Need help!!! fish has white spots.

[barracuda]

Hello all!!!
Today i came from work and found mostof my fish covered with white spots. 2 days ago i brought a new coral. It's small pearl coral. It was kind of open for 2 days, but now i found him completely closed with white stuff comming out of him. I checked nitrites. It was 0.2 . I removed this coral, did some water change (10 gal) this is all i had prepared by RO unit (tank is 110 gal). Added a littele bit of nitrite remover (Kent Marine Ammonia detox). After 2 hours i checked a water for nitrites and it became 0. I'll be checking it tommorow morning again. I have 2 questions: 1) Can the bad coral rise nitrite level? 2) what's gonna happen to my fish. By now all of my fish is eating well, breathing well, not scratching on bottom or rocks. Evrething seems to be ok, except these white dots. As you understand it's impossible to catch the fish within the reef tank. And 3 of my cleaner shrimps doesn't wanna clean my fish.
<img src="graemlins//confused.gif" border="0" alt="[confused]" />

 

[salty rick]

Sounds like Ick to me. Ick occurs when the fish are stressed out. The new coral may have done it for some reason. You may want to move the fish to a quarantine tank to treat them. Most ick treatments are detrimental to LR and corals. Others have had success feeding the fish with garlic soaked fish flake food. I heard that you crush the garlic up and then put the juice or fluid on the flakes. I am sure others have a more detailed explaination.

 

[angief]

Definately sounds like ick to me. If the new coral is dying it will cause your water to change and this will stress the fish out causing ick. The only way to treat them is to get them out into a quarantine tank as the treatment will harm everything else in your reef. Good luck..

 

[saltyrich]

I concur. I think its ick

 

[byrself]

have you checked your ph? are you adding things like supplements? if you are, you may want to pause from that for the time being. maybe the best thing to do since you can't catch the fish is to just try to stabilize your tank as best you can. if you are running a skimmer, make sure it is working correctly. it's quite possible it is ich, but not necessarily certain. maybe read some posts in the disease forum and see if there are other cases of white spots and it may be something different. if the spots look like tiny grains of sand, then its probably ich. i think you should do a search on hyposalinity and try that for in tank treatments. it's the only reef safe way to treat ich with the fish still in the tank. whatever you do to your tank, do it slowly as not to stress the fish any worse than they already are. the garlic is good for the purpose of driving the ich parasites off of the fish, but doesn't treat the tank for ich. it's likely that you will always have the ich in the tank, so just be careful in the future (after this crisis, of course) to not do things to stress your fish, or the ich will return. the only guaranteed way to rid a reef tank with ich is to have no fish in the tank for 30 days. since that's not an option, i give these other suggestions. good luck
i have ich outbreaks from time to time, but my fish seem to fight it off on their own. i killed my only fish while trying to do treatment dips, so i know first hand that an already stressed fish with ich is very sensitive, so be careful. hope this helps you.

 

[lnarobbins]

perhaps a clasic sign of saltwater ick
try saking the question on the disease and treatment forum maybe they can help you aou also
Alan

 

[barracuda]

I think is too early to be happy, but as by now there is no sign of nitrite after i pulled out that coral. I'm looking at the fish and i see at the most of them almost no white spots, except pink skunk clown. Also all of them breathing, sweeming and eating good. Does it mean that good water conditions can make the fish take over the decease?

 

[byrself]

good water quality is essential for fish health. that's what probably caused the ich in the first place imo. keep it as stable as possible, and you should be okay. the fish can fight off ich on their own. the cleaner shrimp may even help out after the water is stable. good luck. glad to hear it is looking a little better.