Sailfin tang ich?

Last weekend, I purchased a Sailfin Tang from my LFS. He's a young one, about 2 1/2 inches long and had average, healthy coloration when I bought him. I know tangs are prone to ich, and could have switching him to a larger reef tank maybe stressed him out? He doesn't seem stressed, he's playing with his tank mates, and when I come home from work, there isn't any seaweed left on the clip! So I know his eating habity are good. If it is Ich, are there any cures for a deer aquarium that anyone could recommend? And the food has soma garlic coating that is supposed to strengthen his immune system, is this true? Would it aid in fighting ich?
Thanks,
Nick

 

Habits* and reef* not deer. Sorry folks

 

Garlic is a Myth. reefkeeping magazine did a very good writeup on it. there are two ways to cure marine ich or crypt.

1. Hyposalinity
2. Copper.

some say you can feed the fish thru it but if you read about the parasite, you will see this is simply not true.

sad part is now that you have that fish in your tank. you have likely introduced the parasite. im not on my personal computer so I dont ahve my links. ill post them a bit later. you can read my build thread and on page 8 I have a battle with Crypt.

 

The real thing that garlic does, is that if the fish is trained to garlicked foods, then they'll be easier to keep eating. If they stop eating, they're basically goners at that point.

It's not a cure, but more of a "helping hand", if you (and the LFS) use garlic on everything the fish eats.

Formalin should be added to that list, too, as a viable cure for ich. Just a bit harder to use than copper, though.

 

Garlic: What has been Studied Versus What has been Claimed by Steven Pro - Reefkeeping.com is the garlic link.

Please do some reading and googling on Marine Ich.

 

If you're talking to me, I'm speaking to none of the points he mentions. Just plain old classical conditioning.

Food + garlic over time = garlic alone stimulating a feeding response. Think Pavlov and bells, except as a smell for fish, since that's by far the largest segment of a fishes' brain. (BTW, the possessive form for a single fish? that's crazy hard haha!)

I'm not talking about it increasing a feeding response without training, the way everyone else does (and the way Steven does in that link). Garlic alone does not cause an increase in appetite. I'm talking about it stimulating a feeding response after training, via a well-studied mechanism. IT worked so well, it got my Banggai cardinal, canary blenny, and melanarus wrasse to all eat nori out of the water column.

 

Thanks for the replies. I've read that a UV sterilizer will help kill ich? I don't know about a fish that already has it, but... Are there any fish or shrimp that clean it off? I'm not really worried about the tank mates, they've each survived at least 2 waves of ich. I'm just tired of losing 200+ of fish each time it hits...

 

Shrimp and fish cannot clean off cryptocaryon (AKA marine ich). Crypto, unlike most other parasites, burrows into the scales of the fish, which means the cleaners can't just pluck them off. If you've ever seen a fish with ich get cleaned, you know it happens very quickly, because the cleaner literally can't find anything. Shrimp just run their cleaner arms along the fish and pull at anything that's a bump. Since ich leaves no real bumps, there's no cleaning.

A UV sterilizer will kill any ich that passes through it (provided it's set up properly, AKA not via manufacturers directions), BUT nearly none will actually pass through it. Ich is only free swimming for less than a day, and starts from the sandbed, moving up to find fish to latch on to. 99.9% of ich won't ever pass through the UV unit.

Literally, your options are formalin, copper and hyposalinity.

 

+1 ^^^

 

My tang gets ich from time to time. I don't recommend dipping it unless he becomes lethargic. Generally just keep the water clean the temp stable and feed it a "variety" of food. Fish should never be fed just one item. Believe it or not tangs love just about anything including mysis and other frozen foods not just dried up sea weed. Keep him fed and the tank water in check and the ich will soon go away. Also to mention ich is in EVERYONES tank, not just a few peoples; however, you only actually see a ich infestation if the fish becomes sick then there slime coat eventually recedes causing ich to latch on.