Blue tang, ich and ?

the ich will not die in your system unless you remove every fish. You can give the little hippo a chance to recover, but he will more than likely contract the ich again if you put him back in. As for the eating. they are just pigs!

I've read a lot. And nothing seems as clear cut as what you are saying. So this means that the ich is getting on my other fish from time to time.

Ich is a parasite. Meaning it cannot survive without a host. Therefore by removing the fish from the display you are getting rid of the ich. They have a cyst type stage where they can lie dormant on a rock. As far as ive heard they can be dormant for up to 30 days. After they "hatch" if you will they are in a free floating tomite stage. If they do not find a host in 48 hours they die. If they do find a host this is when you see the spot on your fish. They stay on your fish and feed off of it and than burst and reproduce in the thousands.  They however cannot live in hyposalinity, but fish can. 6 weeks ensures you kill all of them b/c they CAN survive in the tomite stage in hypo.

They dont really have an immunity just a very good slime coat as they have probbably been in the tank a while. The ich however will stay in the tank as it will attach to their gills from time to time. Unless you remove all the fish you will still have ich in the tank. You can live with it though. If you give the little hippo a chance to get a good slime coat he could be fine too, but they are ich magnets

if he is doing ok and only has a few spots i wouldnt worry about the hypo yet. If he gets bad though I would definetly do it

feed everybody food soaked in garlic.  If your tank doesn't have any invertabrates you could medicate the tank use non-chelated copper.  non-chelated copper is very toxic to all invertabrates.  chelated copper is hard to test for and generally kits available cannot test for chelated copper.  In the past I have used a gravel vac to gentle filter out dormant parasites.

I also have tried using lots of sand sifting stars, 12 lrg. per 180 gal, to strip the micro fauna out of the sand bed.  This was only experimental but it seemed to help.  I then added more live sand that hadn't had any fish in contact with it for more than 30 days.

You could also add a UV sterilizer, which you could turn on and off whenever you would like.  I think that could be a good addition to any tank.

sorry to hear about the troubles.




Edited by dave huish - February 04 2008 at 12:09am

I have treated many tangs in a quarantine system with non-chelated copper at .15ppm.  the tangs and most other fish did fine.  I did not keep them in there for very long about 2 weeks.
The first fish to show any sign of abnormalities were always the pygmy angels and other angels.  They seemed to get very listless if exposed for too long or the concentration was higher than .15ppm.  NEVER put scaleless fish such as mandrin dragonettes in copper.  They will not do well at all in a tank being treated with copper.  Luckily the little buggers can make a thick mucosal cocoon that protects them from parasites and also predation at night.

I do agree with cI2ysta1 that hypo is a much better solution (no pun intended) but it still won't totally kill the tomonts.


Edited by dave huish - February 04 2008 at 12:31am

He is all by himself now in quarentine and hides all the time. No sign of ich. He comes out far enough to eat.

May be my opinion is in the minority here, but I've never treat saltwater ich.  Unlike freshwater ich, which is almost always fatal if not treated, my experience with saltwater ich is that the fish will get over it if they are healthy.  Everytime I add a new fish in the tank, my tangs, especially the blue tang, will come down with ich.  But they all recovered in time if they are well-fed and not stressed out because of fighting. 

I used to not treat ich either until my powder brown got it. it was very bad and i tried to catch him but was un successful. I tried for 2 more days to catch him but never did until he couldn't swim a way from me anymore cause he was dead!

Haven't had an ich out break since then but he did get it on and off alot every time i just let him and the other fish be and they all just over came it!