Blue tang's got the ick. um.......help!

[purity]

i did some research for the last hour on here and found out why he's got these white spots all over him. also saw some dude's thread saying that his damsel's brought the ich into his tank and i think that's the case with mine.
i bought 5 green damsels and about a week or so later the spots started appearing on the tang. now it's been about 3 weeks since and these spots are getting worse. he DEFINETELY looks diseased.
i haven't noticed any signs with the damsels or the clownfish. they all seem to act normal. BUT my goby mysteriously croaked last week (although i didn't notice any signs on him either.)
did some reading on the QT method but there's no way in hell that i'm gonna go spend grips of $$$ on a new tank, filtration & lighting system, etc. just for a sick fish. is there an easier way to cure this? do fishstores have their own QT tanks to use?
and what about all this stuff you can buy to cure ich? i'm reading on these boards about the copper-based stuff- half the people on here say it's ideal and half think it'll cause a holocaust.

 

[purity]

whoops. just read the "how to post in here" thread so here's a lil more info:
-also have 4 lil hermit crabs, anemane, torch coral, galaxy coral, green button polyps, 3 turbo snails, and feather dusters.
-temperature is around 75 degrees, i think
-feed them this red flakey stuff. dunno the name of it though.
-was pretty much given this tank by my buddy about 3 months ago. have since added the coral & polyps, goby (now dead), a chocolate chip starfish (removed about 2 weeks ago), snails, and the damsels.
-clownfish, tang, crabs, anemanae, dusters have all been in the tank for the last 2 years or so.
-do regular bi-weekly nitrate/nitrite/amonia/ph tests and they always come back fine.
-salt content usually between the .0019-.0022 mark
-feed em once every night
-lighting has 2 flourescents & 2 of those blue lights. it goes on at 5:30pm-10:30pm. tank sits next to a window and gets a lil daylight BUT the fence outside & the neighbor's house prevents direct sunlight beaming into the tank
i think that's all

 

[buzz]

Fish stores generally don't QT their fish...that is up to the hobbyist to do.
With corals, anemone's, etc., don't use copper-based meds in your display tank. They will die.
There is one reef safe med that is for ich that I know of - Kick-Ich. Doesn't always work either. Some here have had luck with it, most have not. I fortunately am one that had great results. It isn't cheap, but it may be worth it for you to try it.
Make sure you follow the instructions to the t. No variation.

 

[purity]

kewl i'll give that kick stuff a try. fish stores outta offer in-house QT tanks to rent out. you could just drop yer squirmies off few a weeks or so & pay by the day.

 

[smember]

for starters copper based medications are wonderful at curing disease, there is no controversy there. The problem is COPPER KILLS EVERYTHING. It has a detrimental effect on your biological filter, it will kill any invert that it comes in contact with including shrimp snails and everything that came in on the live rock or sand. The second bad part is the amount of copper must be tested to insure a proped dose, too much copper can kill fish and it doesn't just come out in the filter. special media such as poly filter will remove copper once it is used and no longer needed.
Now if you have no inverts and a stable biofilter copper can be your best friend, a theraputic dose can be left in your aquarium at all times keeping disease outbreaks to a bare minimum. also there are two types of copper chelated and non-chelated. I cannot remember which it is but the type in coppersafe is less effective but also less damaging and more forgiving.
I am guessing that your tang is a blue hippo or morpho tang, also known as ich magnets. Considering this fishes lack of disease defence maybe a cleaner shrimp would be the best method for fighting this and future outbreaks. The last thing I would like to say is that qt tanks can save you more money in the long run, by placing new arrivals in your qt you can prevent future outbreaks caused by new arrivals, use less medicine if and when fish do get sick. remember this is a long term investment and you could get a 20 gal qt for about 50$, you dont need the best equipment or fancy lights just a tank, filter, heater, and a lid.

 

[smember]

now that is see you have corals and inverts I would definatly recomend a cleaner shrimp and say that copper is absolutly out of the question. Kick ich is really slow and kinda pricy but it is reef safe. also since its just on one fish you can try a freshwater dip(the cheapest medicine there is).

 

[purity]

yeah he's a hippo smember. so the shrimp could actually CURE the disease along with preventing it in the future? now that's pretty cool.
i'll read more up on the QT thing. i was thinking the whole setup would cost like $500 or so. sounds like it wouldn't be more then about $150-200, right?

 

[rockies]

I just setup my QT with 10 gal kit (comes with tank, filter, heater and hood with lights (incandescent so they get to hot to actually turn on). I added a power head for water movement. Nothing else in the tank except something for stock to hide behind. ~$60.

 

[reefer130]

Another treatment an experienced aquarist turned me onto that doesn't require you to put the Tang into QT is to soak natural dried seaweed in a home-made garlic solution and feed that to the Tang. I used this treatment for about a week on my Purple Tang with exceptional results.
I used a garlic press and pressed one clove into a glass jar, added about 6 oz. RO water, strained it and soaked the seaweed in the garlic water for about 5 minutes before feeding. Refrigerate the remainder for subsequent feedings. The garlic will have no ill-effect on other tank inhabitants.

 

[purity]

so's it ok to just pick the seaweed up at the beach? i'm only about a mile from it so it'd be no biggie.
anywayz, i got the cleaner shrimp and the kick ich stuff last night.