Cali Kid Corals

re-quarantine and Ich advice needed.

Chappati13

Chappati13

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Well, this is not a post I was hoping to ever make. Long story short, I did not properly quarantine my early additions to the tank and I think that's come back to bite me in the end. My juvi yellow tang that I added arround February 14th or so was acting a bit stressed two days ago so I started keeping a close eye on him. Last night I saw three white dots that looked like specks of sand on his dorsal fin and two back near his tail. This morning said dots are no longer visible. I started reading up last night and from the sound of it I think I've inflicted ich on the poor critter, I was lucky enough to purchase just before the prince increase and given their susceptibility to ich it was properly quarantined (and medicated) on my behalf before putting him in the tank.

I'm looking for a bit of advice on how to move forward here with minimal risk to my livestock. I'm running a 120 gallon tank that I've been setting up for a while now - if you're interested I have a tank journal linked below.

Let me start by saying all livestock are currently eating well, swimming strong, and at least appear to be mostly stress free. The tank is very lightly stocked at the moment as I'm not still working out what my long term goals are for this tank.

The current stock list (in order of addition)
2 x Midnight Lighting Clowns
2 x blue / green Chromis
2 x engineer gobies
1 x purple Stripe Dotyback Dotie (likely to replace with Royal Gramma when I figure this out)
1 x juvi yellow tang

Everything I've added has been juvi, and appeared healthy when they went in. I stupidly believed that I could observe for a few days before adding them to the tank and that would be enough. I also stupidly believed that if there were no signs of illness that meant things were OK. I currently do not have a large enough tank to quarantine everyone. Nor do I have copper or test kits. I'm still doing my research on how and accepting the reality that if I want this tank to be healthy long term I'm probably going to have to pull the fish, do a real quarantine, and leave the tank follow for a couple of months.

I guess I'm looking for input from folks who have seen / done something similar. How long do I have to make a good plan? Do I need to take action in the next couple of days or do I have a little time to set things up? How large of a quarantine tank should I be looking for with this livestock? How likely am I to lose everything while trying to fix this? When I do start the clock to leaving the tank fallow do I need to remove the cleanup crew as well? What about the few coral frags I've got in there do I need to remove them? Given there won't be any bioload in the tank for so long, how do I keep nutrients in the tank to keep the cleanup and corals happy? I have many questions....
 
If it is indeed Ich, you have a little time to work out a plan. I have first hand experience pulling all my fish out of my 300g and leaving the DT go fallow for 3 months. You only need to pull out the fish. All of your invertebrates are fine in the display. Depending on your rock work, pulling out your fish may be a challenge. I used the the TTM method for my fish and once they finished TTM, I put them in a temporary 180g holding tank while the main DT remained fallow for the remaining 3 months. You don't have many fish and they are mostly small, so you can use 10g or 20g tanks. I have four of each and would be happy to lend you 4-6 tanks for this. I also have heaters and air pumps/stones that you can borrow as well. I see that you are in Hercules...I'm in Pleasanton Which may be a bit far for you. Either way, I'm happy to go into more detail with you if you decide to go this route.
 
You could attempt peroxide dosing. I am currently trying it to safely introduce new fish to my tank. I did not qt the first fish so I am taking precautions to manage the risk. My understanding is that the peroxide inhibits the ability of ich to transfer in the water column.

You can read about the method here. The op used it as an approach to an ich outbreak and had good results, but this is still being tested.
 
Sorry to hear your tang is feeling ich-y, one easy thing you can do is offer some nori to munch on. They also appreciate spirulina brine shrimp. That will boost the internal immune response and can reduce any food related stressor.
 
How strong is the flow in your tank? I always thought if you could increase flow in tank it makes it harder for the parasites to latch on the fish. Just a thought.
 
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Opinion: You have two major options:

1) Pull all the fish out, and fully treat. Leave tank fallow for weeks.
A huge amount of work, will definitely kill ich, but stress may also kill a couple of fish in process.
For treatment, I would recommend tank transfer method, not copper, but opinions vary.

2) Leave fish in and do your best to get them through it.
Strong UV with good dwell time helps by reducing the number of free swimming threonts/trophonts.
Making sure fish have optimal food and conditions helps, like giving chicken soup and bed rest to a person.
Removing the badly infected fish can help. To treat them special, and keep them from massively reinfecting others.
Various "ich cure" magic potions do not help, and can even make things worse if they stress the tank. Beware!

Note that if you do #2, your tank will be infected long after visible signs of ich go away,
so new fish added may get it.
 
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