ICH present in reef tank- what should I do?

[RedFrog211]

My 20g tank has been up for 1.5 months. Today I noticed my Phantom Ocellaris has a few spots of ich. I’m trying to figure out if I should dose the whole tank with Kordon ICH-Attack (allegedly reef safe) or set up a quarantine tank for the fish. I have 1 ocellaris, 1 BTA, a Banded shrimp and softies. My water parameters: Ammonia 0ppm, nitrite 0ppm, nitrate 0-5ppm, SG 1.025, PH 8.3. Thank you in advance for any response!

 

[WIReefer]

Personally I wouldn’t do a thing other than make sure my fish are fed well. I don’t qt just make sure my fish are fat!

 

[HuduVudu]

Find the underlying cause for the outbreak and fix that. Then the ich will go away on it's own.

 

[lapin]

There are 2 approaches.
Rid the tank of ich thru a fallow period of 76 days. QT and treat the fish with TTM.
Manage the ich thru live and healthy food, good water parameters and possibly a UV unit

 

[ca1ore]

20 gallon tank with one fish ..... no brainer .... treat it in a QT and keep the tank fish free for three months. I have ich in my tank, but it’s 450 gallons and has 125 fish (which I couldn’t catch even if I wanted to .... and I don’t), so I manage it.

 

[HB AL]

I wouldn't do either. I would make sure the water is as pristine as possible and feed the fish a variety of quality frozen food keeping them well fed. If everything is good they will fight it off with there immune system and it will go away.

 

[RedFrog211]

I wouldn't do either. I would make sure the water is as pristine as possible and feed the fish a variety of quality frozen food keeping them well fed. If everything is good they will fight it off with there immune system and it will go away.

This is obviously a much cheaper and simpler alternative to buying and cycling a QT tank. I’ve been feeding Mysis with a bit of garlic (she was picky for a while) as well as FormulaOne pellets. What would you recommend for food?

 

[RedFrog211]

I wouldn't do either. I would make sure the water is as pristine as possible and feed the fish a variety of quality frozen food keeping them well fed. If everything is good they will fight it off with there immune system and it will go away.

This is obviously a much cheaper and simpler alternative to buying and cycling a QT tank. I’ve been feeding Mysis with a bit of garlic (she was picky for a while) as well as FormulaOne pellets. What would you recommend for food?

 

[KingTideCorals]

If QT is the way you want to go maybe this will help...

 

[KevinC]

Personally I wouldn’t do a thing other than make sure my fish are fed well. I don’t qt just make sure my fish are fat!

+1 I gave up on quarantine fish. It's literally more stressful. Now it's survival of the fittest in there and so far of the 12 or so fishes I added, only a royal gramma died

 

[Kryptonian]

Same here. I have a 180g system with 8 fish that all went through 30 day medicated qt and I had a rough 2 days of minimal feedings and ich showed itself. Can’t believe it’s in the system but it’s there. Fed a variety diet for a few days and almost all symptoms disappeared. Blue tang and purple tang showed white spots and both recovered with a well rounded diet. Have a LARGE uv sterilizer working and kept them fed. Fish have a great immune system if they have low stress and a good diet. Key is LOW STRESS

 

[RedFrog211]

Same here. I have a 180g system with 8 fish that all went through 30 day medicated qt and I had a rough 2 days of minimal feedings and ich showed itself. Can’t believe it’s in the system but it’s there. Fed a variety diet for a few days and almost all symptoms disappeared. Blue tang and purple tang showed white spots and both recovered with a well rounded diet. Have a LARGE uv sterilizer working and kept them fed. Fish have a great immune system if they have low stress and a good diet. Key is LOW STRESS

I’m glad that worked out for you! Would’ve been a real pain to break down/ treat a 180- I’ll certainly give it a try.

 

[Kryptonian]

Using LRS reef frenzy + Marine Algae + Nori clips + Mysis shrimp
Also using bloodworms and clams not those are mostly for the angels.. tangs still get in there and eat those.
If you can. Soaking food in selcon and vit.c will help. Garlic is Only to help them want food. From what I’ve seen, garlic just helps them want food and doesn’t really have much of a medicinal benefit. Can hurt a fish liver in the long run.

management vs eradication is a serious choice. Do your research here!

 

[HB AL]

This is obviously a much cheaper and simpler alternative to buying and cycling a QT tank. I’ve been feeding Mysis with a bit of garlic (she was picky for a while) as well as FormulaOne pellets. What would you recommend for food?

A variety of different types of frozen shrimps, i feed my fish Hikari brand. Frozen clams would be good to. I would not feed the pellets.

 

[HB AL]

I can honestly say I can count with 1 hand the number of fish I lost to ich in the last 20 years, and never ran a quarantine or medicated in that time.

 

[RedFrog211]

Th

Using LRS reef frenzy + Marine Algae + Nori clips + Mysis shrimp
Also using bloodworms and clams not those are mostly for the angels.. tangs still get in there and eat those.
If you can. Soaking food in selcon and vit.c will help. Garlic is Only to help them want food. From what I’ve seen, garlic just helps them want food and doesn’t really have much of a medicinal benefit. Can hurt a fish liver in the long run.

management vs eradication is a serious choice. Do your research here!

Thank you! I’m going to my local fish store today to grab some. I really appreciate the help!

 

[Cwentz758]

I’ve started doing research on places that QT the fish before you buy them. That way you can plop and go or as I like to do QT them and observe them for a week or two even if they were pre QT

 

[mitch91175]

I’ve started doing research on places that QT the fish before you buy them. That way you can plop and go or as I like to do QT them and observe them for a week or two even if they were pre QT

Useless if you do not also QT everything else that goes into the tank. All it takes is a single drop of water from someone else’s tank and all the extra you spent on the QT fish will be frustrating.

 

[lakai]

QT everything, corals, fish , inverts, cuc.

 

[brandon429]

When dealing with fish disease its best to peruse the fish disease forum and see how well non quarantine and non fallow is working for the masses, it’s not we can see in patterns

Bottled fixes only work in personal testimony there are zero pattern works for bottled preps in the places needing disease help

the stickies in the forum have the best current practices

disease is rampant and fallow qt is what people use to get patterns going, even though losses occurred there occasionally


it’s about the patterns, here, and nobody is successful skipping the hard work prep:

Fish Disease Treatment and Diagnosis

A forum for discussing treatment and diagnosing saltwater reef fish.

www.reef2reef.com

also missing from disease forum, non fallow practitioners running work threads showing other people how to make disease free tanks actually using others tanks we can track. Not their own single examples.
skipping fallow and qt doesn’t work, is why there are no work threads other than fallow and qt we can scan for patterns


thats today’s best science and the only source of real patterns new tankers can scan.
If anyone who doesn’t quarantine made a work thread inviting others to run their method, crypto would take over the entrants who run the methods supposed to prevent disease.

im linking this thread to my cycling thread on when to add fish to a new tank. I want readers to see how easy it seems to skip tank preps + the reality in that link above when we do.