Quarantined for 24 days - Now what?

[awillemd1]

I would like some advice. I am very new to salt water aquariums. I purchased two new Tangs (a Yellow Tang and a Regal Blue Tang) about two months ago and unfortunately I didn't believe all the horror stories about ick. I trusted my local pet store. At any rate, I ended up losing the Regal Blue Tang and two other fish in my tank to ick. I quickly purchased a qt tank per the instructions given here, but I ran into a small problem with the salinity/specific gravity. My specific gravity meter didn't go down to 1.009 so I purchased a new one. This one read about 0.003 units higher than my old one, so in trying to sort out the confusion on which one was correct, I didn't get my qt tank down to the 1.009 level until about 7 days ago. Fortunately, my yellow tang quickly lost the white spots and seems to be doing great. My question is, how much longer should I keep my yellow tang in quarantine?

 

[steve-s]

Sorry to hear about the other fish but good news that the tang is doing well.

Hyposalinity should be treated for about 2 weeks straight to ensure any reproductive cysts have "hatched" out and there is no longer any danger of free swimming theronts. The "timeframe" if you will is about 4ish weeks depending on how well the treatment worked, if performed correctly. The first few days are for acclimating and slowly lowering the salinity, two weeks for the treatment and then a few more days to slowly raise the salinity back up. At the end once the salinity is back to normal and the fish appears to no longer be infested, it's best to wait another week for observation and allow the fish some extra TLC time to regain some of it's strength.

It can then be properly acclimated back to the main tank.

Cheers
Steve

 

[awillemd1]

Thank you! One more quick question. The main reason I am anxious to return my yellow tang to the main tank is that I have read that they need room and need to graze on algea all day long. I am only able to feed him in the morning and at night when I come home from work and I don't have any algea growing in the qt tank. Do you see this as a problem?

 

[steve-s]

The best way to counter any problems with nutrition while in the QT is to soak the foods in a good marine vitamin a few times a week. That will help stave off any problems and also help the fish to get back to it's normal health level faster. A small tank is stressful to the fish but will not cause any real health issues for that amount of time. Rushing through the treatment and re-itroduction would be far more detrimental to the fish and increase the possibility of a repeat occurance.

Cheers
Steve

 

[awillemd1]

Wonderful!

Thank you again!