Originally Posted by JO118
one of my 4 percula clowns is showing early signs of ich, having white dots towards the back of its body. another one has about 3 white dots on its fins.
my fish are: 4 percs, 2" yellow tang who seems healthy, a cleaner shrimp & a blood shrimp.
What do i do now?
My brother has a 10 gallon with 1 clownfish in it, im sure i could move that clownfish and use the tank as a qt.
I did a water change two days ago.
Help anyone.
First off, how big is your tank. I think that 4 clownfish is way to many unless you have a huge tank where they can pair off and claim their own territories.
As for the 10g that would be fine to use as a QT for just one fish (also the tank would have to have no inverts and corals) but the problem is that all your tank inhabitants are in danger in havin ich, even if there isnt any visible signs of ich, your fill can still carry the parasite.
Now heres the risk that you will be taking to just treat the one clownfish.
1.) By just QTing the one fish that has visible signs of ich, this leaves your display tank still with the parasit. As long as there are fish in there after ich has been present it will always exist.
2.) Like I said above since Ich will still be present even though the fish may appear healthy at the moment, it is likely that your other fish will get ich at some point.
What I would do is go out and buy a whole new tank all together, one that will be suitable for your 5 fish for at least a period of 6 weeks. Use our water from the display tank and seed the QT with a small cup of LS or a Foam pad from the main tank. This will greatly reduce the cycle time in the new QT. Make sure you have an Ammonia test kit to test for it and be prepared to do water changes to keep the ammonia down if there is any.
To cure the ich you can either run hypo or treat with copper. IMO i would go the Hypo route. This process should take about a total of 6-7 weeks. The first 7-10 days should be spent doing daily water changes to lower the salinity to the target level of 1.009. When I run hypo, I always shoot for a little lower such as 1.0075 or 1.008. I do this so that if the salt raised because of evap before i can top off it will not rise above the 1.009 mark. After you reach your target salinity level of 1.009, the tank remains there for 3 weeks. If the salt happens to go higher than 1.009 in this three week period, then you will have it drop it back down and start the 3 weeks over again. While doing water changes to get the level down, monitor pH since that the lower the salinity the lower the pH of the water will be (dose accordingly).
After the 3 weeks are up take the next 7-14 days to raise the levels back up. When raising the salinity always raise it alot slower than you did drop it. After you get it back up to your normal salinity of your main tank, keep it them in there another week or so to monitor them to make sure nothing comes back. After that then they are free to go back into your main tank.
While you are running this hypo your main tank would have been fishless for a period of 6 or more weeks where by then the ich's life cycle would be up and have died. Remember ich needs fish to host on in order to live so no fish = no ich.
Hope this helps
