White spots the kiss of death?

[luptinpitman]

Question for the pros. If i have a fish that gets white spots on him, is it an absolute 100% of the time ick prognosis?
Is there any other reason for a fish to ever get white spots?
Is an ick outbreak ALWAYS caused by a bad fish?
Will ick affect my corals in any way?

 

[luptinpitman]

White spots look like little salt deposits on the body of the fish.
Lost a Bat fish, Flame Angel, Clown, and Mandarin Goby. Now the Dotty back has the spots but he shows no signs of being sick.
I really don't give a damn anymore anyway. Fish suck. I have the majority of my time and money into the corals anyway. Thanks for the feedback.
PS: All fish were properly quarintined previous to introduction to the tank.

 

[beth]

What would you consider proper QT?

 

[luptinpitman]

All fish are purchased through my "fish guy". He has tanks at his show room that are quartintine tanks. Nothing in them but sand, water and the fish be tested.
Either way, I don't give a damn anymore about fish. My dotty back did die to today by the way.
I have a hawiian scissortail, a yellow tail damsel, a long nose hawk, coral beauty and a lemon peel angel left in the tank. None have spots, all are eating well.
I plan on buying a ton of damsels of all different kinds and just dump them in the tank to give it color and movement. I am tired of being emotionally and financially invested in these fish.
200 gallon setup with about 30 corrals in it. Don't know why I care about the fish anyway.
By the way, pH/nitrite/nitrate, and ammonia all are perfect in the tank. 20% water change once a month, along with very solid cleaning. Never miss a feeding for fish or corrals....

 

[luptinpitman]

Please don't misinterperet my frustration. I appreciate the help! I am just pissed about loosing over $200 in fish in under a week.
My fish is not a LFS. He is a setup/installer that does favors for clients when asked, which includes quarintine for new fish additions. He will not give me a fish until he has them for at least a week in his tank.
One piece of information that might help. I recently ordered 60 snails and 40 hermits from garf.org. I dumped them direct into the tank.
So two theories:
1: snails/hermits caused it?
2: Batfish was the last fish introduced. About a hour after introducing him, I noticied he was missing a fin. I called my guy and he did not remember seeing the batfish injured.
So, what do you think? Do fish just get ich spontaneously due to stress, or are they infected from another fish?
Thanks again.

 

[lesleybird]

Hello, I bought a product by Ruby Reef called Kick-Ich that is safe for all fish, corals and invertebrates. It also does not destroy your bacterias essential to your biofiltration, and is copper free. It works well but is expensive. It costs about $30 for a bottle to treat my 40 gallon tank for two weeks. I am going to treat for a month to be on the safe side as only the swimming stage is killed, and I have read that the cysts can live for up to 3 or four weeks in the gravel bed.
I have seen another by this company product that is suppose to be just as safe to treat marine velvet. I also purchased a probiotic liquid with bacteria that is suppose to help protect against these diseases. I don't know how well it works, but it has not hurt my fish, shrimp, snails, or crabs. Lesley

 

[gatorcsm]

My experience with the kick-ich/greenex products was not at all satisfactory. I lost 2 cleaner shrimp and a blood shrimp. At the time I had no corals, so no experience there.

 

[jlem]

I believe that the reef safe products do work and are reef safe. Obviously they work or they can't be sold. People can say that companies can sell and say what they want, but that is just not true. Companies go out of buisness for stuff like that and Kick-Ich is nothing new. But the kicker is that you have to dose according to your gallons of water. With Hypo you drop the salinity/specific gravity down to a certain point regardless of the tank size, and copper you can get a test kit to precisely dose the tank. With reef safe meds you have to subtract glass, rocks, sand and add in filter gallons and numerous other headaches if you really want to use the product how it was intended. So to say that reef safe meds won't work anyways is a blaket statement with no solid backing. I will give in to they are more of a pain in the butt to calculate an exact dosage and even then you can only hope that you dosed correctly.

 

[blackdog]

I was going to ask this question separately, but I'll add it to this discussion of ick.
Has having a cleaner shrimp as one of the inhabitants been shown to reduce the chances of an ich outbreak in new arrivals or in the tank overall?

 

[fishman830]

my hippo has what looks like dead skin on his forehead, and he scrapes alot against anything, i got him from swf.com, he looked great when i got him and still does he eats, and thats really the onyl time he comseo ut of his little home