ich

[Ross]

I recently added my flame angel to my big tank. He had ich and it is getting worse. Now my royal gramma has it. They are both eating and doing fine, but i don't want to get any worse. I am not going to put the angel back in the 10g qtine because it is way to small. How should i treat him? Could i do a fw bath?

[Ross]

Ok well i have decided i just want to end it all right now. I think i will take out all my lr and the few corals i have and do hyposalinity on the big tank. Do you think this will be a good idea? I would need someone to hold my lr and corals for me. Can anyone help me. I will be glad to give you some frags or something when i have enough corals. Right now i have like 5. 4 shrooms, 2 xenias, 1 small rock of polyps, 1 hammer, 1 toadstool. I have about 85lbs or lr. Please help me out if you can.

[sholzrichter]

If you decide to give your fish a fw bath, make sure the temperature and PH are the same as your tank. Also, the fw bath needs to be at least 10 minutes to take effect. I read that from an article, but I haven't never give my fish a fw bath.

I have used Chem-Marin Stop Parasites before. It doesn't have any copper in it, and it is reef same. I used this product for 2 weeks, and my corals were fine. One thing, if your fishes are very sick, this might not help.

Gook luck ! :)

[Ross]

Could you tell me more about that product? Does anyone else have opions on this?

[sholzrichter]

You will need to add the product in twice a day for 5 days, but I used it for 12 days. Then, you will need a water change. I also drop the salinity down a little because ich doesn't do well in low salinity. You can search online for the product info.

[SaltyJim]

Ross,

I would think that the last thing you'd want to do is tank all of you corals and LR out. I seems like you just finally got it ready for the corals, and now you want to take it all apart? I think if you are going to medicate, try to use the q-tank, or a reef safe product. Also remember, even if you do treat the fish in a q-tank, the parasites will still exist in the main tank until you can treat that with a reef safe product as well. Maybe you should try that approach.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this? I've never gotten ich in a reef tank, only in the FO tank.

Good luck with this Ross.

Jim

[kaiser]

Don't do FW dip. I read up on the this and there is no proof that it works. My Flame did not make it. Get some greenex. $5.00 treats 600 gallons and it is reef safe.

[Ross]

Ok
I'm gonna take my 30 fw down tonight and give the fish away and get it cycling. I will run the tank fishless for a few weeks with just the coral i guess. I have heard that the products are hit or miss. Sometimes they don't work. Should i try or just use the qtine.

[Ross]

Sorry to hear about your flame kai.

[captexas]

I have a blue regal tang that gets ich whenever it gets stressed sometimes. I have had excellent luck with Kent Garlic Extreme. You can place drops in the tank water itself and also soak food with 2 drops of it. Garlic has been shown to work well as a non chemical treatment.

[kaiser]

Ross that was my 1st flame I had a while ago. I still got the one I bought at aquatic warehouse.

[Jenn]

Sorry to hear about this Ross....I've been there. Lost all my fish and 2 anemones. I was told to try the product Kent RxP. It DID NOT seem to work too well. Maybe it was something I did wrong or just too late, but I wouldn't risk it. Now I am stuck w/ an almost full $17. bottle of it.

[captexas]

I have used the Kent RxP stuff as well with little or no sign of it working. The Garlic Extreme stuff has worked for me which is great as blue regal tangs are very prone to getting ich.

[Jenn]

I definitely seccond the Garlic Extreme. Forgot about that one. I soak the brine in it 3 times a week just for a treat. They love it!!!!

[Jenn]

I definitely second the Garlic Extreme. Forgot about that one. I soak the brine in it 3 times a week just as a treat. They love it!!!!

[Tim Marvin]

Save your money and go to HEB and get some fresh crushed garlic. You can feed this in with your food. The juice will soak into flake and they will consume it pretty fast. Regal tangs get out breaks, but I don't think it is ick, as it never effects the other fish and it looks slightly different. My regal will get little white bumps on it every few months, but it goes away in a day or two. Ick won't go away that fast. Fresh water dips will stress the fish more and you will more than likely have an angel that swims upside down by morning. If they are still eating well I have had great results with the garlic, but kent is very expensive when you can get it readily at HEB for a fraction of the cost.
Hope this helps.

[Ross]

I have been soaking there food in garlic since the beginning. I guess it hasn't worked for me. I think i just did the fastet tank tear down EVER!!! 1 hour and 11 minutes ago i had a happy tank of cichilds. Now it is a cycling sw tank. I used the hob filter from the 10g and another hob filter that was on the 30 when it was fw. I put in a handfull of live bioballs from my wet/dry so hopefully it will be ready for fish a a couple days.

