a few problems

[jonas-winslo]

First of all i have a 150 gal tank, with 25w UV light, plent of rock and caves, and restarted about 6 months ago. I have a snowflake, puffer, huma huma trigger, lion, bursa trigger, coral beauty, red coris wrass, yellow eye tang, and 3 agressive damsels. I had to start over from Coral Reef Disease that i acquired somehow(Complete tank overhaul).
Anyway, I have a yellow eye tang who has major face bloching discoloration. He has had it for about a month now, but is performing very well. I have had him for about 4 months, but don't know what the problem is. Any ideas of how to treat or what it could be?
I also have a Bursa trigger that has apparently developed ick and is in quarinte. Now the lion is developing it also. I am using Cupramine, fresh water bathes (9part fresh 1part salt). shouldn't the UV light take care of the ICK in the main tank, or will all my fish need quartined?
Last but not least, my porqcupine puffer no longer swims around. He just hangs out in the caves i have built. Also his color flucuates constantly. He eats and all, but just doesn't swim much anymore. Could he have a disease?
I would really appreicate any help i could get, due to the fact i this is the third time i have overhauled the tank.
Thanks.

 

[jay0705]

First off by overhaul,what do u mean. If you have always had an issue w ick. It can be a pain in the ass to get rid of. Unless you leave the tank fish less for 1-2 months. You can use copper to get rid of it but u have to be exact for it to work and not kill your fish. 2nd u have alot of aggressive fish.they could be causing stress to each other and the disease has an easy path

 

[flower]

Quote:
Originally Posted by jonas-winslo http:///t/396766/a-few-problems#post_3535066
First of all i have a 150 gal tank, with 25w UV light, plent of rock and caves, and restarted about 6 months ago. I have a snowflake, puffer, huma huma trigger, lion, bursa trigger, coral beauty, red coris wrass, yellow eye tang, and 3 agressive damsels. I had to start over from Coral Reef Disease that i acquired somehow(Complete tank overhaul).
Anyway, I have a yellow eye tang who has major face bloching discoloration. He has had it for about a month now, but is performing very well. I have had him for about 4 months, but don't know what the problem is. Any ideas of how to treat or what it could be?
I also have a Bursa trigger that has apparently developed ick and is in quarinte. Now the lion is developing it also. I am using Cupramine, fresh water bathes (9part fresh 1part salt). shouldn't the UV light take care of the ICK in the main tank, or will all my fish need quartined?
Last but not least, my porqcupine puffer no longer swims around. He just hangs out in the caves i have built. Also his color flucuates constantly. He eats and all, but just doesn't swim much anymore. Could he have a disease?
I would really appreicate any help i could get, due to the fact i this is the third time i have overhauled the tank.
Thanks.

Hi,

Ich is a parasite and if it was in the display, it will continue to breed until you leave the tank without fish for 8 weeks. Inverts are immune and can't get infected, so they can stay in the display, but all the fish need to be removed and treated. The best cure is hypo, you can use copper but NOT IN THE DISPLAY EVER, because of the live rock and CUC inverts. The reef safe cures don't work, and are very hard and often fatal, on inverts (your live rock critters) and coral.

Since you have fish only and such a large tank, you could remove the rocks, sand and inverts to tubs for 8 weeks. use PVC pipes haphazard in the tank to give the fish something to hide in and around because of aggression, and then treat your fish in the display with hypo...NOT COPPER... Copper gets into the silicone, and you can't get it out, it's poison to everything but the fish.

UV light takes care of some of the free swimming parasites, but not the eggs, or what hides around the rock, or what has dug it's way into the fish' gills.

A quarantine tank is really only useful for one, or at the most two fish at a time. That's why it's best to quarantine each new arrival, rather then deal with the aftermath of an infection or parasite.

 

[geridoc]

UV can be very effective against ich, but not when it is used on a single tank. If you have several tanks connected to a common sump, then UV could prevent spread of ich from one tank to another, but in a lone tank, even if it kills 99% of the free swimming ich, that surviving 1% will reinfect the tank. In the past, when I had an aggressive tank I did use copper in the display on the theory that no invertebrates survive cohabiting with triggers, eels and such anyway, so the copper isn't killing anything except the cryptocaryon organisms. Using copper in the display will probably make it unusable in the future for reefkeeping, as Flower said. There are other ich treatments that are effective and don't permanently contaminate the tank - metronidazole and a variety of other antimalarials have been shown to be effective, but expensive when used to treat a large volume of water.