ick battle

so my blue hippo, yellow tang, and flame angel have had ick. I've been giving them food soaked with garlic and they have been eating and swiming very activily. It's a been a week and a half, the flame angel and yellow tang have no sign of ick, for a couple days now, but my blue hippo is still moderatly covered with ick. What should I do from here? He really is impossible to catch to put in a qt tank and not sure the stress I would put them under to catch him would be worth it.

75 gallon
reef tank
77 degrees
0 amonia
0 nitrite
15 nitrate (i wont allow it to go above 20)
i do water changes every 1-2 weeks

 

does he appear to have more spots than before? if he is still eating well, i would give him more time. That fish is more susceptible to ick than the other two. it might just take him a little longer to beat it.

 

he has it on his eye now, and has black spots as well. i just finished a week of melaflex.

 

The white spots we see are the cysts containing the parasites. The parasites themselves are microscopic and can't be seen with the naked eye. When the white spots are gone from your fish it simply means the cyst has dislodged because it's time for the next generation of parasites to be born. As long as your fish are in your dt and not a qt being treated the cycle will continue because as long as the MI has fish to feed on this cycle will continue on for around 11 months and any fish that didn't die from the disease will have built up a strong enough immunity to fight off the parasitic infection.
So what you should do is get your fish into qt and treat them with formalin or copper and possibly hyposalinity so they get some relief and leave your dt fishless for 8 weeks so the parasite starves itself out. My .02

 

Ugh. Well, the ideal would be to QT and treat the fish, as mentioned above. However, to fit a blue tang, yellow tang and flame angel you'd need a fairly large QT, especially if you plan to keep them in there for 8 weeks. The other thing to remember is that even if you do this, any future addition to your tank may carry the parasite and re-introduce it - even liverock or coral could be carrying dormant parasite. This is what happened in my own tank - after 9 fallow weeks I enjoyed a few months ich-free, and then it suddenly re-appeared. My conclusion is to try nutrition and reef-safe meds, and only use the QT and copper if all else is failing.

 

I had tried for two weeks, every day to try and catch my PBT, and he was covered in ick. As well as my foxface. I finally broke down adn got this:

Reef Gently AccliMate Acclimator/Transporter Tank

I left it in the tank for two days, feeding them with a rock covered in an algae sheet, (rubberband wrapped), and on the third day, after they got used to it being there, I caught him in 2 minutes. Plus its a great acclimator too!

I have both in a QT tank, and doing much better!! Its a lot better to spend a few bucks now, than loose half your tank to ick as I did last August. Hope this helps!

(it has two parts, the inner part is the trap with a sliding door with a fishing line provided with it)

 

I'm doing the qt ich treatment now with copper. And yes, it does suck tearing your tank apart trying to catch the fish. My wrasse took 2 days of hard work to catch. But, I felt that it was my responsibility to do what I thought was the right thing. That transporter JBL suggested sounds like a good idea. Assuming your fish live long enough to order one. Mine were dieing at an alarming rate. Best of luck, I know how you feel.