my first saltwater fish ever!

[compjtc]

Ater cleaning a tank I had in the basement the clowns have a new home temporarily. I went to my local pet place that only has a limited supply of saltwater stuff and got some medication. They didn't have any formalin, but the dude that runs it gave me some other stuff he says works great (turns out formalin is the active ingredient in it)
Hopefully they'll heal up great

 

[lubeck]

I believe you will have to keep your Display Tank free of fish for at least 5 weeks.
ick can still live without a host for up to that time and fish should not be put back until they are out of "fish" food.

 

[compjtc]

at what point is ich contagious and frees itself into the water? the fish were only in the display tank for 3 days.

 

[crox]

Originally Posted by compjtc
at what point is ich contagious and frees itself into the water? the fish were only in the display tank for 3 days.

I would say that by the moment you put them in your DT you give it to the whole system.

 

[sleasia]

compjtc...I know it seems mean, but you should remove the substrate (gravel/sand) from the little qt tank...this helps to break the ich life cycle because at some point it lives in the substrate...(this is all explained in depth somewhere in the disease archives...beth did a great job putting alot of info in this archive) All you need in the qt is some type of filter, and a heater, you can put a decoration or shell or something in there for them to feel a bit more secure...but that's all you really need.

 

[sleasia]

Its probably not possible to know if the fish brought the ich to the tank or if they became infected in the tank. The safest thing is to assume that the tank is contaminated. I am forgetting the details of everything beth described in the archive, but I beleive the life cycle of ich is about 1 month, so this is why Crox is telling you to leave the main tank unoccupied for 1 month or even a bit more, to "burn" out the ich which might be there. Without fish, ich can not complete its life cycle and dies. Poor ich!

 

[sleasia]

Oops sorry I guess Lubeck said that...

 

[compjtc]

Did I read somewhere that the ich lifecycle can be expedited by raising the tank temperatures a bit, or am I making that up? I wonder if my inverts would mind if i bumped the temp up a couple degrees.

 

[sleasia]

yes I think that is true. you can probably do that if the inverts will tolerate the temp increase. I think they usually put it at 80 degrees.

 

[teen]

the ick life cycle will speed up if you raise the temp. you should be able to get away with like 80-82 with the inverts.

 

[compjtc]

awesome, the ick on the clowns has disappeard already, now it seems like they are fighting something like brooklynella. Ones of them hardly has any tail anymore!

 

[stanlalee]

did you have that hair algae on the far right and bubble algae outbreak before you added the fish? If so you may have had some issues that needed addressing before you added the fish.

 

[compjtc]

yeah, Thats a piece of live rock I got from a friend. It came with the algea. I was going to scrub the algea off, but I figured someone would find it a tasty snack. The inverts have already eaten most of it, I imagine they'll finish it off pretty quickly.