ick problem

[hhuummvveeee]

we have a 90 gal salt tank with 8 fish and 3 invertibrates we purchased one of the fish recently from a wholesale store the powder blue tang at first he got picked on bad by the other 2 tangs in the tank they have settled down now but about a week after introduction the powder blue tang had ick spots bad started treating with greenex because of the invertabrates this did not work and our bird nose wrasse has been acting funny so we put the invertibrates in a seperate tank and treated the 90 gal with ick tablets not sure what kind our fish store guy gave them to us out of his big bottle and treatment helped within 2 hours you could notice a difference but after the third day of treatment and medicine was not being put in the tank anymore they got worst overnight now we are trying QUINSULEX we are new to all this but are fast learners looking for advice on if this is the way we should be proceding our nitrates,nitrites are both fine ph is a little low running7.6 to 7.8 and alk is normal our other fish are doing ok but are showing signs of the desease but nothing like the powder blue tang or the bird nose wrasse we also have a yellow tang a naso tang a pocoso trigger a nigger trigger a maroon clown a blue devil fish this tank has been set up since january 2003 all fish are eating except the wrasse this is the first problem we have had tank has been doing great until the introduction of the powder blue tang but we have learned that you quarintine all new fish for 2 to 3 weeks before introducing to the master tank that way you dont infeck your whole tank and treatment would be easier right?

 

[BrianH]

Quarantining new fish is the best way to avoid bringing a disease into your show tank. The issue I get from your post is that you are going to have problems no matter what due to the huge fish load you have. All the fish you have (except the maroon clown & Blue Damsel) will grow to 8 + inches!. The niger trigger will get much larger than this.
IMHO you need to reduce this fish load by at least 50% and get rid of the niger trigger. It is much too large for a 90 gal and it will most likely kill the picasso trigger.

Brian

 

[hhuummvveeee]

we are setting up a 75 gal tank also we got to good of a deal on these fish that we could not pass up once the 75 gal tank is up we are going to have an aggresive tank and a reef tank with mellow fish but i understand what you are saying

 

[wayne]

And probably the big bioload means big waste which is holding down your pH, and causing mucho stress, meaning ich can take hold. Also your tank hasn't been setup for long so it won't be stable yet.
What are you doing for filtration? Nitritres should be zero, nothing greater is fine.
You're right about quarantine. If I was you I would get the 75 up and running and treat it as a huge hospital tank (you have a lot of fish), no sand, no live rock, keep them in it for at least a month and treat with a copper treatment to clear off the ich. No fish at all in the main tank to let ich die off in there. Dont stress the cycling, skim the 75 and get ready for big water changes.
When everything is good again, reappraise your fish list, and return some.

 

[hhuummvveeee]

we have a dutch system with the wet /dry and bio balls in the tank we have a reverse flow power filter powered with a peiguin powerhead and a small power filter hanging on the tank to catch anything else we have the excaliber skimmer but cant run now with medicine we have recently purchased a 6 times uv sterilizer should arive any day got a 1100 rio to power the uv sterilizeralso in the tank we have about 60lbs of live rock no live sand yet our nitrites are real low but they should be zero??? if not is this real bad?? nitrates are higher have been doing weekly water changes of 20 percent until illness have done 30 percent coulple of times have not changed water since saturday the 17th of may going to change water after five day treatment is over with the quinsulex that is this sunday the 21st of may the cloudy eyes are clearing up they are showing some signs of fins becoming rough can you use melafix with the ick medicine i am useing?? i hope this remedy works any advice is greatly appriciated you said dont stress the cycling what do you mean???

 

[BrianH]

Make sure the tank you are planning to use for the reef does not get dosed with any copper. You will not be able to keep inverts including corals in any tank, sand, or live rock that has been exposed to a medication containing copper.

