Lesson Learned

[squiddly]

And here I was, thinking that if I only bought fish from reputable places, I would never have to worry about ich or those other nasties. Who needs a quarantine tank when you have fish from good places? Well..... ooops. I just feel like venting.

 

Having just finished lowering the salinity on my 120, having dragged many buckets of RO water up the basement stairs (after having already removed the live rock and the inverts), I can tell you that a quarantine tank would have been a lot less painful. This is day one of the salinity being low enough to be therapeutic and the standard I've read is to count 4 weeks from the time you see no ich on any of the fish, then slowly bring the salinity back up over 5 days or so.

 

For those 6 or so weeks, I get to look at an icky tank that has only fish and some PVC pieces for fishies to hide in on one side of the room, and a beautiful tank with beginner corals and some anemones and inverts on the other side of the room that would REALLY love to have some fish :-). Frustrating? Definitely! Every time it looks like I'm making headway, something weird happens. The good news is that so far (knock wood) I haven't lost any of the fish, and the ich looks much less than it was the day before.

 

So, in any case, that's my whine of the day. I have a feeling it's going to be a long 6 weeks.

 

p.s. The ich fish did NOT come from F&F or BRK or AqOne.

Edited November 15, 2006 by squiddly

[HowardofNOVA]

Sorry to hear about that Mikki,

What type of fish was it?

I've been very fortunate not to deal with this yet!

Tangs are the worst for this and should always be target fish #1 for the QT first!

Sorry again!

[squiddly]

Sorry to hear about that Mikki,

What type of fish was it?

I've been very fortunate not to deal with this yet!

Tangs are the worst for this and should always be target fish #1 for the QT first!

Sorry again!

 

Thanks Howard. Kole Tang was the culprit. Bingo on the guess :-). Purple Tang had a few flecks a few hours after I got him, but I used Kick Ich, soaked food in garlic, installed a UV and did a bunch of water changes and it "disappeared." I know know that Kick Ich doesn't do nuthin, garlic is good for boosting immune systems but doesn't "cure" ich, the UV is great when the ich critters are in the water column, but can't help when it's on the fish, and the water changes are always great but won't necessarily do much. When the Kole came in, all ich broke loose.

 

I'm really hoping that this long drawn out hypo fun will do the trick. All the articles I've read and all the people I've talked to say that the only real ways are copper and hypo, and I'm hoping not to have to take all the sand out of the system to do copper. I've also read that they hypo is much less stressful on the fish, which is also what I'm hoping for.

 

The good news is that I'm really happy with the 180. Going to put some more zoas in it tomorrow if I'm lucky. Doing the prep work now to get things ready for some sps. Woo hoo! At least I can mess with the one tank while looking across the room at the ugly naked tank :-).

Edited November 15, 2006 by squiddly

[dandy7200]

Look at it this way, you get piece of mind by putting a fish through hypo. I hypo everything. This means that any time I want a new fish I GET to have him in his own special tank for 6-8 weeks, makes them fat and happy and you GET to observe them on their own before adding them to the community. It really doesn't matter if you get a fish from a reputable dealer or not for ich, pretend the minute you leave the fish store that you KNOW the fish has it and treat them so. Copper is pretty stressful on the fish, just do hypo unless you have too use the kick ich, even then, follow it up with hypo. One other great thing about doing this is it will prevent you from overstocking too quickly, not that anyone would do something like that......

[traveller7]

Going to put some more zoas in it tomorrow if I'm lucky.

Please don't.

 

While your fish are in treatment, please don't add anything new to your display tank unless it has also been through QT. Even simple zoanthids have brought truly nasty critters in with them.

 

Everything you add should be quarantined, to prevent adding nasties to your display.

[squiddly]

Please don't.

 

While your fish are in treatment, please don't add anything new to your display tank unless it has also been through QT. Even simple zoanthids have brought truly nasty critters in with them.

 

Everything you add should be quarantined, to prevent adding nasties to your display.

 

Oh, they would be in the 180 that has no nasties. And I have a nice 24 that can now be a quarantine tank until I get a 10 gallon icky tank to quarantine in, then the 24 will become a seahorse and pipefish tank eventually. It's nice to have plans :-).

[traveller7]

Oh, they would be in the 180 that has no nasties. And I have a nice 24 that can now be a quarantine tank until I get a 10 gallon icky tank to quarantine in, then the 24 will become a seahorse and pipefish tank eventually. It's nice to have plans :-).

Glad to hear you are QTing your corals as well :>)

 

It will make your hobby experience so much more enjoyable.