Help! QT Tangs?

i just put the blue tang in the main and he is going crazy. Hes swimming across the tank walls left to right and breathing heavy. Do they usually do that until they settle in? The powder seems much more calm.

 

I hear they are shy but mine is the bully of my tank. If you turn the lights off for a day it helps them get mor comfortable with the tank. It allows them to get used to it. I hear that and tried it and it helped allot. We all get anxious to see our fish so we throw them in and say look at them go but let them get used to the tank and all will be well.

 

From what I understand, Ich is must be introduced to a system first. It is not automatically present. Part of its life obligates it to attach to a fish as a host. When it releases to finish its life cycle it can remain in the sand for several weeks. But if it does not find a host within a month it dies off. If you have fish in your tank and no Ich has appeared in the last 6 months, it is not in your system, period. That is why QT is such a powerful tool. It affords you the luxury of knowing that there are no parasites or pathogens in your system.

 

They are always there. Dont think that you are ick free. It doesent happen that was every fish is prone to ick. It depends on the fis if it can handle the parasite. I have seen fish with it and nothing else in the tank is affected by it. If it was in the tank others would see it too. I havent seen the fact of everyting going awry from ick so I dont believe it.I had it and beat it and its not all over my fish! I have a hospital tank but I did the basics to beat it and dident need to go that route.

 

breathing heavy is not a good sign.. I would not leave the tank in total darkness for the first 24-48 hours. Leave a lamp on in the room at night or something. Imagine you got plopped into a new house with other people who might want to hurt you and it was pitch black! Definately keep it dim tho.. seems to be better for them.. and limit the movement/ traffic outside the tank..

hopefully it settles down!

 

i think he might be ok, i read on a site that they like to hide in rockwork when first introduced, and not to be alarmed. When i first added him he was swimming left and right like crazy and breathing heavy. Then he started hiding. I tried feeding some mysis, and the pacific blue ate every piece he could get to while the powder didnt pay attention to the food much. He also is breathing normal now, i think he just had a panic attack until he got tired from swimming so much, then rested in the rockwork and now seems more normal.

 

tangs are really high strung fish. It took my tang a couple of weeks to settle down totaly, now he has a nice routine.

 

Ok, I did some research. Here are a few links. Apparently my timelines were off, but not my basic idea about the lifecycles:

" INTERESTING FIND: If no new MI is introduce into an infected aquarium, the MI already there continues to cycle through multiple generations until about 10 to 11 months when the MI has ‘worn itself out’ and becomes less infective. A tank can be free of an MI infestation if it is never exposed to new MI parasites for over 11 months."
Marine Ich - Myths and Facts - Reef Sanctuary

Marine Ich/Cryptocaryon irritans - A Discussion of this Parasite and the Treatment Options Available, Part I by Steven Pro - Reefkeeping.com

A tank can be Ick free if you are careful. That being said, it is difficult to guarantee something like that or even achieve it. But it is possible. The parasite can a wipeout nearly every type of fish in the tank if you don't treat properly. I have witnessed it in a 500g system before and it was a very sad sight. Tangs are more susceptible than others, but if the fish is not cartilaginous it can get it (see second article).

 

11 months is a long time without slipping up. I bet a lot of people think their tank has no ick when it really does.

 

Why not get a rubbermade tub and use that as a temporary QT? Just toss in the usuals (PH, cheapo filter, etc) and go with the flow? Keep in mind that hippos need a very large long tank to thrive. I have also seen and heard that powders are the most aggressive of the tangs, so be sure they get along before putting them together in your tank.
As far as ich, think of it more of a disease that resides in all fish that will only rear its ugly head when the fish is stressed out or physically sick. No aquarium is void of the disease 100%. Now adding a fish into a tank that is displaying ich already will most likely cause ich to manifest on a fish that wouldn't normally get it, unless it is really healthy and unstressed. Now getting rid of a tank that exibits ich requires that a tank be void of all living tissue so the parasite cannot host onto. The free floating ich will have nothing to feed off of and will not reproduce and will die off. Ich has a lifecycle of about 6 weeks, so the tank needs to be rid of all living tissue for at least that amount of time, at least in that scenario.