Saltwater diseases: Advice needed

[TimaT]

my tank has been gone through a lot of fish diseases and i suffered a lot of death due to ich and other unknown fish diseases. i haven't quarantined my fish and added a morish idol to the tank and shortly after it got sick and infected all my recently added fish. (recently meaning bought in the past month) in total i lost 5fish. i still have 2clowns and a yellow tang in the system couple of invertebrates and corals. now my question is what is the next step after u had ich and im sure it was more than ich because seemed like the fish had huge burned like circles on their body and white spots..
now my remaining fish never had any ich. ive had them for about 3month.

now i dont know how to move forward. do i take out my remainig fish and let the system run empty for about 2month? or should i keep them in there cause they never had ich in the first place??

when is it safe to add new fish? and is there anything i can do to help fight the disease in the main tank?

 

[Ingy]

Once your tank gets ick it will likely always be there unless you treat it (going fallow for 8 weeks or so as you mentioned). Likewise your surviving fish probably have it even if you can't see it ( in their gills) and they are not affected adversely by it. That means they should be treated as well.
Pull them out and put them in the hospital tank and treat them while the DT is fallow.
Failure to do both of these treatments will likely expose all future fish to ick as well.
At least that's what i'd do.


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[TimaT]

Thanks for the advice.. but what do u mean by: while the DT is fallow ??

 

[Ingy]

Leave the main tank running, but without any fish in it. Cuc is ok tho.


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[mr_X]

There is something about the tank that stresses the fish to the point of lowering their immune systems. What size tank is this?

 

[TimaT]

My tank is 220 gallons.. 6ft long started up in January.. its not the first time i set up an aquarium so i kinda know all the basics.. in fact my corals are doing great. i've been in this hobby for years and never struggled to keep my fish alive.. never quarantined fish and this is the second time my new tank suffers diseases and everything died.. both times i tried adding morish idols.. i am starting to think my local fish store is getting those morish idol from a bad vendor or something.. its a shame because it was eating till the day it died...

anyway any help on how to move forward would be great.. cause i really want more than just 3fish in my tank.
so much money invested and yet nothing to show for...

 

[jeffaquarius]

If you can boost immune system of fish, ich may have a hard time in attaching to them. Here is the steps that I would do.
1. Use Garlic Xtreme mixed to frozen food and pour the recommended amount to tank.
2. Add fish once a week but acclimate very carefully new fish and keep doing step 1.
3. If there is still a sign of ich then you have no other choice but to treat them in QT. Transfer all fish to QT and slowly adjust salinity for hypo treatment while still doing step 1 in the QT.
4. The DT must have no fish for at least 2 months.
5. After moving all fish back to DT keep doing step 1.

 

[TimaT]

Yeah that was pretty much what i was doing.. trying to keep the immune system up by feeding 3times a day with garlic..
the only thing i skipped was the QT
but from now on every new fish will go through the QT with low salinity and close visual.. im tired of my main display being pretty much empty..

what do u guys think of UV?

 

[jeffaquarius]

The UV kills anything that passes through it. You don't really want to remove all tiny stuff that are beneficial such as plankton. It is good in new tanks with uncontrollable algae bloom. It is used sparingly. Not all the water will pass through it so it doesn't really eradicate parasites if used by itself. Besides parasites stay in rocks and substrate.

 

[TimaT]

You my good sir just saved me 300bucks.. Thanks

 

[jeffaquarius]

You are welcome sir. The most important thing to prevent or battle ich is make sure you don't expose your fish specially the tangs to any kind of stress. The Garlic Xtreme works for me when I had the same outbreak. It also depends on how bad the outbreak is or the stage before you notice it. If the same thing happens again, remove the one with the 1st sign and treat it in QT. If the others can not be accommodated in the QT you have no choice but double or triple the Garlic Xtreme application as long they can still take it. Continue the garlic for more than 2 months or as long as you can. The key is, if the ich can not attach to a host they will soon starve or can not multiply and they start dying.