Nitrate spike and ICH

[reefaddicted]

Is there any correlation between a nitrate spike and ICH?
I have added several items from SWF.com recently and nothing else in months. I recently knocked the intake strainer off of my canister filter while moving some rock. Because I failed to notice this my Mandarin was sucked into the intake and killed. This caused a nitrate spike. Today my Hippo has many very small white spots all over it. I beleive this is ICH. (The first case I have had in nearly 20 years of keeping fish! {mostly FW}) I have not decided how to deal with this yet. Any notes from experience with this would be appreciated. BTW I have searched threads on ICH and know many of the options.
Will a UV sterilizer have a chance of curing the tank of ICH?
Nitrates currently 20ppm
nitrates 0
am 0
pH 8.2
calc350

 

[barracuda]

Hi there,
are you sure you have nitrate spike? Nitrate in concentration of 20 ppm won't cause ich outbreak as fish is tolerant to high nitrates. If so, and your usual nitrate is low, you probably had ammo, nitrite spikes also, because nitrate is the end product of ammonia conversion.
Hippo tang is very sensitive to a changing in water chemistry though i don't think nitrate 20ppm will cause ich. You will need to treat your diseased fish ASAP. As far as parasites will attack fish gills it is maybe will be late. I would suggest fresh water bath before startin the treatment. 5 min FW bath, with the same PH and temp.

 

[swilbs83]

I have to disagree. FW dips aren't a good thing, especially with a tang. It will only stress them out further, thus making them more prone to ich. Also 5 mins? That is way to long. Fish won't be alive in FW for 5 mins. Hyposalinity is the best/safest way to kill ich.

 

[barracuda]

I have done the FW dips for my tangs in the past before the treatment. FW dips may help killing paracites that attached to the fish gills. Anyway it depends in what condition the fish is. If the only sight of disease is white spots, than you can skip the FW dip step. But if fish breathe is heavy, so FW dip may help, before it will be treated whith Hypo or Copper.

 

[reefaddicted]

I have not had any measureable ammonia or trites. With a mature tank it has been my experience that the cycle go very quickly to nitrate. The nitrate spike was noticed tthe same day as the poor Mandarin. The tang is actually looking better today. I think this may have been caused as you mentioned...by the rapid change in water chemistry. I am going to let it go for now since the fish do not seem to be stressed and the tang looks better. The cleaner shrimp may be doing his job. At least I hope so.