Bad news: another round of ich! Good news: I've had a sponge filter down in my sump for about 2 months so setting up the hospital tank was fairly easy. I set it up with the air tubing and put in a 20 gallon tank. Filled about half with water from my main tank and the rest with fresh RODI water.
I've only got 3 fish. 1 was easy to catch. It had the ich and died shortly after the transfer. The other 2 are impossible to catch. Another is so fast and I've got so much rock, I can't get to him. The bicolor blenny runs straight to his hole in his rock any time I approach the tank. I have picked up that rock shook it and I can't get him out! Finally I just moved him rock and all to the hospital tank. I'm hoping that when he comes out for food I can grab the rock and remove it. No luck on that yet and it has been 4 days. Thankfully he isn't showing any signs of ich so I'm not in a huge rush to treat him.
I used this tank with the last go round back in sept-nov. I treated fish w copper. Once I moved the fish back to the display I drained the hospital tank left sitting outside for a few months until I needed it again. I cleaned it out w bleach and rinsed it well. dried it out and now have set up as described above. I have 2 plastic huts/rocks for the fish to hide in. They went through the first copper treatment, sat outside, got cleaned too.
Now to my question: could any copper still be in the seals of that tank or in the plastic huts/rocks? After I put the live rock and blenny in, it occurred to me that might be a no-no. I was planning to move that live rock back to the DT once the blenny comes out. I know better than to treat with any meds while it is in there, but I'm wondering if the rock has been exposed in any way. I also stuck a power head in there. Wondering if either can go back to DT eventually?