Ick help

I recently got a brown powder tang..last night i noticed
he had white spots all over ..it is a reef and fish tank.
40gal alot of different mushrooms brown and green button polyps,pink and green star polyps,candy button coral,a few different zoos..1 percula clown,1 tang,2 green chromis,and a rock flower anemone..i know tangs are very prone to ick..he is eating good and looks good..
i do also have a QT but it is the process of cycling..any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated thanks

 

Ick... the word says it all.
I would try a fresh water dip for 3 minutes. The fresh water being a mix of 10 percent salt water to 90 percent fresh water.
My yellow mimic tang looked like it had Ick once but he swam on over to the cleaner station set up by my scarlet shrimp (skunk) and I haven't seen anything reappear. Their are people with much more experience than me who will respond to this. I'm just getting it started.(bump) And yes you will definitely hear about quarantine tanks
J

 

Your out of luck!  You must Do a FW dip and place him in a quarentine tank along with any other fish that were exposed to ick.  Don't worry about cycling your QT.  Just use a bare bottom tank and place a couple of big pieces of PVC pipe for cover and then treat the fish with daliy FW dips and either metronidazole which can sometimes be effective and is non toxic or seachems cupramine copper which is less toxic than other types of copper and uses much lower doses.  If you go this route get seachems's copper test kit because its calibrated to cupramine.  I have used this product on my blue tang and false eyed puffer and they survived ick without any problems.  As far as cycling the QT it doesnt matter because you will be doing daily water changes and vaccuming the bottom of the tank to suck up any ick cysts on the bottom before they hatch.  Make sure that you have good water movement and aeration too.  You will need to treat all your fish and remove them from the reef tank.  The reef tank must be fallow or fish free for 8-12 weeks for the ick to die.  In the future I recommend you do a FW dip on all your new fish and quarentine for 2 weeks minimum.  All LFS have ick in their water!  Check out www.wetwebmedia.com on marine ick.  Be sure when you do the FW dip you adjust for the same pH and temperature and aerate the water with an air stone for 1-2 hrs.  You can also add methylene blue to  calm the fish and increase oxygen exchange in the FW.  Just put enough in to make it a nice semi deep blue.  Good luck!

 

And remember you can use an ammonia reducing serum like Amquel to combat ammonia spikes! Good luck, tangs are known as "ick magnets" for a reason! Do you quarantine your fish normally?

 

Sorry for the long post earlier but a couple more things.  You should slowly raise the tank temp. to 83F because it speeds up the life cycle of Cryptocaryon(marine ick) and if you choose not to use chemicals then you should try using hyposalinity by slowly decreasing the SG to below 1.018.  I think you need to get it down to 1.016 or 1.015 but I would check on that first.  Wetweb media has excellent articles and FAQ's site on this.  You would still need to vaccum the bottom of the tank daily with this method.  Also I would keep your reef tank fish free for a min of 8 weeks some say up to 12 weeks.

 

Hey Lefty, hows that tang doing and what treatment method are you using? Hope he turns out ok.

 

Thanks all for the advice i really havent done much..i raised the heat alittle bit,ald lowered the SG ..its been a couple days and i havent noticed any spots on any thing yet..but will have to moniter it if they reappear
im going to use the QT since i have to vacuum it out..
im pretty leary about adding any chemicles if i dont have to..and i do have a couple skunk shrimp coming.wet web media says they are a must and will help with the ick so will keep monitering and thanks again

 

Any time.

 

Hey lefty!

Just to make sure....you may know this already...

do not add copper to your display tank! Only the QT tank. You mentioned your shrimp and I am getting a bit nervous here. Copper could kill your inverts. It will also render your live rock toxic with copper leaching. You would no longer be able to use the rock.

;D

 

just to give you my two cents. are you sure that it is ich you are dealing with? could it have been parisites ? if it was that is easier to deal with.