Help! Sick tang

[dano]

I bought a powder blue tang, six line wwrasse and a firefish in group buy from Petsolutions 10 or 11 days ago. For first time ever, based on recommendation, I set up a quaratine tank. Since yesterday Tang has been hanging out by a rock on the bottom, breathing heavier and I just noticed whiteness starting to cover him. Should i remove the firefish and six line and put in main tank if they look clean or is it too late? What is best treatment? Should I remove the few pieces of rock I have in the quarantine tank or are they also already infected? Thanks. Dano

 

I looked in my shelves and i don't have copper but i do have a bottle of Kordon Rid Ich+ ... Formaldehyde 4.26% (11.52% formalin), Zinc-Fre Ch;oride salt of malacjhite green (0.038%). thanks again. Dano

 

well.. i just looked them all over again and they are all infected...poor babies. I guess I'll wait a little longer and if i don't hear otherwise I will treat with the rid ich for tonight since it is too late to pick up anyhting else for tonight.

[davelin315]

I don't know about treating them, but my guess is that if it's a white film, it's not ich. Can't tell from your description what it is. Also, I wouldn't remove the rock unless you have some alternative method of biological filtration. I also wouldn't put the rock back in if you treat in the QT tank. Are you sure the fish have ich and not something else?

[dano]

pretty sure.. as i look at it more closely they are white dots... i'm reading some archive postings now

[davelin315]

If you've got an ich medication, I'd follow that for the time being and if it doesn't clear it up then go with the other medications. I don't know a lot about medicating, but I do know that the formaldehyde is risky from what I've read. Also, feed a good diet and enrich the food with garlic so that the fish can fight the disease off better. I'd also reduce the salinity in the tank down to 1.009 so that you're doing some hypo on the ich as well. A freshwater dip will also help to alleviate some of the immediate symptoms but I wouldn't advise this unless the fish seem healthy enough to handle it, which it sounds like the tang is not if it's gasping for air.

[dano]

thanks, Dave.

[steveoutlaw]

Dano-

If the treatment you have is safe for inverts, I would also get a cleaner shrimp and put it in there.......they do wonders. Also, start mixing their food with garlic (I use Kent Garlic Extreme). This treatment has proven itself to work many times over.

 

Good luck!!

[dzekunoi]

Do not move other fish. They need to be treated as well as they were exposed to the parasite already.

Good news - you did QT

 

Mine from that order looks good but now I worry (and praise myself for setting up a QT)

[bk_market]

Mine look fine. I didnt QT mine though. I hope it be fine along with my 6 lines

[dano]

Thanks... it was your strong suggestion about quaratining that pushed me to do it... No question about treating the other fish as I saw they were also infected, though their behavior - eating, swimming- has been good. The powder blue mostly rests on bottom, breaths heavy, occasionally takes a swim around and then returns to spot. He did eat some brine shrimp that came close to him yeaterday. Is there any way the brine shrimp (from Superpets) could have brought the ich into the tank?

 

As for what I have done.. set up a new tank in a 5 gallon or so bucket, 1/3 new saltwater and 2/3 from display tank, only put n plastic hiding places, fliter with no biowheel or fliter pad, heater at 78, and 2.5 ml of the Rid Ich. Cleaning out 15 gallon quaratine tank and will move them back in in the next couple of days. Not sure whther to keep treating with the Rid Ich or not but I think I will. Also thought of trying the hyposalinnity ... will probably try to slowly adjust salinity downward each night. Any other ideas/suggestions?

 

Thanks for the idea of the cleaner shrimp... I'll see if I can pick on up. Anyone know where there is one in stock?

 

Thanks. Dano

 

Last night I did try adding Garlic to food... wasn't sure how so I heated some tank water with a half clove of garlic, mushed the garlic a little and then removed it and then soaked a piece of Formula 2 in it and fed it to fish... does this make sense? I guess garlic drops for fish from the pet shop makes more sense..

[davelin315]

For garlic, put it through a press and squeeze the juice into food. If you heat it up it will break down the things you're trying to get into the food (at least from what I understand). The stuff from the pet store is not any better than natural garlic and might be less effective (although it's a lot easier!). My understanding is that the garlic works just like it does in people. It causes the fish to secrete a lot of stuff and helps to generate the slime coat which in turn will help it to fend off disease and any parasites on their skin.

 

Also, I hear the suggestion to put in a cleaner shrimp a lot, but IME, if a fish is pretty sick already, it won't help to have it harassed by an active cleaner as well. It might help, but I have seen where they harass the fish too much and then it doesn't get any rest.

 

Some other suggestions - get the water temperature bumped up a tiny bit and leave the fish alone! The stress of moving back and forth and being freaked out will cause it to deteriorate. For hyposalinity, I would simply prepare the water at the right salinity and then acclimate the fish to that, same as you would normally do. I would also keep the rid ich cycle going as this can only help. I would also add some aeration as the treatment and a bumped up water temperature will also deprive the water of oxygen.