[Ross]

I am going to do hypo in the 30g. Does anyone have a refactometer or glass hydrometer i can borrow. Like i said i will be happy to give you some frags when i get enough corals.

[Sherri]

When I first got my Regal Tang...he stressed and came down with ich...I posted for help and was told about the garlic also. But I was also told to get a couple of cleaner shrimp and let Mother Nature go to work. I did and as soon as I put them in they jumped the tang - freaked out the tang as he was a baby and didn't know what the heck happened the first time, but after that he searched THEM out. Cleaned him up. Last week he stressed again cause his running buddies (clowns) hosted my anemone and he couldn't join them. He got ich again and I haven't seen the cleaner shrimp actually cleaning him, but the ich is now gone. I believe in garlic extract and Mother Nature's cleaner shrimp. I was convinced to stay away from chemicals. The shrimp have proven to be a good preventative, but I'm not sure when there is a serious multiple outbreak. Good luck Ross...but I would add some shrimp for future...

[matt]

Ross;

Let's see if I understand what you're doing. You're taking your fish out of your reef tank, putting them in a separate tank, then lowering the salinity of that tank, leaving your reef tank fishless for a few weeks to rid the system of parasites? So far, so good; that's exactly what I would suggest. But, in the q-tine tank, (which i guess is your old fw tank, right?) maybe you should treat the sick fish with copper. It's a real PITA, but it works. Just try to keep a decent hang on skimmer going and have lots of water for water changes handy; you might have a real hard time establishing any sort of bio filter in a copper-treated tank.

The cleaner shrimp idea in your reef tank is also very effective; you might consider putting a few cleaner shrimp in there (although it seems nobody in town has any these days) depending on the size of the tank. If you have a few, I think they'll be a little more aggressive at cleaning than only one.

Good luck

Matt

[Richard]

Better be careful using copper on any of the centropyge angels. I would go with formalin on these. I have not found hyposalinity to be all that effective although simply moving the fish to a clean tank may be enough to result in a "cure". If they don't have it too bad I would simply move them to the clean tank and feed them, feed them, feed them. A cleaner shrimp is a good idea if you can find one- all of the wholesalers have been out for a couple of weeks, don't know why.
If it continues to worsen then I would treat them with formalin. If you go with copper then you need to keep the level consistently at .15. Many fish will tolerate cu levels of .25 but that will probably kill the flame angel.

In all honesty I would do a FW dip before placing them in the new tank and that would probably solve your problems. However I quit recommending FW dips because alot of people tend to kill their fish when trying a fw dip for the first time. Just a note on fw dips, doing a fw dip on a fish and placing it back into an infected tank is very bad juju. You may remove/kill the cysts on the fish but you also wipe out its slime coat thereby opening it up to an even worse infestation.

[captexas]

Along with the cleaner shrimp, I have also found that neon gobies work well too for. My regal tang will swim over to where my neon sits and let it clean him from time to time. It took the tang awhile to figure out what the little guy was trying to do, but now he loves it.

[Jimnorris]

I have tried many ways to remove ICH. Copper, lowering the SG, freshwater dips----Kent garlic works for me. I have notice it does take acouple of weeks but the fish seem to love the food I soak with it. One other good thing there are NO vampires to be seen anywhere! You open a bottle of the Kent and wow!
Jim

[Ross]

Thanks guys. I am going to do just what matt said, but am not going to use copper. I will lower the sg down to .009 for 3 weeks. I have heard too many bad things about copper and angels or tangs. I do have a cleaner shrimp, but haven't see him cleaning anything off the fish. Does anyone have a refactometer? I really don't trust my little plastic one when i'm getting the sg that low.

[Ross]

Forgot to ask if the stuff "Quick Cure" works.

Contents99.20$ formaldehyde .75% malachite green

[Sherri]

That is what I had bought and was about to use when I decided to ask questions myself. I was told not to use, so I didn't....maybe someone else can add to this as to why/why not.

[dan]

i have a glass hydrometer,the kind you float if you need to borrow.

[Ross]

I'm thinking about buying a refractometer. What do you think about this one.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2366794517&category=20 755

[Ross]

Does ANYONE have a refractometer? Please!!!!!

[Sherri]

I'm sorry Ross...but I don't have one...

[Jimnorris]

Ross,
I have one. The most important item to make sure to have is that it adjusts automatically to temp.! The one pictures does not.
Jim

[Ross]

It doesn't? It says it has ATC which stand for automatic temparature compensation. Doesn't that mean it will adjust to any temp?