Ich and Marine velvet info

ScottyD36 · May 23, 2021

So what ever attacked my tank did a number on my fish. I lost 2 clown fish, Midas blenny, possum wrasse, fire fish, royal gamma and my pygmy hawkfish. The only things i have left in my tank are a 6 line wrasse and a green chromis fish. Also in my tank I have a cleaner shrimp, blood shrimp, 3 urchins and a bunch of snails. All my parameters were fine in my tank and at normal numbers. It was either Ich or velvet. I am assuming velvet by how fast all my fish died. I tried quarantining the sick fish and their was just nothing I could do to save them even with treatment. If my two fish end up getting it on them and die. I plan on just letting my tank sit without fish in it for a long time and just focus on my corals to pass time. Here is my question will the shrimp and snails carry ich or velvet on them and say after 100 day fallow period when I introduce a fish I could be dealing with this all over again. Should I be running a UV sterilizer right now will this help destroy free floating things and continue to use it during fallow period.

JumboShrimp · May 23, 2021

You can keep the non-fish critters in there during your fallow period. If you go a super-long-time fallow as you say you will (you mentioned 100 days), then I don’t see the UV adding anything to the equation Ich/Velvet wise. So sorry for what happened... hope ‘Round Two’ for your tank goes much better.

PS: Just don’t add anything new during the fallow period.

ScottyD36 · May 23, 2021

JumboShrimp said:
You can keep the non-fish critters in there during your fallow period. If you go a super-long-time fallow as you say you will (you mentioned 100 days), then I don’t see the UV adding anything to the equation Ich/Velvet wise. So sorry for what happened... hope ‘Round Two’ for your tank goes much better.

PS: Just don’t add anything new during the fallow period.

Yea nothing is going in my tank for awhile. I am going to focus on adding corals.

ctopherl · Jun 21, 2021

ScottyD36 said:
So what ever attacked my tank did a number on my fish. I lost 2 clown fish, Midas blenny, possum wrasse, fire fish, royal gamma and my pygmy hawkfish. The only things i have left in my tank are a 6 line wrasse and a green chromis fish. Also in my tank I have a cleaner shrimp, blood shrimp, 3 urchins and a bunch of snails. All my parameters were fine in my tank and at normal numbers. It was either Ich or velvet. I am assuming velvet by how fast all my fish died. I tried quarantining the sick fish and their was just nothing I could do to save them even with treatment. If my two fish end up getting it on them and die. I plan on just letting my tank sit without fish in it for a long time and just focus on my corals to pass time. Here is my question will the shrimp and snails carry ich or velvet on them and say after 100 day fallow period when I introduce a fish I could be dealing with this all over again. Should I be running a UV sterilizer right now will this help destroy free floating things and continue to use it during fallow period.

Your inverts can carry ich/velvet on them up to 76 days, after which the parasite will die because there is no fish host for it to live off of. So it's not really that the inverts are "carrying the parasite", the parasite is just hitching a ride on them temporarily. If you move the inverts to a different tank within 76 days, there is risk of infecting that tank. This goes for corals as well, especially those with a hard skeleton and/or frag plug attached.

See my documented experience running a fallow system with inverts and coral.