Ick

[stefanie]

Tangs had ick pretty bad. On the advice of our trusty LFS guy, we lowered salinity in the water and increased temps... it was a sad sight to wake up to: snails crawling all over my dead white-cheeked tang. Tonight my hippo died. We bought some kind of ick treatment tablets. It is what they recommended. Apparently treats all kinds of things, but doesn't say anything about copper on the box. I've been reading, and most of the posts say copper is the way to go.

On the advice of the almighty... the users of 3reef... we now have all our fish [a coral beauty angel, two maroon ocellaris hybrids, a neon goby, and four chromis] in quarantine. The quarantine is ~20gallon plastic tub with a heater (~82 degrees), salinity (1.025), and an airstone. There is also a biowheel attached, but not yet running, because I think some of the posts said to keep it off until a day after the treatment ends.

The main tank is a 75 gallon with ~70lbs (complete guess) of live rock, metal halide lights, algae turf scrubber filtration unit, two air pumps for added circulation, 4 inches of live sand, two starfish, two cleaner shrimp, mushrooms, goniopora, three stony corals, a frogspawn coral, and a xenia.

My questions:
There is still a neon goby inside of the main tank. He is hiding. I cannot find him. Can he stay in and have this whole process still be effective, or does he absolutely have to come out? If he must come out, any suggestions on catching him? I don't even know what rock he is in.

Is my quarantine tank set up correctly? Temps and salinity? Some of the water came from the main tank, but because of the treatment tablets we added, that should be okay, correct? We also put two small rocks in the QT from the main tank. Is this okay?

Now that the fish are in quarantine, they need to stay there for how long? Is 6 weeks really necessary? If so, I'll do it, but I want to make sure this is true.

What about the main tank? There are inverts and corals and rocks, sand, water, etc. still there. Obviously, I don't want to put newly healthy fish into a "dirty" tank. Otherwise, what was the point of all this? Do you "treat" the tank with anything? I don't think so, but will just having no fish present do the trick? If keeping the fish out is all we need to do, how long? Should we stir the gravel? Move rocks? Anything else? Should we lower salinity and raise temps there too?

[Mburke]

Stefani
No completely get rid of ick in your display tank it must remain fishless(totally) for 4-6 weeks. When I finally listened to to pros this cured my tanks of ick over 2 years now with no signs.
I used a small29 gallon tank for quarantine with cuppramine added toit with the necessary dosage for 7-10 days. AT the same time due to all the water changes to keep parameters in check I gradually lowered the salinity in the QT tank to 1.009(use a refractometer) Then left the QT tank at this level for 4 more weeks. Display tank temp was brought up to 86 degrees(speeds up the ick cycle. Then I rasied the QT tank back to 1.024 over another week tootaling just over 6 weeks all fish are doing wonderful and I even threw two green chromis in the qT tank just to keep it cycled and ready for that next purchase.
Mike

[stefanie]

Thank you for your help.