Help Ick that Won't Go Away.

Molli wrote: bur01014 wrote: [ Please don't take offense, but this is one of the biggest myths out there...quarantine reduces your chances of carrying disease into your tank, but is far from 100%... evidence is non-existent on coral dips and ich, one small droplet of tank water from an LFS on a coral could carry ich into your tank....quarantine is far from a guarantee. lol, guess I can't quote someone right I guess you must not have understood what I do.  I quarantine my corals without any fish in that tank many weeks -- if ich was brought in in the water attached to the coral. the lifecycle for it would have come and gone way before I put my corals in my tank.    I don't tank offense, but I think advice like you have given is off the charts for newbies on here.  They keep hearing from some of you that quarantining is a waste of time.  Its NOT a waste of time.

I just said quarantine isn't a 100% guarantee...nothing about being a "waste of time"....

However, now that you mentioned it though, it is a waste of time, IMO.....the effort, time, and resources needed to have a properly running quarantine system for both fish and corals out of a home can be daunting and IMO outweigh the potential benefits and risks for not quarantining.  I only feel I can say this, because during my early years in the hobby I had a full-time quarantine system.  The hobby became unmanageable and I did not see the benefits.  This isn't for everyone though, some people have good success with quarantine systems, but the beauty of these forums is to share advice with fellow reefers that has worked for you.

I don't purposely try to mislead "newbies" like you say...but perhaps you should take a poll on here to see how many of the "oldies" actually and truthfully have properly running quarantine systems in their homes.  I think you'd find it to be less than 50%.   Furthermore, the difference in fish survival and coral health between both types of hobbyists would not be statistically significant.  In other words, people have success both routes. 

Now back to the issue....how are those fish Sculpin? 

bur01014 wrote: I just said quarantine isn't a 100% guarantee...nothing about being a "waste of time".... However, now that you mentioned it though, it is a waste of time

I'll just chalk this up to we all have different ways of taking care of our animals.  I give as much preventative care as I can -- I'm that way with my horses, dogs and cat as well.  I think that prevention is well worth the time and energy.  But that's just how I do things.  Oh its how I take care of my house as well LOL.  Perhaps this comes from my past career in working in nuclear energy, where its not wise to wait until something breaks!

I'm pretty sure the probe is functioning properly but I plan to recalibrate it soon. Even uncalibrated if my PH was showing 8.9 at its peak that could definitely explain the stress on the fish and why they would get an ick breakout. They've had ick before but a little more feeding with some garlic always has cured the issue (except for this time of course. Plus, it would make sense that I would get a PH spike if I overdosed with the DKH buffer. That is scary stuff and I'll have to admit I got a little liberal with it.

Edited by Sculpin - October 19 2012 at 11:06am

Good advice improdigal, I did just pick up a cleaner shrimp last night and it already has been working on the fish.

My alk is now at 14 dkh (checked a week ago so it's probably a bit lower now). I've not dosed since. I was dosing because it was down to 7.8 dkh (if I remember correctly) before several doses of buffer about a month ago. The mistake I made was dosing twice over the month without checking the dkh on the second dose. I think that is were I got in trouble.

wow, this is definitely an issue!

Yeah, just remember to dose in amounts that will not raise your alk by more than 1.0 dkh at a time. That will defintitely stress things out if you jumped an average of 3.0 dkh per dose

Unless you remove all fish from you tank for 8 weeks (some will say less, some will say more) then quarantining new fish will do nothing to deal with the ich you have in your tank and you will still have ich in your tank. It will however make sure any new fish you may add to your tank are healthy and have a better chance at dealing with the ich in the tank and they may show no symptoms unless they get stressed or sick.

I know there will still be ick but to be honest I'm not terribly worried. I've always had ick in my tank ever since I can remember, I just have never seen it this bad. My theory is that I either brought in a new strain of ick with the recent addition of fish or something changed in the tank environment that stressed all the fish causing an outbreak.