ICH!! help!!:(

Walmart sells a 18 gallon plastic container for $4 that would be great for a hospital tank. Add some basic filtration (a hang on back filter fits on the container), and treat with hyposalinity or copper.

 

No its okay but my fish have been in my tank for four weeks but my uncle gave them to me and he had them for about 5-10 yrs before he gave them to me.

 

My regal, sailfin, kole, and naso tangs all got ich over 6 weeks ago. At the beginning they were covered in white spots, but were acting/eating normally so I just soaked their nori in garlic and selcon and added 4 cleaner shrimp. Now they are almost completely clear and everyonce in a while I see a couple of white spots but they disapear in a day or 2. I don't have a QT so hypo or meds wasn't an option. Keep us updated how things are going!

 

Moving to a QT tank and treating can be very stressful for the fish...I had a bad case of ich on my hippo for about 3 weeks. I didn't treat him or the tank. All I did was upped the feddings and made sure everything was soaked with garlic and vitamins. As long as he is still eating and your feeding with garlic and vitamins he should be able to kick the ich. The "reef safe" medicines from what I undertand don't work and some have made the ich case worse. Just relax, it will be ok in the end...

 

My 10 year old Blue Tang developed ich about six months ago, because he was stressed out. As it turned out, my nitrates were through the roof and read 80 ppm at one point. I immediately researched the cause and asked allot of questions at my lfs and read the forums on 3 reef.com.

To resolve the nitrate problem, I double up on my water changes, started a vodka dosing regiment, which now my nitrate levels are at 0 ppm. Furthermore, I began to dose my flake food once per day. I found the the large container of minced garlic that Costco sells, works excellent, which I only use the garlic juice from the container. To enhance my feeding program, I now make my own high protein fish food. I throw in some squid and shrimp into my blender until its a smooth paste. Once you have the right consistency, I then lay about the pasty mixture onto a cookie sheet, which I line with a clear ploy plastic film and flatten out into a thin layer and then freeze.

My fish receive the dosed garlic flaked food in the am and my special high protein squid / shrimp mixture in the pm. The fish love this combination and there health has increased tremendous. I consider my Blue Tang on the heavy side now, where before, he was skinny.

To improve my skimming capacity on my 90 gallon reef, I just installed the AquaC EV 180 two days ago. Once the skimmer goes through the break in period, my water quality will improve at least 30 % or more. My EV 180 is starting to pull out some nasty stuff after only two days of operation. For years, I was using the Red Sea Berlin venturi skimmer, which worked ok.

All in all, my fish and tank are very healthy now and even after maintaining reef tanks for fourteen years, you never stop learning, when caring for these beautiful creates of the sea.

Randy

 

great thread everyone... I picked up a few things as well!!!
Lesson-- soak food in garlic!
good luck!
Ryan

 

Okk now im statrting to have a problem again with this ich. Ive been soaking mysis in garlic now for a month or two and every now and then ive been putting it directly in the tank and i have a cleaner wrasse. now it looks like tiny salt grains that dont hang off the body so it looks as its on the skin and now starting to cover the body and in some areas its bad so is there anything else that can help it?

 

The only sure fire way I have found to kill ich is quarantine ALL your fish in an appropriately sized container for 6 - 8 weeks and treat them with copper. Also you MUST leave your main display tank fallow (fishless) for the duration of the treatment. This will kill all the ich on your fish in QT fast and starve off the ich parasites in every stage in the main tank.

The only downside is it SUCKS having your display fishless for 6-8 weeks, but it does work 100%. Feeding with garlic and vitamins boost fish's immune systems so they can fight off the ich, but its always going to be present in your system to some degree unless you go fallow for 6-8 weeks.

~Will.

 

OK i have now decided to do the QT. After on saturday my beautiful chevron tang died. So now when it died now half my tank or three quarters of the tank got ich. Ok so lets see i was thinking of doing a 10 or 20long QT tank. I have a 2 clownfish cleaner wrasse and some other nano fish. So now my nano an cleaner and one clownfish has ich so what supplies do i need iwas just thinking a filter heater sand and live rock and do you reccomened any filters!? And could i leave all my snails and crabs in my tank for six weeks straight and should i shut down the tank(as u can see this is my first time doing this). and if there is anything else please add!!!

 

ohh and should i use water from my bigger tank?