blue tang ick! help!

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ektorgt

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Jul 28, 2005
Messages
70
Location
San antonio TX
i have had my blue tang for several months now. about 3 or 4 days ago i sarted noticing some white spots on him. today it was kind of bad, the spots got kind of larger and he started losing color around the eyes and i noticed him scratching against some rock.... i have read about adding copper in a qt tank or the hyposalinity thing but i dont have a qt tank.... should i buy a 10 gal tank as a qt?? what else should i do???

i will probably get a 40 gal this weekend which i could use as a qt for the meanwhile but is that too late???? i dont want my blue tang to die and i dont want to get any other fish infected with ick..........

anything will help because this is the first disease in my tank!!
thankyouuuu
 
A QT tank and a refractometer are your best investments right now. Prompt hyposalinity treatment will likely save him. Copper may also work if you can't afford the refractometer, but keep in mind that copper is poisonous to the fish as well, and must be dosed carefully (preferably with the aid of a compatible copper test kit) to poison the ick without poisoning the fish.

Is there any way you can get the 40 gallon earlier? Even if you have to buy a 10 gallon now, might set up the 40 as your long-term QT. If the ick spreads to any other fish, your best bet is to treat all of them, and they certianly won't fit in the 10 gallon.

Have there been any recent changes in the tank?
What are your water conditions?
How large is the blue tang?
 
the blue tang is about 3 inches and the only recent change is that i added a coral beauty and a racoon butterfly... at the time i added them, my blue tang seemed real shy, it hided under a rock for about 4 or 5 days and then came out and was perfect for a week or more... then the ick started to appear but it seems to be leaving now... my blue tang never showed any other signs of stress or illness except for scratching against the rocks sometimes but it ate well and swam all over the place...
 
I'm guessing you didn't QT the new arrivals? Might be a good future policy. It may just have been stress letting his immune system down, or it may have been that the newcomers brought the bug with them.
 
the thing is the newcomers dont have any signs of ick....
and for the next time, how long should i quarantine new arrivals?? and what should i look for?
 
QT new arrivals for a few weeks. I've heard differing opinions of 3-8 weeks.

Ick often hangs out in fish gills, where it can't be seen.

You might want to do a through bottom vaccum. After the ick parasite falls off the fish, it goes to the bottom and reproduces. If you can remove them at this point, you can reduce the chances of re-infection.
 
Most of the time you will not see any existing symptoms of ich (depending on stage of c. irritans by the time you are looking at the fish in the LFS). QT is definitely important, especially that you have a pre-existing BHT in your tank.

Since you don't have any crustaceans and inverts that will be missed, you might want to do a hypo in your display. This is definitely not advisable. However, you have specimen in your tank that most likely have the ich as well. Also, your sand and rocks will have c. irritans in there as well.

At this point you will have to erradicate it in your main tank. You can either (a) do a QT of all of your fish and treat them there, or (b) if you don't have a QT and it is at a desperate condition, do a hypo in your main. Again, this is not advisable. I am just talking about your situation wherein you don't have corals and anemone, crustaceans, and in dire need of saving your BHT from sudden death.

Good luck.

PS: I did it in my main tank. First pic is before. Second pic is during. Third pic is after. I lost a red tail file fish, and a white spotted puffer. I donated my porcupine puffer, damsels, and the cowfish.
 

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so when you put new arrivals in tha qt tank, what are you looking for if they will probably not show any signs of ick and then when you put them in the main tank they will spread it anyways???????????
 
No, it's more like you quarantine a new fish and treat it with a precautionary hyposalinity treatment to make sure that any ich is erradicated by the time you introduce it into the display. Some people have the wrong notion that the QT is just a magnifying glass for the new arrival.

You put it in QT first in order to treat it with hyposalinity for a month. Then it is ready for introduction.
 
I have heard a freshwater dip for 1-2 Min. will drive the ich out of a salt fish. I tried it on my royal gramma and it seemed to work. I'm not saying to do this. without 1st consulting others about this treatment option.
 
FW dips are not a treatment. At the most they will help alleviate a heavy infestation and give the fish some relief if the trophont dislodges. The down side being it can severly stress the fish and cause it's death outright. It may "appear" to work viusally but the dip does not affect the trophonts buried in the epithellium. The parasite will just wait it out. FWIW, the trophont can survive upto 18 hours in full FW.

Cheers
Steve
 
You QT new arrivals looking for signs of disease. No need to treat a new fish unless it shows signs of disease during the QT period.
The life cycle of c. irritans is about 30 days. It is visible on the fish for only a short period. It then falls off dan drops to the bottom where it it forms a cyst (the tomont stage). This stage can last a week or more and then the cyst breaks and at this time infect the fish (again).
Keeping a new arrival inQT fro 30 days should give you enough time to know whether the fish is infected or not.

This article has a rather good explanation of the life cycle and hypo treatment.
 
Freshwater dip in my opinion is definitely a No-no. As a matter of fact, even my "do the hypo in the display" advise is a No-no, especially if you have lr and ls. I was just desperate.

However, a freshwater dip is a sudden change in EVERYTHING water-wise and may stress the specimen to death. You're really risking the specimen itself.

With that said, I've read of people doing dips and pulled through. Maybe they're just lucky, who knows.

Try to erradicate c. irritans from your display. QT-ing everything out of the display will starve the c. irritans of host and will eventually cause the erradication. Or, if desperate, gut it out and do the hypo in the main tank. That should be the last resort. Hopefully you'd even consider it as the last of the last resort. :|
 
I give all my new fish f/w dips with methylene blue with great success. IMO freshwater dips will do no harm at all.
 
I think that freshwater dips are a really bad way of fixing the problem. I think it's cruel and the fish certainly do not like it.
 
I just don't see it as effective as hyposalinity. Besides the fact that you're shocking the fish, you're only going to get a fraction of the parasites in the process. Most of them are so encysted in the fish that they are safe from external medicines, have to wait for them to fall off to kill them.
 
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