Fish covered in white spots - is this ICH?

[eekball]

Hi! I have a 75 gal SW with crushed coral and lace rock.
We set the tank up on Dec 9th and when it was cycled we added a school of 8 blue/green chromis. Slowly, they are dying off (that's another topic ) We are down to 3 chromis now. We waited about a week after adding them and on Sunday (4 days ago) we added a Yellow Eye Tang and a Coral Beauty Angel. We did not QT these fish.

Last night I noticed they both had some tiny white spots on them (mainly on their face) so we treated with Melafix. This morning, they are both COVERED in tiny white spots. The 3 remaining chromis look fine.

We are using a 125 gal wet/dry filter and the water parameters are as follows:

pH is 8.4 (recently it's been as high as 8.5 and as low as 8.2)
Alkalinity is normal
Nitrate just went from 0 to 20 the other day
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
Salt 1.021-1.022

Will the Melafix work? What else should I do?!?! I am new to this and am finding we made some pretty big mistakes starting off. This is quite frustrating and I hate that the fish are sick now. I hope they can be saved. Please help!!!

 

[RMPD109]

The best thing to do is move the fish to a QT for treatment. Adding copper based meds to the main tank will limit future additions to it later(inverts). You can use a lowered salinity to treat instead of the meds if you want(1.019). The main tank will need to remain fishless for 6 weeks to allow the ich to die off in the tank.

This is all with the assumption that this is ich. If you can post a pic so that a proper Identification can be made it would be great.

 

[austinsdad]

Check out oodinium or marine velvet in addition to ick. Sugar coating is the best way to describe it - as opposed to distinct and few white spots.

If Quarryshark doesn't see this, PM him. He's really good with this stuff. Need to share the other post as background info IMO too.

 

[quarryshark]

Here is a good article that may help you with the ID and also gives you proper treatment options.
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/marineich.html
Agree, if its ich you need to treat all the fish in a separate bare bottom hospital tank with hypo or copper and leave the tank fallow for 6 week.
I would not lover the SPG in the main however. 1.019 is not low enough to kill the parasites and all it will really do is stress out the inverts in the system.
If using hyposalinity in a hospital tank, the spg would have to be at about 1.009 (14 ppt salinity) to have an effect on the parasites. Measured with a good refractometer for accuracy.

 

[steve r]

if it is ick you will need to move all your fish to a QT and treat. leave your main with out any fish for 6-8 weeks

your ph is really moving around alot also. yoyu may want to look into that

there is not a big chance that a tank as young as yours can support the additon of soo much new life at once. even an established tank can see problems by adding two fish at once.

do you have any other animals in your tank? with ph swings, new tank and 10 new fish in a short amount of time, your mini marine world is probably very stressed. the QT period will allow your tank to establish itself more

steve r

 

[RMPD109]

QS- thanks for catching the salinity error. Another typo.

If you do use hposalinity remember to do it very slowly. Especially while bringing the salinity back up to the normal range.

 

[quarryshark]

QS- thanks for catching the salinity error. Another typo.

Kinda thought so.