sick fish(ick) would penicilen into the main tank be ok

af330i

af330i

Member
Here is my story, a few of my fish (2 puffers & 2 tangs) are getting ick, I've done the freshwater dip for approximately 3 minutes with each of them and it seems to work but as soon as one fish looks better another one is getting it. I've had good luck in the past with using penicilen and I usually put the fish in a hospital tank but since so many of the fish are getting it, I think I might want to treat the whole tank especially since the hospital tank is only 10 gallons and I can't see putting 3 fish into it for any period of time.
Would the penicllin harm the healthy fish ?
I've tried kick ick in the past and am not really crazy about it ... please give me some advice ....
Here are my tanks specs:
65 gallon Tank
1.019 salt
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrite
60 Nitrate
8.2 PH
82 degree water temp
I have a system with Bio-balls and everything has been running very steady since I started the tank 3 months ago.
All my fish are on the small side & I currently have the following:
4 blue damsels
2 black & White damsels
1 porcupine puffer Medium size (started out on the smaller side)
1 medium size dogface puffer (started out on the smaller side)
1 Valentini puffer
1 Star & Stripe puffer ((very very small (maybe 1-2 inches)
1 Powder blue tang (medium size)
1 blue hippo tang (small)
 
carshark

carshark

Active Member
well i can start with maybe a starting cause of your ick issue. Your tank is entirely too small for those fish, matter of fact some of those you named wouldnt be stress free if it were their own tank to themselves...... you could however, get a 20 long or bigger and use the cycled water thats in your QT and do another 10 gallon water change from your display, and put those guys in there for Hyposalinity...that way you dont have to worry about cycling the new QT... or even better get a 30 gal and do that same thing....
I have no experience with using penicillan on fish. I havent ever read any information about this practice nor have I ever heard of anyone using it....curious to where you got that info from...
 
ithorian_r

ithorian_r

Member
i agree with carshark - way too many fish for a tank that size. i think that is why you are seeing the ick problems. and i have been in this hobby for awhile and have never heard of using penicilin either. where did u learn this? im curious....
 
kdfrosty

kdfrosty

Active Member
Originally Posted by carshark
you could however, get a 20 long or bigger and use the cycled water thats in your QT and do another 10 gallon water change from your display, and put those guys in there for Hyposalinity...that way you dont have to worry about cycling the new QT.
FYI - If you decide to do this you will have to stay on top of water changes, and almost do them daily. There won't be any living biological filtration in the QT tank to convert ammonia.
 
carshark

carshark

Active Member
Originally Posted by KDFrosty
FYI - If you decide to do this you will have to stay on top of water changes, and almost do them daily. There won't be any living biological filtration in the QT tank to convert ammonia.
oh understood. I wasnt even starting with his process, good point to bring up now though.
so he may have only choice, and that is remove all inverts from his tank if he has any, and either copper or hypo his main tank.. hypo is preferred... I dont see copper as a viable option but some people feel differently..
 
af330i

af330i

Member
I knew the first comment about too many fish was going to come up but these fish have been living together and there hasn't been any noticable stress until now which I think was broguht about by a problem I had 1 month ago when my surge protector almost started a fire (a brand new Belkin) and I had to move some of the fish into a friends tank for a couple of days (actually I was away on vacation and he pciked up my fish from my home)
His fish have died from ick so either my fish gave his fish ick or vica versa ...
The penicillen was given to me by the local fish store about 6 months ago when I had a problem with a puffer and it was the only thing that got the puffer to get better ... it worked amazingly.
 
jedi

jedi

Member
Originally Posted by AF330i
I knew the first comment about too many fish was going to come up but these fish have been living together and there hasn't been any noticable stress until now .
This says it all.
Your tank is still VERY new, only 3 months old. And if you figure in the time it took to cycle, etc.. you have had fish in ther only around 2 months.
That is not very long, and that is alot of fish added in a VERY short time.
That is causing the stress on your fish, which is causing them to loose the slime coat, and Ich is the Result.
I have had ich problems in the past, and the only thing that realy worked for me was hypo, or no fish untill the ich's life cycle passes.(4-6 weeks)
Kick-Ich doesnt really work. if you think about it logically, it is reef safe for all inverts and corals, Ich is a type of parasite, or very small invert., so it doesnt really do much.
I have never heard of a truly succesfull story of anyone who ONLY used kick ich as the treament.
Try to lower stress, feed garlic in your food, and dont add any more fish.
Jedi
 
