ICH Treatment in a fish only tank

[vigneshgpandian]

Hi,

I am new to Maine hobby. I have a 3 months old tank with 2 clown fish one fox face and a regal blue tang, No corals. The fishes are showing early signs of ich. Can i treat the display tank itself with copper. i am planning to get anemones and shrimps after 4-5 months later. Will this have any impact ? Is there any other treatment that i can do on the display tank.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Hi,

I am new to Maine hobby. I have a 3 months old tank with 2 clown fish one fox face and a regal blue tang, No corals. The fishes are showing early signs of ich. Can i treat the display tank itself with copper. i am planning to get anemones and shrimps after 4-5 months later. Will this have any impact ? Is there any other treatment that i can do on the display tank.

Welcome to Reef2Reef and sorry for your trouble!

You can technically treat the tank with copper, but the copper will kill any invertebrates in the tank (such as shrimp, snails, hermit crabs, crabs, clams, etc.) and absorb into any calcium carbonate based material like most rocks and sand used in the hobby - from what I've seen, it seems the copper can be removed over a few weeks using Cuprisorb and poly filters to make the tank habitable for invertebrates again, but it's not recommended to attempt.

That said, if you're sure that it's ich, then you could also do hyposalinity instead of copper treatment (hyposalinity would also kill most invertebrates, but it wouldn't require the Cuprisorb and poly filters after):

if you want to treat ich effectively, you need either copper medication (chelated copper like Coppersafe or Copper Power at 2.25-2.5ppm for 30 days after the last ich trophonts disappear is recommended) or hyposalinity (drop your salinity to 1.009 and keep the tank at that salinity for 30 days after the last signs/symptoms of the disease disappear)

Hyposalinity

Hyposalinity Jay Hemdal 2021 This term refers to a long-term bath treatment for marine fishes in which the salt content of the water is lowered and held below the point that certain parasites can survive. The salt level reached, and the time of the treatment are the two variables...

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