Marine Ick/******

[villi]

Hello, everyone. This is my second iteration of this hobby, and right now I have a 75 gallon tank that has been running for 3 months (started with cured live rock and didn't have a cycle). I have been lurking around this forum since day 3 and have found all the information very helpful, so thank you all.
Anyway, out of stupidity/impatience, I added fish without QT'ing first. Don't worry, I have a new QT up and running now for future fish. Summary of my current stock is various soft and hard corals, 2 cleaner shrimp, an ocellaris clown, lyretail anthias, sixline wrasse, sleeper goby, flame angel, and blue tang (very tiny at this point - please don't hurt me tang police).
The issue is that when I added the flame angel, he developed a case of ick, and I attempted to catch him to QT, but was unsuccessful. It stressed him out even more and the ick got a little worse. A day later, the tang developed white spots. They continued to eat very aggressively, so the LFS guy (who has provided some very good advice thus far) told me to let it run its course because of the troubles I was having catching them. Two days later the spots completely disappeared. This was a week and a half ago.
Well, yesterday morning, I noticed the blue tang has spots again. And yesterday night, I noticed that the angel has some spots on its fins. It looks like a reoccurrence, but once again, the fish continue to aggressively eat. What do you guys think is the best course of action now? Even if I QT the two sick fish, I am afraid the ****** won't be completely gone because of the remaining fish.
Thanks in advance.

 

[blacktop pete]

you are going to have to treat all of the fish. try making a trap or go to lfs maybe the will lend u one

 

[jackri]

The ich is going through cycles.. but your fish are healthy enough they are fighting it off themselves. Continue a VERY healthy diet.. I would add garlic and or selcon to their food until you can get them quarantined.
Kudos on the fish for being healthy enough to fight it.. sounds like you have good water parameters -- sucks to have the pain in the rear ich though

 

[villi]

Thanks for the advice

 

[sepulatian]

Welcome to the boards! What sized QT do you have? You will expose all future fish if you do not eradicate the parasites from your tank now. Sure, fish can live with ich if the are very healthy. However, you will run into problems each time that you have a fish fall ill for any reason, if you do not get rid of the ich. It will be a lot easier to get the fish out now than it will be later on when there is more stock in there.

 

[villi]

I have a 20G-High QT. Do you think my fish could tolerate being in that type of tank for 6-8 weeks of hypo? Also, would you consider the large sponge that was in my sump for a couple weeks, a powerhead, and a heater, sufficient equipment for a QT?
Finally, if I leave the inverts and corals in the tank, is there anything else I would need to do to keep the bacteria viable?

 

[villi]

I should also mention that the QT is currently running. It has the ph, heater, and sponge, in addition to a couple pieces of live rock and 3 clowns that I was separating from my DT until I could figure out what I wanted to do with them (I got lucky catching them and didn't want to release back into my DT only to have to catch them again).
I also have a fully cycled 34 g solana that has nothing besides live rock in it (only running for a week, but live rock was cured - also mostly sand from the 75 and no cycle). I learned with the 75, so until I could properly QT my new additions, I didn't want to add anything in it.
The reason I add this info is that I could use any combination of the three tanks to get things back to normal.

 

[villi]

So here is where I am at...
I just removed all of the fish from my DT and put them into the 20G high QT...its a full house. I had to combine what I was already holding in the QT with my DT fish. So it is three ocellaris clowns, two lyretail anthias, a tomato clown, sixline wrasse, sleeper goby, flame angel, and blue tang.
I am in the process of lowering the salinity to 14-15 ppm. The only fish with symptoms at this point is the blue tang. He has had the spots for 6-7 days. The flame angel developed a several faint white spots on his fins, but they were gone within 36-48 hours.
I have a couple other questions:
- I read in other threads that I am supposed to keep the fish in QT for 3-4 weeks after the fish do not show anymore symptoms. On the other hand, I believe I read that it takes about 6-8 weeks to eliminate the parasite from the DT. How long should I be keeping the fish out of the system?
- Should I continue feeding daily? How often should I be doing water changes and how much water?

 

[villi]

Well, things aren't going as well as planned. Today, I found one of the lyretails and my sixline dead and stuck between the sponge I took from my sump and the wall. My heater malfunctioned overnight and I woke up to 71F water. I quickly replaced the heater, and temp is back around 78. Everyone else looks ok.
Ammonia has spiked to 0.3, but since I am still changing quite a bit of the water to decrease the salinity, I am hoping that will take care of it. I also added a cup of substrate from my DT to the QT just in case.