What am I doing wrong?

[demodan]

Ok, I learned from my first overstocking mistake. Now, I have a Trigger and a Dogface puffer. After adding the puffer, they got ich. The puffer is brown all day, but comes out and returns to normal color at night. I started my uv 48 hours b4 adding first fish, and ran it until I noticed ich today. I acclimated them very slowly. What am I doing wrong? I don't mind treating the tank, but soon I am starting a coral tank, and I need to quit doing whatever I am doing to cause this.

 

[demodan]

Ok, Terry, one more question. This is going to be my quarantine tank now, can I use the live rock out of this tank for my new one, since I treated with copper, or is this fish only rock now?

 

[nitrex]

I am not Terry but I have some experience with this stuff and here is MHO
If you used copper in your main tank with live rock, you probably killed a lot of the oragansims that makes live rock so popular. I wouldn't add this rock to a reef your planning on setting up under any circumstances. Here is why...
Copper willbond with certain molecues (Bare with me if this isn't excatly how it works everyone and please correct me) depending on whether it is ionic or not ionic. What this means is that your system can store copper in a form that is almost undectable by most tests and then be relased back into your system at a future date and you wouldn't even know it. Therefore, error on the safe side and scrap the rock for a FO tank
As for the reason your losing fish; IMO 90% of the fish you buy from your LFS has ich or some type of parasite. That is why you must always qurantine. ALWAYS assume every fish you buy has parasites, regardless of what your LFS tells you.
<img src="graemlins//freak.gif" border="0" alt="[freak]" />

 

[nitrex]

No problem Terry!
One additional message to demodan...you may know this, but I will assume nothing for your sake.
The UV light your running will only kill parasites if they pass thru the unit and should be looked upon as a preventative maintenace, the likely hood that a UV light would cure a disease is very unlikely (in case you didn't know this).
In addition, if your running the UV sterilizer off your sump, the chances of the parasite passing thru it is minimal. IMO, your best bet is to run it right off the main tank and keep the intake close to the bottom of the tank.
LOL! <img src="graemlins//freak.gif" border="0" alt="[freak]" />

 

[kris walker]

And to add to nitrex's reply, the reason the ich will probably not pass through the sterilizer is because it is not free-swimming when it is infesting a fish. But it should prevent the ich from spreading to other fish that were already in the tank before you introduced the non-quarantined fish (during the "free-swimming" stage).
cheers,
sam