Ich!

Cleaner Shrimp, Garlic Guard/Garlic Oil, and a UV Sterilizer. All in all the garlic will help your fish keep eating so their immune system can fight it off, the cleaner will help keep them cleaned off, and every tank should have a UV sterilizer (remember when buying a UV to get one rated for your total water volume, not just your display tank size). You can never totally get rid of it without going fishless for a couple months, most new fish will have Ich on them, it's just a matter of are they healthy enough to fight it off. Quarantining new additions for a couple weeks while treating with a copper based medication or formalin will kill off any Ich on the new fish. Just be sure to never mix the water of the QT tank with you display because copper kills everything except fish.

Edited by CapnMorgan - July 07 2010 at 12:43am

Cleaner Shrimp are prone to "heart attack" the best way to help them survive is to drip acclimate them slowly over a few hours. This will minimize the stress. You should also plan it so that you are acclimating them, and adding them to your tank during "dark hours" so plan on shutting your lights off for a few hours (dimming the lights and/or introducing new additions at night is a good practice to follow with all livestock). I have about 12 peppermints and 3 cleaners and have never seen problems. As far as the UV sterilizers go, the Turbo-twist by coralife is a great unit, the aquastep by pentair/lifeguard aquatics is also a nice unit. If you have a water volume of less than 125 gallons the JBJ submariner is an easy way to have a UV.  Again just make sure you buy one to fit your total system volume and not just your tank size. 

I have not had a single problem with the Ich parasite since we discovered the value of Garlic Oil and I started using it five or six years ago. That's why I wrote up the best way to use it in the "Tips and How to's" section of the link referred below. 

I moved recently and got out of the garlic habit! DUMB!

It is sure hard to sit back and wait when a being is on their sick bed.

SG,

I think it is probably too late to set up a QT for this outbreak :( Tonight they still seem healthy and only the blenny is breathing hard. Everyone else is eating and acting normal. So hoping I don't have too many losses.

Steve

Lots of good advice here.

So is it even worth quarantining new additions? It sounds like it might be kind of pointless in the long run.

Lot's of people with more experience and intelligence than me recommend quarantine for everything, and yet not all the experts agree on that. I have personally asked many of our guest speakers about it. Many feel the same way and have the same experience as me. The quarantine is so stressful for the new fish that if Garlic Oil is not used, it stills gets infested with the Ich parasite after being moved out of quarantine into the new tank.


If the tank is a healthy environment for the incoming fish; an environment that minimizes stress because of the ample supply of natural food growing in the tank and tank mates that are friendly(or trained to be friendly) then the use of a Garlic Oil that is effective in that particular tank will prevent most fish mortality.

That's why I applaud what was said by Downhill_biker and BobC63 about making sure the tank is a healthy environment. Unfortunately, people do not always understand what is meant by the term "healthy environment". For example, too many hobbyists still do not understand or recognize the importance of Alkalinity and Calcium. If we looked at the hobby as expressed by the "complete test kits" at the LFS, which lack Alk and Ca tests, we would have to admit that the hobby still has some catching up to do.

Mark steps down from his soapbox.