Blue Hippo Tang

[smoothie7]

Before I start, please no tang police
I purchased a blue hippo tang about a month ago. He is about 1" big and very cute. lol. I put him in my biocube 29 gallon with the plan of putting him in my 90 gallon for the next year or so until the big tank gets set up. I feed him LRS Reef Frenzy Mon, Wed, Fri and Nori soaked in garlic on Tues, Thurs, and Sat. Over the past week he has broke out into a small case of ick. Hasn't changed his eating habits at all though.
I also have a pair of snowflake clowns in my cube. My question is, I know hippo tangs are ich magnets. Is this just part of owning this little guy or do you think he doesn't have enough swimming space and that is causing the ich? Ideally I was planning on adding him to the 90 gallon in about 6 more weeks or so. All parameters are spot on in the cube. Any thoughts?

 

[Dav3]

Why not in the 90 already? The 29 is too small.

 

[dragonfisher33]

i think it's really luck of the draw. some people keep tangs in small tank without ick outbreak while others experience tank meltdown because of the ick. although chances are, the bigger the tank, the less probable the tang will develop ick

 

[ejp]

Your blue tang will be OK if it doesn't stop eating what u can do is add kent viatamin C , seachem focus and metronidazole to its food that way the parasite will die as soon as it tries to host on to the the fish. Been doing it for the last 4 years when i get a new blue tang.


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[ezy33]

I've had good luck with garlic Xtreme putting it directly in the water column for the instructions on the bottle. Do a water change when you can smell it then give it a day start over again. Good luck!


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[carey]

The size of the tank is probably a contributing factor to him breaking out with ich. They are known to be ich magnets, I am not sure why you would add a fish with that rep to a tank you know is too small.....BUT since you have it now what i would do is take him out and put him in a qt tank and treat him there. being he is so small, well i am guessing he is small, lol, I dont think you have a large tang in a biocube, but since he is small, copper might be too much on him. i would try hypersalinity in a qt and keep feeding him lots of greens and garlic as well. keeping him eating and healthy except for the ich is the best way to keep him alive. In a qt you can also overfeed to make sure he eats alot, doing that in your cube would just make a mess and be a pain to keep the water good.
Do you have other fish in the cube btw? I dont think anyone has asked...

 

[ezy33]

If one fish has ICH then all your other fish have been exposed to it. Treating only one will cause failure of your main tank. IMO you'll need to treat your whole system or let it go fallow without any fish. When you move a fish with a compromised immune system you only add to the stress which deteriorates the immune system even more. IME Garlic Extreme works for me. Good luck!


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[jrcordero4]

The size of the tank is probably a contributing factor to him breaking out with ich. They are known to be ich magnets, I am not sure why you would add a fish with that rep to a tank you know is too small.....BUT since you have it now what i would do is take him out and put him in a qt tank and treat him there. being he is so small, well i am guessing he is small, lol, I dont think you have a large tang in a biocube, but since he is small, copper might be too much on him. i would try hypersalinity in a qt and keep feeding him lots of greens and garlic as well. keeping him eating and healthy except for the ich is the best way to keep him alive. In a qt you can also overfeed to make sure he eats alot, doing that in your cube would just make a mess and be a pain to keep the water good.
Do you have other fish in the cube btw? I dont think anyone has asked...

You mean hypo salinity right?


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[carey]

lol, yeah, hypo salinity. That and copper are the only absolute proven methods of getting rid of ich.

 

[smoothie7]

As mentioned in my original post he is about 1" long and he is with 2 snowflake clowns. The reason he is currently in my 29 gallon is because my 90 gallon was not ready for him yet. Should be in about a week or so and I would like to put him and a yellow tang in my 90 at the same time. He eats very well. Yesterday I picked up a cleaner shrimp and today he is looking 10 times better. I think we are on the road to recovery

 

[BigRedsReefs10]

Cleaner shrimp do nothing for ich, the spots will disappear but that doesn't mean the parasite is gone. The only way to completely treat ich is to transfer all fish to qt as stated above and leave the dt fish-less for 10-12 weeks.