Ich in reef tank

[Acemann]

Hey I have had ich in my reef tank for awhile now I have invertebrates, powder blue tang, clownfish, and corals. I have had ich for about 3 months now I have been trying to keep my fish over fed with vitamins and garlic they are doing well. I am getting a little annoyed with this ich just because it looks bad on the fish. Anyway I am wondering if I could take all the corals and invertebrates out and have a second tank with just the corals and invertebrates and in the main tank add copper power for a couple of months to kill the ich off then clean it all out get new rocks new sand new filter socks new everything. But I only have like 3 corals and I hate trying to get my fish out to quarantine them the powder blue almost died last time I tried to get him out he was to stressed and I don’t really want to have the tank fishless for 76 days either. So I guess what I’m asking is would the copper power get diluted due to my rocks I have in there I self made them with concrete and sand but they are completely safe with the concrete, I made sure.
I have a 100 gallon tank with a 50 gallon sump.

 

[davidcalgary29]

It's really not a great idea to dose your display with copper; in addition to killing all the inverts in your tank (beneficial or not), your aquascape and substrate will also absorb copper, which will make it very difficult to maintain a therapeutic dose. You'll also have to use cuprisorb at the end of your cycle or, as you suggest, dump everything.

If you feel that you have to keep the fish in your display, I'd take everything else out -- rocks, corals, substrate, and inverts -- and put the coral and inverts in another tank. You can then treat the fish in the empty tank. Get a bunch of PVC elbows and short lengths for your fish in the display so that they'll have places to hide and rest.

You can then put the rock in a garbage bin with an airstone and leave it for three months. You can then return the rocks to the display. I just don't like the idea of throwing away hundreds of dollars of live rock.

 

[kbnh]

Copper will be absorbed by the sand and rock, making the treatment itself incredibly difficult because you would constantly have to add copper to keep the concentration high enough, seems like more trouble than it’s worth

I’m not an expert by any means just regurgitating info that was given to me as I had the same situation, I’m currently managing it with a UV, plenty of food and not stressing the fish but anytime I add a fish to my tank my two spot bristletooth breaks out in spots for a couple of weeks then it “goes away”

if you can properly treat everything(including qt of the coral as they may have some ich on their stony skeletons) then that would be best but if you can’t then ich management it is

 

[Saltees]

It's really not a great idea to dose your display with copper; in addition to killing all the inverts in your tank (beneficial or not), your aquascape and substrate will also absorb copper, which will make it very difficult to maintain a therapeutic dose. You'll also have to use cuprisorb at the end of your cycle or, as you suggest, dump everything.

If you feel that you have to keep the fish in your display, I'd take everything else out -- rocks, corals, substrate, and inverts -- and put the coral and inverts in another tank. You can then treat the fish in the empty tank. Get a bunch of PVC elbows and short lengths for your fish in the display so that they'll have places to hide and rest.

You can then put the rock in a garbage bin with an airstone and leave it for three months. You can then return the rocks to the display. I just don't like the idea of throwing away hundreds of dollars of live rock.

I couldn't have said it better! I'm doing likewise on my display of similar volume 132G. I'm going for 30-45 days CopperPower @ 2.5ppm with bare tank and PVC pipes. Followed by 2 weeks of Praziquental and a month of observation. Total process takes about 3 months, while my rocks, corals and invert stay fallow in another tank.

Best time to add all the Powder series tangs to your heart's content right before copper.

 

[motolatte]

Had the same issue but think (haven't had any ich in 3 weeks now) I kicked it with a combo of UV and Polyplab Medic. I wasn't QT-ing fish, and brought a Gem Tang home that 4 days later had spots, and then my Naso, Blue Eyed Kole and Swallow Angel got a few spots. Ran that combo for three weeks and had no decernable effect on the corals and inverts in the tank. Started out just doing minimum dose for first week which really didnt seem to do much other than keep the spots to a minimum, fish weren't getting worse. Ended up ramping up the dosage by doing the same minimum dose at 6 AM and then repeating same dose at 7 AM then turn UV on at 8 AM and then repeat same double dose at 6 PM and 7 PM and then UV back on at 8. Instructions state to turn UV off for an hour after dosage. Really concentrated on chemistry in tank. I had some phosphate issues for some reason, like .6 ppm instead of the desired sub .1. Nitrate was 13 ppm at the time as well. Worked on getting that down, using GFO for Phos, beefed up on the vitamin and quality food regimen and it seemed to have done the trick. Medic is probably an expensive way of dosing peroxide, which I combed the forums trying to get a good grip on going that route to no avail. But from what litle info i garnished in regards to that and then ich life cycle, I at least figured I was targetting the times of day when the free swimmers hatched. Also, a buddy at a LFS that said this stuff worked for him. I also fed once daily Mysis infused with API general cure with seachem focus for 7 days. I still run UV 24/7 600 gph. Maybe this helps? Never really liked messing with copper meds and my tank is more geared toward the corals than the fish.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I made the mistake of thinking I need a ich free tank for my fish to survive long term. Mainly bc I was adding a dream fish like Achilles and Powder blue tang in my new 400 gallon. So i QTed everything and purchased some QT fish and too my surprised still got ich in my tank, I paniced when my achilles had 100s of spots early on and thought it was a death sentence (this was in March), today I have all my fish and still have ich, though the achilles and powder blue have zero spots or do not scratch at all. The only fish that i see a few small spots here and there are my Hippo tang but that since getting better overtime. I lost 8 months of my tank maturing bc I went the hypo salinity route and pretty much had to start from day zero 4 months ago. My tank is almost 1 year and still no coraline algae.

I think there is a lot of truth to what Paul D (50 year old tank guy) has to say on fish disease. We are not building our fishes immune system enough to fight of these parasites naturally. For example, a new born baby has zero immunity and only builds that immunity if they are exposed to viruses. I In the ocean there is ich everywhere in high numbers and fish survive bc they are exposed to every virus in the ocean. Paul d also keeps talking about Gut bacteria and that can mean one thing, feeding whole animal parts. I started making my own frozen fishfood and by chance use something called Lake smelts, they are small inexpensive whole fish that I wonder what human would eat but felt it definitely helped bc its entire fish including their digestive tract.

Garlic 100% helps bc its not from the ocean and ich parasite tend to not like this stuff. It has anti fugal properties so in high doses it will literally prevent corals from opening their polyps. I overdid the garlic using 15 full cloves in a batch of frozen food and while the fish loved it I found it did not digest in the fish and had small white sprinkles all over their poop and the rockwork. I never thought garlic could do harm so it was the last thing I was thinking was the issue but I see why Ich parasite doesn't like it. For the past 6 week I have no garlic in my food and dont notice much of a difference so garlic is not as effective as below methods I use.

Good husbandry (Hate the term Ich management)
Good Random flow
UV Plumbed into the display is best. low to medium flow
Good frozen food (Cod or tilipia, Shrimp, Lake smelts, Mussels, etc)
Good pellet food every 2 hours
Nori sheet every other day

 

[Hurricane Aquatics]

A good quality UV is about the only way to control Ich. Blue tangs, and some Tangs in general, are carriers of Ich and will have it regardless.

Forget the water additives, etc. They are all a waste of time in the long term.