Need advice sick fish!!!

kateater · Jul 11, 2013

I know ich has been beat to death but I need some input. I've had my main tank setup for 8 years and have never had an outbreak in my main display. I quarantine religiously with cuprimine before introducing anything into my 215g reef. It's been over 3 years since I've added anything to my tank and now I have my first outbreak. I recently added a regal tang and a flame angel that have been in my QT over 4 years. So what I'm asking is would you attempt to pull 3 large tangs and a large swallowtail angel out of the tank and medicate or would you just let it run its coarse? I would have to buy a few large containers to do this as the 90g deffinately isnt large enough. I have added a 36w UV to keep the number of paracites down and have been feeding vitamin enriched food. Any input would be appreciated.

Mike J. · Jul 11, 2013

Do all of your fish have it?

kateater · Jul 11, 2013

The swallowtail is the only one showing any signs.

feh · Jul 11, 2013

if its ich you might as well go ahead and assume all fish are infected to prevent loss if you still have time. Not all fish take dealing with ich the same. Best to move them to a hospital tank and start treatment... preferably no meds. Just bring the salinity down to 1.009 and hold it. No real need for copper. dump the salinity to hypo and hold it for a few weeks. Leave all inverts in the display and just maintain them for a min of 8 weeks. They can't find a host they won't repeat the cycle. Forget the UV. Ich will only annoy your fish, so leave the shrimp, coral, etc. in the display... move all fish and treat with hypo. Sooner you do it better the survival rate. Do not treat in the display if you have any kind of invert.

kateater · Jul 11, 2013

feh said:
if its ich you might as well go ahead and assume all fish are infected to prevent loss if you still have time. Not all fish take dealing with ich the same. Best to move them to a hospital tank and start treatment... preferably no meds. Just bring the salinity down to 1.009 and hold it. No real need for copper. dump the salinity to hypo and hold it for a few weeks. Leave all inverts in the display and just maintain them for a min of 8 weeks. They can't find a host they won't repeat the cycle. Forget the UV. Ich will only annoy your fish, so leave the shrimp, coral, etc. in the display... move all fish and treat with hypo. Sooner you do it better the survival rate. Do not treat in the display if you have any kind of invert.

Treating the display was never an option and I will definitely treat every fish in the tank. Problem is these tangs are 10+ inches and i would have to buy multiple large tanks/containers. Hypo isn't the easiest to do and I've used cupramine with a very high success rate. I'm leaning towards removing the fish but I have 250lbs of live rock and it isn't going to be fun to catch them. beating myself up for moving those fish in my display!

Budman's Corals · Jul 12, 2013

I've fought ich every time i got a regal/ hippo tang, UV helped alot(some people say it dont but just gotta slow the flow down going thru) plus just feeding him and vitamins(selcon) helped,I thought many times taking him out treat in qt but i think the stress of doing any treatment is worse then letting him fight it off himself,so far i havent had any other problems since he fought it off himself... Good luck which ever method you use ...

Reefing Madness · Jul 12, 2013

I'd leave the fish alone. Let it run its course, the fish are fully capable of beating this off. Keep them fed, and don't stress them out.

Mike J. · Jul 12, 2013

Reefing Madness said:
I'd leave the fish alone. Let it run its course, the fish are fully capable of beating this off. Keep them fed, and don't stress them out.

I'd choose this route. I'd consider treating just the Swallowtail. Obviously, your fish have been living with it for a long time.