mikeyjer

mikeyjer

Active Member
Originally Posted by AF330i
Here is my story, a few of my fish (2 puffers & 2 tangs) are getting ick, I've done the freshwater dip for approximately 3 minutes with each of them and it seems to work but as soon as one fish looks better another one is getting it. I've had good luck in the past with using penicilen and I usually put the fish in a hospital tank but since so many of the fish are getting it, I think I might want to treat the whole tank especially since the hospital tank is only 10 gallons and I can't see putting 3 fish into it for any period of time.
Would the penicllin harm the healthy fish ?)
Where did you hear that from, using the penicillin?
Originally Posted by AF330i
Here are my tanks specs:
65 gallon Tank
1.019 salt
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrite
60 Nitrate
8.2 PH
82 degree water temp
Your Nitrate is very HIGH!!! You must do 25% water changes to try to bring that down, that might be one of the reasons that your fish is getting sick, did you re-do the acclimating procedure when you introduce your fish back into your tank??
You need to try to bring back your salinity back to 1.024 - 1.025 after all this is done. Plus cut down on your feeding, it's one of the causes of high nitrates, plus you have too many bio-load all at once. That I mean too many fish in a short period of time. Also remember this, having live rock and a protein skimmer will also help you cut down on nitrates. You can't really have a clean up crew cause of your puffers though. So a weekly water change is needed.
Originally Posted by AF330i
I have a system with Bio-balls and everything has been running very steady since I started the tank 3 months ago.
All my fish are on the small side & I currently have the following:
4 blue damsels
2 black & White damsels
1 porcupine puffer Medium size (started out on the smaller side)
1 medium size dogface puffer (started out on the smaller side)
1 Valentini puffer
1 Star & Stripe puffer ((very very small (maybe 1-2 inches)
1 Powder blue tang (medium size)
1 blue hippo tang (small)
Like the above post says, your tank is quite young to start that many fish at once, plus it's a pretty small sized tank to have that many puffer! Powder Blue Tang & Blue Hippo Tang are prone to ich, they're like ich magnets. I would try to feed them Formula 2 (garlic guard) or soaking their food with garlic and feed it to them daily!!! This has been proven to work for me and some others. IMO I wouldn't do copper treatment, they'll cause your tangs to have problems down the road, it kills their digestive system, had experience with it before. IF you caught it early, IMO best to try garlic guard first, then do hypo, some would say do both. I didn't do hypo though and it worked for me.
 
af330i

af330i

Member
Thank you so much for all of the replies ... this board is great and I really appreciate everyone's help
Originally Posted by Mikeyjer
Where did you hear that from, using the penicillin?
When I had the tank set up many many months ago I had a puffer that got ick and then cotton eye and the kick ick didn't work so the local fish store expert gave me the penicillin and it cleared up the cotton eye very quick and the fish looked great.
Originally Posted by Mikeyjer
Your Nitrate is very HIGH!!! You must do 25% water changes to try to bring that down, that might be one of the reasons that your fish is getting sick, did you re-do the acclimating procedure when you introduce your fish back into your tank??
Yes I did the reacclimation process when I put my fish back into the tank ... also yesterday I did a watter change (about 10 gallons) so I need to see if it lowered the nitrite
Originally Posted by Mikeyjer
Like the above post says, your tank is quite young to start that many fish at once, plus it's a pretty small sized tank to have that many puffer! Powder Blue Tang & Blue Hippo Tang are prone to ich, they're like ich magnets. I would try to feed them Formula 2 (garlic guard) or soaking their food with garlic and feed it to them daily!!! This has been proven to work for me and some others. IMO I wouldn't do copper treatment, they'll cause your tangs to have problems down the road, it kills their digestive system, had experience with it before. IF you caught it early, IMO best to try garlic guard first, then do hypo, some would say do both. I didn't do hypo though and it worked for me.

I know I've got too many fish and was hoping to give a few away to a friend of mine.
My problem is whe nI got to the fish store I am like a kid in a candy store. I try VERY hard to have patience as I know this is extremely important but I sometimes can't resist buying more fish.
Anyway I am going to go with a larger tank pretty soon ... I was thinking of possibly a 120 to 180 gallon.
Thanks for the garlic suggestion I had no idea these tangs were so prone to ick
 
jerthunter

jerthunter

Active Member
Just curious but if he only has fish couldn't he do hyposalinity on his display tank? Also, I've heard it is good to keep the s/g low for fish only tanks because this will help prevent ich, is this true??
 
mikeyjer

mikeyjer

Active Member
Originally Posted by Jerthunter
Just curious but if he only has fish couldn't he do hyposalinity on his display tank? Also, I've heard it is good to keep the s/g low for fish only tanks because this will help prevent ich, is this true??
He could do hypo on his main tank, but it's a lot of water to change out. It would cost him a lot less to go with a QT tank, but with all his inhabitants, probably be better to do it in the main tank. I've also heard about low salinity, I know it's not good for inverts, but hypo is at 1.009, I think anything above that, ich can still live. Not sure about that, maybe someone has a suggestion about this. :happyfish
 
carshark

carshark

Active Member
forgot to mention that about copper. well the study has been at 1.010 and 1.009 both seem to be effective. i think that if fish can survive through hypo at 1.009 better to be safer than sorry. I am currently coming out of hypo on my main tank. it has been really tough on a 75 gallon, my recommendations is always a QT but i didnt want to babysit the unestablished QT for 4 weeks. what a process it has been. I cant wait to get my LR and inverts back into my main tank...
 
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