Ruby reef kick-ick/Rally

[Fowler freak]

First off wanted to thank everyone for all your input/posts on this site especially and not limited to Mel,Humblefish,and Ford.
I have a 265 gallon(total volume) Fowler tank with my beloved tangs, butterflies,angels and wrasses.
I’ve gone through 2 major ich outbreaks in 3 years that nailed my tank pretty hard which puts me into a mental abyss sometimes even losing sleep because I truly love these fish/hobby and feel awful when they’re suffering/die. Wish I would’ve known what I know now when I started caring for saltwater fish. Every hard knock I end up learning more and more which is good but at the expense of these beautiful innocent fish which were plucked from Gods blue ocean where they were thriving and doing well. I don’t want to “roll dice” on Ick anymore, I do QT, and am giving up on “ick management”. I’m going through a 3rd outbreak now due to the ick that’s present not introduced. Regardless of my almost perfect husbandry feeding top notch food infused with selcon vitachem and phyto with bacteria, weekly water changes, and fantastic equipment it’s returned.

Sorry for the rant I need to vent, thanks for reading, and would consider myself pretty experienced in the hobby.
I’ve noticed ich spots for months on a few fish but they come and go and will usually change more water weekly, feed “good stuff” a bit heavier, and even added another Aqua UV light bring it to a total watts to 65. Fish were all healthy as hell and eating like animals. My tank is STUFFED with inverts of all kinds with a few hundred pounds of live rock so dosing main tank is out of the question. Decided to dose with Rally and Kick-ich as a last ditch effort before it got bad and to obviously avoid a tank crash. Spoke to Don (very nice guy) CEO of ruby reef for 45 mins to explain the situation and get his feedback. After the conversation I spend over 400 bucks on the expensive regiment and followed it to a T I mean to the T!!!!! I was going to follow through with the regiment for 2months if it was going to help. After 2 weeks ich got worse and worse spreading to almost the entire tank and stopped using it. Lost a fair amount of fish and if I didn’t act quickly I’d probably lose everything. Broke all of my rock down and caught 6 fish that were badly infected to house them in a 55 Qt tank. I left all the others in because I can’t house them all in there and am setting up a 90 gallon for the rest as I text. Going fallow which Is obviously a HUGE undertaking (making my life a mess 145 gallons of QT in my kitchen)but it’s my last honest go around.

Kick-ich does NOT work guys it does not work for (____)! It does slightly curb free swimmers but that’s it. Pretty sure if I didn’t use the stuff and water change every other dose they all would’ve succumbed to ich/death but it’s junk. Hoping none of you spend the money I did in hopes it will save your fish and your sanity because you’ll be out cash, precious time addressing the real issue, and your precious sea babies lives. My tank was the perfect experiment for kick-ick and let me tell you it’s trash it failed pretty dam hard. Never done the fallow thing before but here I go and any advice is greatly appreciated :-/

Thanks again to you all and God bless.
Sad fish Dad,
Fowlerfreak

 

[andys]

I have been in your shoes. Did exactly what you did. Even spoke with rally like you did. In person by the way. The only and I mean ONLY thing that worked was removing my fish and treating them in a separate tank with copper power. I let the tank sit fallow for 6 months as I was not taking any chances. Fish are back in and has been for about 8 months or so. As for coral or anything else I have not introduced due to being freaked out I may catch something again. Hit me up if ya have any questions

 

[Fowler freak]

I have been in your shoes. Did exactly what you did. Even spoke with rally like you did. In person by the way. The only and I mean ONLY thing that worked was removing my fish and treating them in a separate tank with copper power. I let the tank sit fallow for 6 months as I was not taking any chances. Fish are back in and has been for about 8 months or so. As for coral or anything else I have not introduced due to being freaked out I may catch something again. Hit me up if ya have any questions

Andy i really appreciate the reply man. I’m so bummed to say the least so much hard work and money spent so to go through this I’m just at a loss. Going fallow for a planned 90 days and going to qt with cupramine, kanaplex, and metro. So many fish and two tanks is going to be a nightmare but we gotta do what we gotta due. Thanks again and I will be hitting you up. Congratulations on your successful tank my friend that gives me hope when I really some.

 

[Spar]

Sorry to hear of your pains! As you are moving toward a reset and new protocol, make sure you are treating proactively for Velvet and Flukes as well. Rather than cupramine, you really may want to consider doing CP or Copper Power instead, depending on the type of fish. Much better and consistent results from people on the forum with these two products.