Please help! ick outbreak

[jesscola]

In my tank I have: 2" coral beauty, 1.5" powder blue, small niger trigger and a mated pair of cinnamon clowns. I noticed a couple of days ago that my powder blue and coral beauty were scratching themselves, but they had no spots. This morning my powder blue has several little white spots on him, as do the niger trigger and the angel. Everybody else is doing alright.
I do not have a hospital tank. I have no live rock in the main tank. The only non fish thing in there is a long tentacle anemone. My question is, can I drop the salinity level of the tank without hurting the anemone? And will doing this and feeding the tank garlic soaked food cure the ick or should I do something else in addition. Any suggestions would be great.

 

[beth]

You cannot drop the salinity with the anemone. Inverts have no tolerance for hyposalinity. Perhaps you can ask your LFS to hold him for you while.
Drop the salinity over the course of 2 days to 1.009. Keep the SG at this level for a min of 3 weeks AFTER all signs of ick are gone from your fish. Then take another week to raise the salinity to normal levels.
Soaking food in garlic is a good idea, and nothing else is needed if you follow this procedure.