Should I just give up......

Ok, my 75 gallon tank is 4 months old and actually looking pretty good, didn't have an RO/DI unit at the time so started it with declorinated city water, but now use R0/DI water, went thru a bad algea stage(dark green hair) but now things are going good with it and all inhabitants seem to be doing great. The 125 has been up for 3 months and of course, i had another post recently about all the brown hair algea, and now ICH !!!!..... noticed in on the blue hippo tang and the flame angel mostly, actually the blue tang may not make it.... I am thinking the 125 may be a great freshwater tank, but I really wanted it to be Saltwater and I was hoping to have corals later on....should i just hang in there ?

 

Do you have a quarantine tank you can put the infected fish in and treat them?? Never give up, especially if you have kids around. You never want to let them think that when times get tough you just quit. You get up, brush yourself off and learn from the mistake that knocked you down. Hang in there fellow reefer.....this too shall pass.

 

Hang in there mate youve gone too far now .....lol

 

Hey what Otty said is so true. Don't give up, we all go through spells with our tanks. I just spent 2 months of water changes to get my nitrates from 80ppm to 0ppm. I did a ton of home work, vaccumed my substrate, used my turkey baster alot. I got alot of help and support from my 3reef friends. I was exhausted and this all happened when I was sick too. I wanted to give up, I was so frustrated because I made some silly mistakes but I have gotten back on track to find out I have another problem. When a tank is under a year old you will run into problems until things settle.

Get a rubbermaid container and use that as a quarantine tank, get a cheap heater and either use a spare powerhead or possibly a bubble stone for oxygenation and treat the ick in there. Blue hippo's are prone to ick even sometimes just a water change can cause it. Hopefully someone with experience with this situation can help. Don't give up!

 

too much too soon

Too me it seems you have put too much in your tank too soon. The slower you go the easier. Your 125 seems to have quite a load for 3 months old. Assuming you dont have any coral in there algea will not hurt anything and with time you can probably "wait it out". The reason algea is there is because it is consuming the nutirents nothing else in the tank will, or will fast enough. Give it time and others will out compete, algea is low on the totum pole.
As for the ich, you could do a quarantine tank but that is likely to stress your tang even more and increase the chance of mortality. IMO if he is that far gone, he is gone. The best treatment for ich in a reef system is to eliminate as much stress as possible. A fish that is not stressed is likely to beat ich on thier own, assuming he is not too far gone.
So in conclusion, if it were my tank I would let things be, feed minimal (dont let them starve), and wait it out for several months, count your losses as lessons learned
MHO, I have only had a reef aquarium for less than a year but have been an aquarist for 20+

Good Luck
Travis

 

Definitely Don't give up-

I gave up on my 75 gal marine aquaria a few years ago, and I never forgave myself. Of course, I didn't have the folks here at 3reef to help!... I now have cut it down to a 30g freshwater with a large sump... and my african beauties came down with ICH. The point is, freshwater, brackish, or marine, all aquaria can have issues. Trading one type for another isn't going to resolve the issue at all. Like the others have said. Wait it out a few months, keep the stress down, and they're likely to overcome the nasty lil' parasites- you can try more aggressive remedies later on if some good time and a stress free environment don't solve the issues.

 

Do a FW dip immediately on your Tang! Whats worse, stressing the fish out a little or letting it die. The dip will temporarily remove most of the parasites that are external. I just dont understand this fear of stressing out a sick fish!
Sick fish will become more stressed as they become sicker and will eventually die if left untreated. I've been doing this for 30 years and have never lost a fish because of a dip or placing in a QT tank. You never have anything to lose by treating a sick fish that will die without treatment. Check out my post in the Tropical Fish section of this forum and look for Miracle Fish post. Aggressive and EARLY treatment is the key IMHO in keeping a sick fish alive.

 

The saltwater hobby, IMO, is a trial and error and a learning along the way process! Your failure at a point in your endeavor with a saltwater tank is no reason for you to get depressed and have your confidence level deflate...You will have failures again, I assure you, but your successes will far outweigh your negative experiences, and these positive experiences are the ones that should be focused on and built upon!
as for your ICH dilemna, you can try to decrease the salinity level of your water gradually to a 1.010 level and keep that level for a couple weeks, then increasing the salinity level again to your desired level of around 1.024-26 IMO-again gradually! This should help with the ICH problem naturally! I would go so far as to say that an iodine and vitamin C supplementation will further aid your fishes combatting the ich disease!

 

Ich

I posted this on another thread today all good information a real pain but I will never introduce another wet object into my display without Qt for 4-6 weeks first. This will save alot of headaches later on.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your main tank has ich. Even though you can not see it all your fish are infected. I just went through this. The only way to beat this is to quarantine all your fish in another tank. Leave your display tank empty (no fish ich need a host to survive) raise temperature to 82-85 degrees. Itreated my fish with cuppramine for 20 days(directions say 14 but instead of 100% water change at the 15th day I elected to just do a partial change without adding the cuppramine. I also lowred salinity to 1.009 and left it there for 5 weeks. Over this last week I have begun raising salinity to normal levels. All fish are free of ich now and tank should be also. There are numerouse articles on Wet web media.com,Marine depot forums.com and CAptive reefing. These all say the same thing the only true way to get rid of ich is to remove the hosts for 6 weeks.
Mike