Ich... Oh boy!

[Spongerock69]

Hey Everyone,

We are experiencing a wave of Ich, and I just put together a 20 gallon quarantine tank with a filter, power-head,
and 100w heater. i have the specific gravity at 1.012, the salinity at 17ppt and the temp at 78 degrees, and I'm treating
them with Marine Max.I have my Butterfly fish, Long-Horned Cow fish and my clowns in there now, but I just discovered
that two of my 3 Engineer Gobies still in the main tank have it as well. I feel like I'm losing control of this quickly...

Can I fit more fish into the Q-tank without stressing them out too much?
Should I just treat the main tank with Marine Max as well?
What kind of water changes do I need to perform in the Q-tank? (keep getting different info on this)

If anyone has any words of wisdom on how to manage this situation, I could really use the help, thanks.

-Michael

 

[Bosco83]

You should read through all the ich threads in Lee's fish section. You will have to pull all the fish out of your tank and leave it fallow for about eight weeks for the ich to die off. In the mean time you should just do a hypo treatment on your fish in the qt tank. I wouldn't use whatever Marine Max is it probably won't work. I have had to do this twice in 3 1/2 years you would have thought I would have learned my lesson the first time. I will never put a fish in my tank again without qt for at least a couple of weeks without any signs of disease or parasites.

Good Luck,
Brian

 

[Spongerock69]

Thanks a lot Brian,

What would you do if you were me, and all you had was one 20 gallon quarantine tank? Would you
pull all the fish out and place them there, or figure something else out? I live in an apartment, and
I don't have room to use 14 different quarantine tanks so I'm a little hamstrung. I'm beginning to realize
that even though I thought I'd done due diligence in preparing for this, I was not prepared!!! ...lol

Is this a situation where it would be more important for me to figure out a way to no matter what to
get the fish to a quarantine situation, even if it is somewhere else in some other tank? Or is it somehow
possible to treat this situation with just my main 150 gallon display and one 20 gallon Q-tank?

I really appreciate any wisdom you can pass my way, and I will definitely heed it.

Thanks,

Michael

 

[Bosco83]

I guess that would depend on how large your fish are. If they are pretty small I would put them all in the 20 if not I would rehome them letting the person know they do have ich and should be treated. Either way I have learned the hard way that they all have to come out to cure it. The second time around was in my 210 and all my fish were healthy and doing great. I really wanted a Powder Brown and couldn't keep them alive in qt. So I did some reading chose a healthy one and ignored the fact that he may have ich. I put him in my display tank right off the bat and everything was fine for a couple of weeks. I was so happy it's the one fish I really wanted to keep and he was swimming around and eating nori like a pig. Then he started showing some ich when he probably got stressed from the new environment. Well I kept reading that if you feed them good and have good water quality a lot of people said they can live with it and be ok. So anyway those people are wrong pretty soon almost all my fish were showing ich and some started dying off. I ended catching all the ones that I could with a net because they would come to me when I would walk up to the tank. The rest took me about a month to catch with a fish trap. I treated all of them in two different qt tanks lost a few fish in the process including the Powder Brown and learned a hard lesson for the second time.

 

[returnofsid]

I would use a couple large rubbermaid totes, each about 30+ gallons. You don't need aquariums to QT. As long as you can provide the right water quality, some flow and heat, you're good to go. Add a few large PVC fittings, for the fish to hide in.

I would treat with Hyposalinity, per the stickies you'll find in the Fish Discussion Forum and I would QT ALL fish, leaving the display tank fallow, the entire time.

Treating your entire display will be a waste. You'd need to drop the salinity to hypo levels, killing off the beneficial bacteria that's populated the display. This die off would cause a cycle, and be very damaging to your fish.

 

[Bosco83]

Did you find all the stickies to read? There are a lot of great ones on hypo how to keep healthy fish and how to treat them.

 

[Spongerock69]

Thanks a lot guys, I appreciate it. I think I have enough information now to do this..one
more thing about QT...how on earth to keep the ammonia and nitrate levels down without
a cycled bio-filter? I continue to perform 50% water changes every day and I cannot for
the life of me keep the levels down below .50ppm on the ammonia, and 10ppm on nitrates.
I even put some beneficial bacteria in there, but it only brought it down a little, and even
then the reduction only lasted a half a day.

Anyone have a clue what to do about that?

Also(there were two things I guess) If anyone can tell me how to post pictures on this site
I'd love to get some up of the tank. It keeps telling me my pics are too big, but I shrunk them down to
a size you can barely even see, and I still keep receiving the same response. I must be
overlooking something

Thanks,

Michael