Uhg ich is back... need help to decide on a attack plan

[Candymancangt]

So ich is back. I eliminated it completetly doing hyposalinity in my main tank about 9 months ago. I moved the 30 coral frags i had into my 20g quarantine tank put a 24 inch t5 fixture over it with my ati bulbs abd left that tank alone for 2 months. And for the other tank it was in hyposalinity for 2 months at 1.007 to 1.009.

It worked all my fish were ich free. And i havent seen ich again since. Howevee i did buy more fish hermit crabs and stuff recently. I did hypo on the fish and tank transfer on the flame angel and longnose butterfly which cant handle hyposalinity.

The hermits i did tank transfer on as well.

So im not sure who brought ich in but i suspect its the flame angel.long nose or the hermits or something. Cant be certain though.

Anyway the tank is 135 gallons. I have way more corals now then i did before and they wont fit in my 20g qt.. and neighter will all my fish.. I have 5 tangs a foxface. Butterfly flame angel. Bunch of green chromis.

Currently the only ones im seeing ich on are the powder brown tang and the butterfly. And ive only seen it on those 2 for a few weeks on and off. The other fish like my sailfin.naso. tomini, yellow tang. i never see anything the flame angel i see nothing either.

So its just been these 2 fish and it isnt too bad maybe 10-15 spots occasionally then its gone. But i know how ich is.. itll come back more and more and more until my other fish get it and i dont want to deal with losing 1000$ in fish.

I have a 60g hexagon with 2 discus and a few smaller fresh water fish in. I can move those smaller fish to my 92g and the discus ill just put in a 27g hex i have. ( cant put em in the 92g long story). I can use my 20g and 60g as quarantine tanks.

So my options are these 3 options.

1. Split my fish up put the chromis and smaller tangs like the tomini and yellow eye kole in my 20g long. And put the larger fish in my 60g hexagon. Like the yellow tang,fox, sailfin, and the 2 clowns and the naso. Then for the flame and butterfly and a wrass ill have to do tank transfer yet again for 2-3 or so weeks. This option i leave my corals alone to keep growing.

2. I keep all the fish in my main tank. Move the butterfly and flame angel, and the wrasse into tank transfer. Move all my corals into my 20g and 60g. Ill move the more sensative and larger corals to the 60g and the tougher and smaller corals to the 20g. Some corals are ecrusted on the rocks so ill just move the rocks with em. The corals will be fine. The lighting wont change and ill move some sand and as i mentioned rocks to the tanks filtration and flow will be the same too.

Option 3. Leave everything alone, watch the fish and just keep doing what im doing. But i dont like this option because the powder brown is an ich magnet hell just keep getting ich over n over.

Sorry for a long post. Im leaning towards moving the corals. Im 95% confident i wont lose any but moving so many fish into tiny tanks might cause issues. Plus my kole tang doesnt eat prepared foods he eats algae. And those tanks dont have algae. I dont care too much about losing all the fauna in my main tank. Itll still be on the rocks i do move out of the tank. The fish j worry most about is the long nose butterfly.. he eats mysis but tank transfer in a empty tank for 2-3 weeks last time stressed him out so much so he refused to eat and he got pretty skinny.

Whatever option i do its going to suck regardless.. itll deff be easisr to move the corals then the fish though. I really hate this lol. Ich free for 8 months until i decided i wanted more fish and some hermits.


This is my tank.

 

[beth]

Move all the fish into other tanks, leave everything else in the display tank. Hypo fish (be sure to use a refractometer). In the absence of fish in the main tank, the ich should die off since they will not have a host. Is the 60 gal big enough for the fish you mention?
Depends on size of fish.

 

[Candymancangt]

Its a 60g hex it would be a tight fit to put a 8 inch sailfin foxface yellow tang and naso tang in it. Then i got a tomini powder brown and yellow eye kole tang and then green chromis and 2 clowns and stuff. I dont think i can put em all in my 20g long and 60g hex.

Thats why i was thinking just move the corals and leave the fish. Ive done it before and it worked but i didnt have nwarky as many corals as i do now. And id really hate to kill off my fauna in the tank aince its been up for nearly a year. But dang this sucks. Having so many fish and not a big enough qt for em.

I guess i have time to decide the ich hasnt infexted anyone else interestingly enough just the 2 i mentioned

 

[beth]

You can move the corals, but fish will need to be in hypo for awhile so you'll need to address their lighting needs. Inverts in your sand bed will mostly die off under hypo conditions. It's not the best option to hypo a reef tank with a live sandbed but it can be done. Just check your water daily for spikes and have ready saltwater to implement water changes as necessary.

