Ich & substrate questions

Ronald Brown · Oct 5, 2016

hello all, I have moved my fish from my dt to a hospital tank treated with copper about 2 weeks ago. my question is should I remove the water and crushed coral substrate to get rid of ick?
also sometime in the future I was planning on removing the substrate anyway to set my tank for sand and corals. any thoughts or help on this matter?

Humblefish · Oct 5, 2016

Ronald Brown said:
hello all, I have moved my fish from my dt to a hospital tank treated with copper about 2 weeks ago. my question is should I remove the water and crushed coral substrate to get rid of ick?

If you are talking about ich in the DT, you need to go fallow (fishless) for 76 days to starve it out of there.

Ronald Brown said:
also sometime in the future I was planning on removing the substrate anyway to set my tank for sand and corals. any thoughts or help on this matter?

If its currently empty (no fish, corals, inverts); now would be the best time to do it. Afterwards, run activated carbon and/or GFO (Granular Ferric Oxide) to remove any hydrogen sulfide in the water.

Ronald Brown · Oct 6, 2016

thanks, would I need change out the water at all?

Empress · Oct 6, 2016

You said your fish are currently in a QT. Leave them there until the 76 days are up. Also leave the DT alone and just wait it out for 76 days. Don't do anything to the water for now. Just wait, and wait, and wait. The ich parasites will die off in about 76 days.

However, if you want you can do regular water changes/maintenance on the display at any time. Just don't put anything "wet" (except for clean water) into the DT until the 76 days are up. Change out the sand if you want, but it's not necessary to kill the parasites.

Watch out for cross contamination/aerosol transmission. Hope all this makes sense.

Ronald Brown · Oct 6, 2016

thanks. yes it does make sense. the only things that I have in my dt is pulsing xenia, live rock and a cleaner shrimp. I am going to go ahead and change out my substrate for now so it can be cycled by the time the fish are ready for the tank. buy that time my reef rock will be close to being cured for aquascaping . I am using copper power in the qt to dose the ich.