gguertin
10/06/2008, 05:17 PM
I had decided to start qt'ing my fish after upgrading tanks and have now lost a blue tang and a powder brown tang in the process.
I have never in 10 years having a reef tank actually lost a fish to ich I have always had them recover to fight the ich off but wanted to keep my main display ich free.
I tried the hyposalinity and lost my blue tang 4 weeks into the process monitoring the salinity with a refractometer the whole time. Then hoping for better success I tried the copper treatment with the brown tang only to come home today 3 weeks after getting him to an upside down fish. I am really having trouble believing that taking a perfectly healthy fish and putting them in a scenario where they have 1 parameter so far off that it will kill a parasite could ever be good for a fish.
My question is what alternatives are there? Are fresh water dips effective? How stressful are they? Am I going to kill another perfectly healthy fish in an attempt to keep my tank ich free? I would not consider myself an expert but I am far from the beginner in this hobby so while I know their are people really gun ho about things like a skimmer 5x whats necassary which I fell into as well I am looking for a serious yet safer way to combat ich. Does anyone here have a reasonable method that they use. I have 2 qt tanks setup a 20g and a 14g so its not that im not willing to put the effort in but with the precautions I take with this and losing fish that were healthy from the start I am starting to believe there has to be a better way. Sorry for the spelling errors and rant but I waited 3 months to find a powder brown I liked in the Fargo area :(
I have never in 10 years having a reef tank actually lost a fish to ich I have always had them recover to fight the ich off but wanted to keep my main display ich free.
I tried the hyposalinity and lost my blue tang 4 weeks into the process monitoring the salinity with a refractometer the whole time. Then hoping for better success I tried the copper treatment with the brown tang only to come home today 3 weeks after getting him to an upside down fish. I am really having trouble believing that taking a perfectly healthy fish and putting them in a scenario where they have 1 parameter so far off that it will kill a parasite could ever be good for a fish.
My question is what alternatives are there? Are fresh water dips effective? How stressful are they? Am I going to kill another perfectly healthy fish in an attempt to keep my tank ich free? I would not consider myself an expert but I am far from the beginner in this hobby so while I know their are people really gun ho about things like a skimmer 5x whats necassary which I fell into as well I am looking for a serious yet safer way to combat ich. Does anyone here have a reasonable method that they use. I have 2 qt tanks setup a 20g and a 14g so its not that im not willing to put the effort in but with the precautions I take with this and losing fish that were healthy from the start I am starting to believe there has to be a better way. Sorry for the spelling errors and rant but I waited 3 months to find a powder brown I liked in the Fargo area :(