Ich everywhere....UV sterilizer??

I have a new outbreak of Ich after coral introductions. My striped sailfin tang and yellow tang had a few white spots. Not willing to dismantle my reef and catch these guys, I bought a cleaner shrimp and treated food with garlic along with keeping up with water chemistry. The white spots disappeard in less than a week....woowooo. 5 days later...out of nowhere my striped is COVERED in white spots and the yellow has black spots. Even my tough little damsel has white spots.

I can't quarantine all of my fish....was wondering if a UV sterilizer would help??or at least help prevent this from happening again...thoughts?? If a UV would be beneficial, I'd appreciate recommendations for a 70g.

 

A UV will help, it will not erradicate it like everyone thinks but it will do some damage to the free swimming cycle of the inverts....
What you are doing is a good course of action, keep water quality up, feed heavily with a garlic enhanced food, and adding the cleaner shrimp. In all reality you will need more shrimp for that to be effective though. I would say at least 3-4 more.

Are you sure you got this from adding coral? That just sounds awfully perculiar....
What do the black spots on the tang look like? Similar to ick but black?

There are a few ways you can go about treatment in your reef. Continue to do what you are doing.
You can do a series of very large very frequent water changes... I mean upwards to a third a day or everyother day. This will help flush the ick out as well as maintaining stellar water quality, its an old fisheries trick.
Next is to use a herbal or natural ick med, such as Herbal Ick attack, or No Ick or similar reef safe med. These are effective but obviously not the same strength as say copper or formalin.
I have used many of the reefsafe meds with good success so I have full confidence in recommending them.
You could also take the fish out and treat them in a qt, or conversely you can take out all the inverts and treat the DT with copper then remove it with a metal chealating resin.

Before you rush out and purchase a UV remember that they are not always as effective as people assume they are...meaning you might want to have a back up plan!!

Good luck!

 

The black spot is a lot easier to treat then white spot. I just went through both myself. Now I am not a fan of the freshwater dips method but for the black spot it is very effective. I did one dip for my yellow tang and then treated with melifax, By the end of the day all spots were gone and have not returned. For the white spot I did as you are already doing by adding garlic to the food and water changes, I did also add a UV. I also added stresscoat while we were going through our little ich problem. Not sure if it was all or just one of these things but the ich did not return. This is just my experiance with both issues but I hope it helps.

Michelle

 

The only thing with freshwater dips is that byrodoc stated that he didn't want to tear the tank up to catch the fish..... If they are going to tear it up they might as well put it in the QT...

But yes if possible freshwater dips, or ones with a med in can work well, depending on the fish you are dipping. Royal Grammas for example do not like FW dips.

 

I wouldn't use dips for anything but the blackspot. Used them for white spot and it did nothing but make things worse.

 

Well I bought a UV sterilizer(Coralife Turbo Twist). I'll let you know if it helps the ICH...I'm also running No-Ich. I'm in panic mode.

 

I've seen No-Ich used before in a friends system. It claims it kills off the parasite in its free floating stage. It did remove the white spots from his fish within a few days.... but they did come back. Hopefully a combo like what your planning will help.

 

hi guys, im new to the board (first post!), but have been in the hobby for about a year. I actually happened to get an ich outbreak from a purple tang i added to the tank recently. First I tried the natural way for about a week with water changes and increased the temp, plus added a cleaner shrimp and fire shrimp. it seemed to ge going well, but then i noticed it spread to my hippo kind of badly. luckily my other fish havent been attacked. so i went into panic mode, hooked up my turbo-twist 6x with an eheim 1048 pump (luckily i had these lying around). I also had some Kordon ich attack that i bought as a precaution probably 6 months ago. The ich attack seems to be working well. I did a single dose the first day (which happens to have been yesterday) and did a double dose today which i probably continue to due for the rest of the week. The purple tang has 1 perhaps 2 spots left and while the hippo still has quite a bit, it looks better than in the morning. Both are swimming without scratching on the rocks and eating like crazy so im assuming everything is working and they should be ok. The crabs and snails seem to be unaffected by the ich attack solution along with the 2 shrimp. I even bought a small star polyp prior to the attack that looks to be thriving.

long story short, get some kordon ich attack.

 

UV Sterilizer WILL NOT CURE ICH. It will only kill what free-floating ich happens to slip into the UV sterilizer pump.

No "Reef Safe" medications are proven to work. Don't waste your money.

First thing to do is calm down, everything will be fine as long as you follow treatment directions EXACTLY.

READ READ READ
Marine Ich - Myths and Facts - Reef Sanctuary

You have to be patient with this treatment. I did hyposalinity for 4 weeks in a hospital tank and figured everything was fine. I thought leaving the display tank fallow for 8 weeks was overkill and ridiculous, so I introduced my fish back into the display tank on the 5th week. 3 days later, I got Ich AGAIN.

I strongly advise that you just be very patient. No money or miracle product will cure your ich, and it won't go away on its own regardless of what others may say.

DO NOT SPEND ANOTHER DIME BEFORE YOU READ HOW TO TREAT MARINE ICH

 

A little update...my Ich has resolved thus far.....all affected fish are clear. Who knows if it was the No-Ich, UV sterilizer, heavy garlic loading, a combination, or none of the above. I'm just glad it's gone. I spent a pretty penny, however, I don't think it's a bad idea to have a UV sterilizer regardless. I also learned how to supplement food with garlic and Selcon. Best of all, I didn't have to dismantle my reef to catch the little guys.