Clownfish and domino damsel have ich!

I have had freshwater fish for the longest time. This is my first saltwater tank. Someone in my house has been turning the cold air conditioning on too high and the temp changes are giving my fish ich! I spoke with them about it today, but I had no idea how to treat a saltwater fish for ich.

When I had freshwater, I would just put in some aquarium salt and they would get better within a couple of days. So I took out all of my rocks and spent a half hour trying to catch my damsel and tomato clownfish. I put them in a separate container, as the meds said to do. The guy sold me "QuICK cure", so I put that in there as told. I also put a little decoration in there for them to hide in. My fish look miserable in there! les miserables.

Then, on top of it, I when I was putting my rocks back in my tank, I noticed my trigger fish was missing! He must have went into a rock or stuck to one.. I found him on the floor. He is back in the tank and swimming around fine, but I hope he is going to be okay!

Am I doing this the right way?

 

You should have a heater in the tank set at 76 degrees. Use Marine-Max by Tropical Science to ward off the ich and prevent it in the future. I will say that a Domino and Clown Damsel along with a Trigger is your problem and the stress they are giving each other is the real cause of the ich.

 

They all get along so well, though. I have a heater set at 78 and it is a good heater. But my room temp is at around 61. I live in a house with people who get hot very easily. I'm suffering from it just as much as my fish are! LOL.

 

Supplement your food with Garlic Guard or something like that...if your feeding Mysis or Brine shrimp to your fish let it soak in the garlic supplement for a long time before u give it to them..also u can get a vitamin C supplement for fish too and add that to soak the food in as well...if u do that, your fish should be able to kick the ich by themselves with no need for putting additives in ur water

 

61 degrees! Get another heater, you shouldn't have a problem keeping your tank at the correct temp. Not sure if that's what stressing them so much, but you can have more than one heater... what size is your tank?

 

Could you give us some more details like the size of your tank, and your water parameters like ammonia nitrites and ph?
Also how old if your tank?

 

55 gals.. I have been running it with saltwater since March 29th. It has live rock that was in a running tank before.

ph: 8.0
gh: 180
kh: somewhere between 40 and 80
nitrates: 160 (OUCH!)
nitrites: 5 - 10

Jeez! The water looks so clear.. never expected for them to come out so badly.

 

I would definitely run multiple heaters if I were you. Our house stays around 65, but the tank stays at ~77 because of 2 100 watt and 1 300 watt heater in the 65 gallon tank.

Nitrates need to be lowered a huge amount. Nitrate stress plus trigger stress is what's letting your fish be highly susceptible to ich.

 

How do I lower them?

 

Water changes at first. You should do a 25%ish change every couple days till it's down under 20. Growing algae in-tank or in a refugium or using a DSB are the most frequently used ways of keeping it low over time, but there's a few others. People use denitrator equipment, or chemical additives. I prefer natural methods by far, because the natural methods have a number of side benefits, and the chemical methods have some problems with them in more complete systems.

Just the other day there was mention of this stuff called Purigen. I would never use the stuff in a reef tank because of the downsides, but in a FOWLR, it may work decently well. I still wouldn't use it, but it should be mentioned.