Clown fish with ich? .. And some questions about ich..PICS

If your fish load is in the lower range, you would do great with just the live rock, and your skimmer. The skimmer will airate the heck out of your tank, and that will help your fish, and the bacteria on the rocks. If you have room though, I would just leave the HOB for now. You dont have to have a refug, it is just a plus. Same as a sump. I dont have a sump on my nano and it is full of corals!! Just worry about the ick thing for now, , and cross the other roads when you get there. This hobbie can be a cheap or expensive as you want it to be. My nano is basicly a FW setup with a power head for more flow.

 

UV sterilizers are good, but I wouldnt get one unless you were having trouble with algae too. Ich is a never ending battle unless you do it right. The copper treatments are great, work really well, but will leave traces in your tank forever. Thats why you set up a QT. I tried to do it in a hurry and used the Ich Attack stuff which worked great. I had tken down my QT tank when that happened, but now its up an running just incase, lol.

 

well I did a 10 gallon water change on Teusday and added ph buffer per my lfs because they said it was alittle low.. after doing this , the clown seems more active swimming away from his corner. I hardly saw any white on him yesterday, and what I saw may have been microbubbles from my new skimmer. If I leave him in there for 2 weeks, without making any changes besides water changes, do you think it will be safe to put a new fish in after that without it getting ich or do you think it could still be alive in the sand?

 

Ich is going to be in your tank for a long while, and your fish will either fight it off or suffer with it. Because you don't see it at the moment it doesn't mean you've got rid of it.

I'd suggest stopping restocking with fish for the moment and get your tank settled with your hardware, and let your remaining clown have a good run at beating ich for now. Once you get him up to good health and enjoying life, your tank finished with all the hardware additions, and stable water parameters, then think about adding more livestock.

You'll probably still have ich in your tank in another 6 months, but the healthy fish will fight it off. Ask me how I know.:

 

Well the ick was completely off of his body Thursday evening. Went out of town and returned last night and it is all over him again.. looks worse this time.. its almost not even like white spots but like boils of the skin or something. I will not be adding fish until I can be sure that this wont affect them too much.

 

so it looks like my clown is winning the ich again, but I am almost sure it will be back my the weekend or monday. is this just going to keep on going and going until I pull him out or what?? He is active, eats fine. when he has the ich bad he just chills in the corner and lays on the sand sometimes.. i didnt think it was going to make it this past time, but the white spots are starting to go away. will it get to the point where it will just not come back or will it keep on?

 

You will have ich in your tank permanently as long as fish are in your tank unless you chemically eradicate it or leave it fallow (without fish) for 12 weeks. And even this may not work. I fought ich for a year in my 120g by pulling all my fish out and placing them in a bare 75g and treated them with copper. I left the 120g without fish for 12 weeks and 7 days later the ich was back on the fish. I ended up tearing down the tank, live rock and all.

There is a new product on the market that I just used to treat Ich on a powder blue tang I recently bought. I placed it in my QT tank and 3 days later it broke out with ich. I bought LifeGuard SW tablets with Halo Shield and treated the tang for 7 days, 2 days longer than recommended and the fish is ich free. Its made by Jungle Labs/Instant Ocean/Marine Land
It is not invertebrate safe. Its 1 tab per gallon of tank daily. Chlorine remover inactivates it.

If your clown fish is looking bad, do a pH and temp adjusted FW and methylene blue dip ffor 3-5 min. Use 90-95%FW and 5-10SW and aerate the water for 20 min before the dip. I would then place it in a QT tank after the dip. All you need is a 10g tank with a power head and air stone or a small aquaclear filter or something similar. Wait a day and then treat with copper or try the LifeGuard. IMO from experience and reading all the failures on wetwewbmedia.com copper is the only effective remedy except for possibly this new LifeGuard product.
Best of Luck!
Larry

 

Thanks for the info Raven. I am not going to get any new fish until I see that this one isnt going to keep breaking out. I just my test kit in and all the parameters are on spot, so hopefully he is going to get better. I heard that a cleaner shrimp and a goby could possibly aid in getting rid of ich? is this true? have you ever heard of it?

 

cleaner shrimp will help alot, but the poor goby will get ick faster than any fish. I learned that the hard way. The only problem I see is clowns are not the best fish for the shrimp. Ive almost never seen mine get cleaned...

 

Yes, clown fish do not like to get cleaned in my experience and many cleaner shrimp do not act as cleaners except on larger fish. Ive got 2 cleaner shrimp, a fire cleaner and a neon gobie in my reef with a yellow tang and maroon clown and have never seen the shrimp clean. The clown hates it when the gobie tries to clean him.