Brian

 

[hhuummvveeee]

well our powder blue tang died this morning we are surprized he made it this long so now we are down to the fish we had before we got the desease so hopefully the rest of the fish are strong enough to make it through this would hate to lose anymore fish the powder blue tang we were not attached to it yet well i guess we were it was sad seeing him die well the wrasse still is not eating i hope he will make it the rest of the fish are eating and swimming only time will tell until then i will wait thanks for the insight on the copper treatment also this morning we did a 30 gal water change with some seeded water from our fish store just in case our biological filter was starting to get messed up this way we were able to change a bigger ammount of water without depleteing the biological filter anymore than it was already also put some good seeded water back in seemed to help and as always any advice is greatly apriciated

 

[wayne at home]

Adding water isn't going to 'seed' your filter, the live rock should have done that, and if you're piling in water from an lfs, don't be too surprised if you introduce something nasty. You know that when you buy new fish and acclimate them , the last step is move the fish and dump the shop water down the drain. Then you quarantine for a month.
I doubt your cycle is fully complete yet, especially if you still have nitrites. Nitrates are always a problem with dutch style setups (read hi-tech), that why the Berlin method (lots live rock, skimming, lots water movement) is so popular now. You hae a big fish load, and this combined with a low pH and mention of nitrites really makes me suspect a water quality problem. Big water changes may help by relieveing the fishs stress levels

 

[hhuummvveeee]

i added seeded water from a 360 gal reef tank that was good water from a trusted fish store not some lame shop i never put water in my tank from anywhere except this store because i know this water is fine i have learned to quarintine now was wondering how long you answered that i also found out that our red sea salt lab must of been old the tests results were way off so all my readings were wrong got new tetra test works great low nitrates 40 parts good ph 7.9 fish still look bad have not lost anymore fish yet we just got our uv sterilizer in the mail today the 22nd so we hooked it up and ran for 24 hours at the same time we ran the skimmer put charcoal in the fiter and put cycle in to pull the medicine out now we have shut everything back off and going to try treating for another five days with some better water in the tank also thinking the sterilizer got rid of some of the ick to releave some of the stress and make healing go better with this treatment THANK YOU FOR THE ADVICE ANYMORE APPRICIATED

 

[wayne at home]

The sterilizer will help a bit, it'll kill the parasites in their free swimming stage though only leaving the tank wmpty for a month will get rid of the parasite eggs/cysts in the substrate rock. Garlic loaded foods might help if they're still eating, it makes the fish taste horrible to ich. But copper in a qt tank is the most effective cure.
I don't believe adding seeded water is going to do anything useful, but that's my opinion. You might get your tank clean and seed it with some more free swimming ich - it doessn't matter how good your lfs, I bet almost everyone in the world has ich in their water. If you're seeding to reseed your biobacteria, I think it's a waste of time, there are almost none that free swim.
Assume that ich is always there, but normally fish are strong enough to just not get infected. So what weakens them - stress, like bad water - pH 7.9 is still not there, and you need to figure out why. How big are the fish, how much you feeding, skimming out. I'd keep the skimmer on, and do dome big water changes.

 

[hhuummvveeee]

what do you run ph at and other s like nitrate also how do i increase ph more or figure out why its low let me know other than skimming low food going into tank and waterchanges ?????? all fish are small the biggest is the naso that one is 5 inch long 3.5 inches tall and 1 inch thick the rest are only 3 inches long and smaller lets say this is something other than just ick how do i determine this they have the clouldy eyes but the medicine i am useing this time has cleared that up but they are not being real active and there eating is slowing also when you say big water changes how many galons i have about 100 with wet/dry

 

[toodles]

The first thing I would do is test your water right after you mix up a fresh batch of saltwater and see where your pH is. You should be keeping your pH between 8.0 and 8.3. What are you keeping your salinity at? Are you using RO water to mix with or are you using tap water?
One thing to consider is the amount of surface agitation you have in your tank. Having enough agitation will help to blow off any CO2 (which may contribute to low pH levels) that may be accumulating in your tank. It will also help with the oxygen levels......

Others have already pointed out the obvious....that your tank is overstocked and that you have some aggressive fish in there that are probably contributing to the stress levels which leads to illness, so I'm not gonna say anything about that!

Good luck to you and your fish!!