Fish with ich cured?

Plesoine · Aug 12, 2015

A few weeks ago, I noticed that some of my fish in my 55 gallon tank had ich. I've removed all the fish and transferred them to a quarantine tank. The 55 has live rock, corals, inverts, etc. so I couldn't copper that tank. I heard that the tank should sit fallow for 72 days. In the quarantine tank, 6 out of 8 fish survived and are looking healthy and ich free with the treatment of copper. My question is, how long should I wait to place those fish back into another tank, (not the 55, I have other tanks) to make sure that they are absolutely positively ich free??

TJ's Reef · Aug 13, 2015

Question... what fish and what size QT setup ? When I went through QT/Fallow period I left all fish in the QT's and just made them more comfortable by adding additional PVC structure and some plastic plants for the duration.

Cheers, Todd

Randy Holmes-Farley · Aug 13, 2015

I'm not sure of the answer so I'll move this to the fish disease forum.

Humblefish · Aug 13, 2015

The fish need to be left in copper for at least one month. The copper must be within therapeutic range (0.35-0.5 mg/L if using Cupramine) for the entire 30 days. After that, you can transfer the fish to a disease free DT and they should be fine. DO NOT lower the copper in the QT before transferring them.

Your 55 gallon they originally came from must be left fallow for 72 days before adding any fish back to it.