You can put corals and live rock in rectangular rubbermaids which are cheap enough to buy. They will need good circulation so you may need extra pumps since you have more coral now. Don't forget to drop some food in for you micro-fauna on the live rock and even corals as needed.

In future, your best bet is to QT inverts for at least a month; particualarly if they are coming from fish shops that share filtration with fish in the store. Any hard surface can hold ich--including corals.

 

[Candymancangt]

What do you think if i just remove the powder brown tang put him in hypo and put him in a seperate ich free tank. Like convert my 60g hex to salt get new sand. New rock and do that ?

This way it keeps the ich load down ( you know like keeping a viral load down when taking meds) because seriously i still havent seen ich on my sailfin,tomini, foxface, clowns, 10 green chromis, blond naso, yellow tang, or my yellow eye kole tang.

Seems only the ich magnet powder brown is getting it the long nose butterfly nevee started until recently. So take him out to keep the ich load down and leave my 135 alone. I know it sounds eh to leave ich alone but again it seems no one else is getting it. Havent see abnormal breathing. Not a aingle spot and i critique my fish every morning and evening by watching.

 

[Candymancangt]

You can move the corals, but fish will need to be in hypo for awhile so you'll need to address their lighting needs. Inverts in your sand bed will mostly die off under hypo conditions. It's not the best option to hypo a reef tank with a live sandbed but it can be done. Just check your water daily for spikes and have ready saltwater to implement water changes as necessary.

You can put corals and live rock in rectangular rubbermaids which are cheap enough to buy. They will need good circulation so you may need extra pumps since you have more coral now. Don't forget to drop some food in for you micro-fauna on the live rock and even corals as needed.

In future, your best bet is to QT inverts for at least a month; particualarly if they are coming from fish shops that share filtration with fish in the store. Any hard surface can hold ich--including corals.

Itd be better to put the corals in the 60g. See that tank i had my 24 inch t5 fixture over with 4 ati bukbs.. that fixture is over my 135 with a 48 inch fixture to cover all 72 inchs. I can move the 24 inch back to the 60g hex and move the 48 inch center of my 135 itll cover most if the tank and it since itll have no corals it isnt needed to be 100% lit on the ends. The 60g has the same filtration as my 135g.. all i use are hobs and powder heads. So itll litterally not change a thing for the corals cept going to a amaller system.

But im atarting to think.. take the powder brown out. Keep the ick breeder out to lower ich loads in the tank. Because im quite suprised no one else has even got a spot. I dont see how thats possible when i have so many fish ?? Ive debated he had lymphocystis because of this. Until i saw the butterfly have a few spots last night

 

[Candymancangt]

Another thing im finding weird is its been around 4 days now and i cant be certain but these spots havent falled off yet. They look the same as they did before when i first noticed and they dont look exactly like ich. Ich is pretty white round these are more greyish white and raised weirdly in some spots not like ich. Ich in my experience falls off after 24-72 hrs. Specially at night with the lights off. These havent changed

Its super hard to get pics of it properly because he wont stop moving. Ive seen lymphocystis on my yellow tang in the past. He was in hypo for 2 months and yet had hundreds of white spots that looked like ich and took like over 2 weeks to come off and when they did they left huge craters in him and a 2nd bacterial infection. It turned out to be lympjocystis as it kept rregrwoing in those craters. Hes still alive but even to do this day he still gets it ( hes in another tank in the house)

They look like skin tags if that makes sense..

 

[beth]

If you can post good quality pictures of the fish, I might be able to assess the ich. Ich will stay on the fish for longer than 4 days. Ich does not all attach to fish at the exact same moment, nor does it all fall off at once.

Also, there is no such thing as keeping the ich low load. There is no way to control that. A fish tank with ich is a ticking bomb. It may stay low and not so bad to deal with, and then one day, you find your tank and all fish seriously ill. You need to get the ich out of the tank you plan to keep your fish in and you need to treat ALL your fish. Further, you need to QT in the future to ensure this doesn't happen again, and not just rely on a transfer method. Transfer method does not eliminate the need to QT. Be careful where you get your inverts, live rock, hard corals, etc. If there is any sharing of water and filters, then all these non-fish things are exposed and can carry ich as well as other fish parasites.

Tangs are not really magnets for ich, the parasites just show up on them more readily because tangs have very tiny scales. This makes ich more visible. Also, their slime coat (nature's fish protection) is not quite as thick as other fish, which results in infections showing up "perceivably" more. The truth is, all your fish probably have or will get ich if left untreated. That is why hobbyists have to set up methods to quarantine new marine animals and live rock, etc., in order to keep their display tank parasite/infection free. Whatever you have to do to accomplish that is far better than what you have to deal with right now.

