my inverts in the DT with no problems ??

Just to make sure you know, all of your fish are now infected. Ich is a parasite and will latch onto the first fish it finds. You may not see it on the other fish, but it’s there I guarantee it.

[Josecuervo1]

So, since my QT tank is only a 20 gal I think it is too small to hold all the fish in my DT....so.... can I fill the QT with DT water, pass all inverts and LR there and treat the fish with Cupramine in the DT ?? If I can, will I have to remove all sand as well and will I be able to return LR and inverts back after all copper's gone without harming anything ??
I want to thank you all of you who took some time of your day to help me !! Really appreciate the help and I'm sure my fishies do as well !!!

[Tin_Whistler]

Silicone can hold onto the copper, and leech it back into the water.

You could however put your L/R, and inverts into the smaller tank and run hypo in the tank with just fish in it.

[Josecuervo1]

If I go for the hypo on the DT and move the inverts to the smaller tank, Should I remove the sand and LR fro the DT as well ?? I was reading a sticky and it said completely bare tank for hypo but if I have any angels ( which I do ) and tangs to leave rock and sand. I'm a bit confused now because I thought that ick falls off from the fish to "burrow" on the sand while reproducing and then affecting the fish all over again......

[Josecuervo1]

I'm still so confused on what to do, either cupramine or hypo, and either doing it in the 20 gal QT or the 75 gal DT. The sailfin Tang is swimming great, active and eating like a pig, which its good....I think. Here's a photo of my little friend, I really want to start treatment but because all the other fish that I may have to treat I'm not sure what to do, dont want to get in well over my head.....
Sailfin.jpg

[Gagstr]

Do copper in a qt with the fish that have ich the worst. Get yourself a UV sterilizer if you don’t have one, it will help your fish fight off the ich. at the same time you are running a coppered up QT I would run a hypo DT just to get rid of as much ich as I can. However do not combine both techniques with the same display, it is too stressful for the inhabitants. When you run copper on the QT make sure its Chelated Copper (excuse my spelling please) and monitor it often to make sure you have the right concentration of copper in there. Constant monitoring is also required for the hypo tank. Read the sticky's it will teach you how to beat ich. As for abandoning your LFS, I wouldn’t, just make sure you QT everything very carefully! I also started in this hobby not to long ago battling ich, 0 casualties  I won!! Good luck!
p.s. Treatment for tanks that contain corals, inverts, and other delicate organisms will be different! Make sure you take that into consideration.