 

As far as the brine, I would avoid adding those at all. They don't have a whole lot of nutritional value and I have heard that you can get ich with them, not because they can be carriers, but sometimes you get contaminated water mixed in with them that has ich in it.

[dano]

Thank you, Dave. A couple of questions... I was concerned that doing the Rid Ich and Hyposalinity would be too stressful and that I should only do one of these treatments at a time. What do you think? And I was gogin to raise temperature in tank to 80 -82 but then had concern about the aeration at the higher temperature because of the Rid Ich. Currently i am aerating from the water flow of the HOB filter and a tube connected to an air pump. I didn't want to use a wodden airstone thinking the ich may hang out in it but I think I have a plastic wand which I will attach when I get home tonight. And I'm thinking the 5 gallon bucket is too small for the three fish and should move them back to the 15 gallon maybe tomorrow. But then I will keep them there. Thanks . Dano

[dano]

update... when i returned home last night the tang had died ... 6 line and firefish still infected though still active.. I refilled the 15 gallon, acclimated the two fish and raised temp to 81. I'm slowly lowering salinity. Added another dose of RId Ich last night and fed this AM with garlic infused food. will keep updating if anyone is interested. And thanks again for all of the advice.

[Lee Stearns]

Hey Dano,

I think that ich is fairly dormant in nearly any system- I even think that ich can get into a system by adding something as innocuous as untreated tap water or placing ice in an aquarium- Would seem like salt water ich could not survive in fresh water like that. Either that or the those additions have stressed the fish in my experience in the old days of running fish and invert only systems. Now all that being said they say that if you leave a system fish free for 6-8 weeks that the ich would be gone. Supposedly it can not stay in the dormant stage for that long- The cysts open up every 2-3 weeks and go into a free swimming state for 24-48 hours usually at night to find a fish host. Now there are various strains of ich both fresh and salt and brackish and we have even some strains in the aquarium industry that are very virulent and seldom found in the wild because of our LFS running systems on some form of treatments for indefinite periods...I know of local LFS that have had an outbreak that nearly decimated all livestock within 48-72 hours. So when we talk ich there are so many ideas and so many different things that have worked for one person and may not work for another. Now with all that said I can only address my experiences because I have not done the pathology at the cellular level of any of my ich through the years. I would generally state that anything that you feel might have been contaminated should go through a 8 week fallow time without contact with fish to keep from spreading. QT tanks I would always run bare bottom, but I like you have put rocks, calurpa, and pvc pipe for hiding places. If you were to take a QT tank down I would clean it with a light Clorox fresh water before using again. Otherwise just run it with the rock and bio wheel 8 weeks then I would not worry much about putting the rock in the fuge of my main system. It is good that you did not use copper based treatment with any of the rocks in the QT- that would have made it unusable in system that you had any snails in. I have had ich in my main tank and have tried the hypo salinity before and raised the temp which accelerates the ich cycle, but that was before I had some fairly sensitive sps corals. I did not have much luck in either case and have found that the best thing for tangs is get them a little help like cleaner shrimp and Neon gobies which are nice additions to a reef tank that do not place much bio load. Keep the tangs appetite up by adding fresh garlic to their food, keep plenty of safe havens (caves and or PVC) and keep grazing material in front of them 24- 7 like romaine lettuce, nori, calurpa, zucchini peels. These stress relievers helps them to get fat and with- stand the occasional smaller outbreaks of ich. Now what is the difference with life threatening outbreak other than a resistant strain of ich- I think when the really get coated as a last resort they can be fresh water dipped and placed in QT with a rid ich treatment- but those heroic efforts are seldom effective because the poor fish is so stressed by being taken from his reef and placed into a small strange environment that they just get stressed more and ich jumps on this compromised immune system. One other treatment that I have had success with is add fresh ginger ground to their food like spirulinal flakes soaked in selcon (or high vitamin supplement). Garlic increases appetite and stimulates the Immune sytem. Ginger is a natural antibiotic and helps them fight off secondary infections- which lowers the stress and many swear is a "cure' for ich out breaks. But nothing beats a happy healthy fat fish for fighting off the smaller ich outbreaks that Tangs especially seem to get frequently in nature as well. Just my two cents on how my fish survive the occasional spots that show up on them every few months or so for no reason that I can identify, which is why I say I am not sure you ever get it out of your system. I am in the process of adding UV to my main system to run 24-7 like Flowerseller does- If nothing else to catch the stray ich in its free swimming stage and to clarify my water a bit.

Regards

[Boxxr]

Dano,

 

Sorry to hear about your loss. I lost a powder blue to ich about 3 months ago. I agree with the comments of the other folks also.

 

What I did, and it was effective, was set up a 20 gallon, glass bottom, and added some hiding places. I then added a copper treatment to the hospital tank. I then took my remaining fish and added them into the hospital tank. I kept my fish in the 20 g tank for 7 weeks. During that time, my main display tank only had my inverts and corals in there.

 

After waiting for the 7 weeks, I put the fish back in the display tank and for the last 2 months all is well. When I purchase fish now, I will quarantine them before placing them into the main tank.