All your fish need to be hypo-ed. Your display tank needs to remain without fish during that time. I think I would find additional space for some of your fish during this process to give them a fighting chance to get through this.

Is there a way to rig your lighting over containers where you can keep your corals out of the tank?

 

[Candymancangt]

I do qt i do hypo on all my fish.. but hhpo doesnt work on all fish it kills butterflies. Flame angels. Fairy wrasses. Alot of dottybacks. Royal grammas. Some gobies they all die from hypo. So you have to do other methods like tank transfer and i hate copper.

But yea. Im ttying to get some good pics.. its just so hard i took 30 pics of him but he wont stay put hes so active.. it makes the cysts blurry so you cant see what im seeing.

This is the best pic i got but it still doesnt show good detail. Basically all these dots arent exactly round. There diff shapes, they extend out fairly far. Far like a skin tag on your skin. They even cause shadows if you can see. Ive seen ich for years n years and this doesnt look like ich to me but it does to an untrained eye.. Its odd. I wish i could get a clearer pic because you may not get what im talkin about. These (tags) arent pure white either. They are greyish color and semi transluscent.

 

[Candymancangt]

Another pic. See the ones i circled.. its hard to see in this pic.. but when he faces me i can see the side of his body right and these are all thin and sticking out they arent round.. all the spots are like this.. not round and sticking out like skin tags

 

[beth]

It's ich.

If you don't want to use hypo, you can go with copper (seachem cupramine). Be sure to use the seachem copper test kit that is compatible. If you want to do hypo on some fish, then, as you suggested you will need separate containers. Copper is out of the question in a reef tank. I have never used the transfer method myself, but I believe there are some others on here who have. I will say that even using this method, you must still quarantine your fish afterword to ensure that they are clear of the parasite.

Let me say, hyposalinity is safe for most fish, with the exception of cartilaginous fishes such as sharks and rays. Just because a fish dies during a treatment doesn't mean the treatment killed the fish. Or, if it did, was that treatment was administered correctly? Hypo requires exact treatment using a calibrated refractometer with the exact salinity ppm .14., maintaining adequate pH and temp. Drop the salinity lower, then fish could die. Do not drop enough, ich won't die.

Do you have a refractometer for the hypo?

 

[Candymancangt]

Two refractometer using distilled for hypo and brs refracto juice for my main reef. I calibrate everytime i check due to changes in ambient temp of the tank and refractormeter itself

As for only rays and sharks that you are wrong on. People have noted butterflies not handling hypo. And a video on youtube of a guy whos done hypo for 40 years noted fairy qrasses dont handle it either.

My experience has shown butterflies and fairy wrasses like people have mentioned dont handle it. The flame angels ive had have died in just 1.013. The orchid dottybacks and royal grammas all hide become lethargic and die soon after.

One thing they all show is a popeye like symptons where their scales pinecone out they baloon up and die. Ive saved a few by rapidly putting thrm back into normal salinity and when i did their pineconing subsided and they went back to normal. I suspect the pineconing is their kidneys basically shutdown and they become bloated.

Trust me ive tried it on multiple of the same species the end is the same result. Only tangs. Foxfaces. Damsels. Chromis clowns. And other types of dwarf angels can handle it.

Not gonna argue with you on this. Nore treat you like a noob because i know your not so id appritiate if you didnt treat me like that either. Been doing this awhile and those same species of fish can never handle it. They die at the upper levels of hypo at 1.013. Not even close to what i keep mine at 1.009.

Im going to take the powder brown tang out and put him in my 20g thats in hypo 24.7 and see if the spots ever do fall off and not come back. If they dont fall out in a few more days to a week im going to seriously doubt its ich and lean to lymphocystis. So lets see what happens i guess i think this is thr best course currently to give it a test rather then tear everything down since right now its just him and the long nose. I know i have lympjocystis in the tank ive had fidh covered in it in the very distant past and it took over a month to fall off them

 

[beth]

My thoughts on the subject come from scientific or professional observations that have been written, published, accepted as fact, not anecdotal hobbyists' experiences where they may interject their own interpretations about what is going on with a sick fish. However, I'll be glad to look at any reference sources you've run across that back up your position. I've had a few of those species myself with excellent results in hypo. In fact, I've never lost a fish in hypo.

Good luck taking a tang out and placing him in a 20 gal that is in hypo 24/7? Good luck trying to treat ich after a few days to a week.

I'll back off of further advise to you since I'm [unintentionally] making you feel like a "noob". Sincerely, good luck.