Coral and Ich

[MatthewLaw]

My royal gramma has come down with ich! boooooo!

i tried to catch and move him to the hospital tank but unfortunately the only thing i succeeded in doing was aquascapping the tank! he is a fast little bugger!!

So, I was thinking of moving my LR and coral (sun coral) to the hospital tank and just treating the display and its inhabitants.
the inhabitants are the royal gramma, 1 false perc and a few hermit craabs. i plan on using hyposalinity since it worked for another RG in the past.

any objections?

i assume i should keep my Protein SKimmer on as well as the carbon pad in the filter.

i also assume the coral and LR will be fine in the hospital tank (its cycled, no issues) for 6-8 weeks 9 (at SG 1.025)? does Prime affect corrals? I used it in the tank for a coral beauty that was pooing more than the whisper filter could keep up with.

thanks fory our help!!

[swegyptian]

That sounds fine by me, but keep in mind that if you remove all of your coral and LR, it will be easy to catch the fish and move them instead, if that would make your life any easier. That's what I always do. I don't even bother with a net until 99% of the rock is out of the tank. Makes for less stress on my end.

[MatthewLaw]

thanks for your help.

from a survival point, would it be better for the fish to be in the empy QT/hospital? my concern is that once the SG gets to 1.009, the live sandbed will start to die off causing an amonia increase.
is that a legitimate concern or does most of the die off come from LR (which will be removed)?

[MattL]

There is no reason why you can not leave some LR and some sand behind in the DT to do hyposalinity.

It is an old fallacy that hyposalinity will kill off live rock and sand. Just be sure to lower the salinity slowly (-0.001/d) and skim while doing so until the salinity is too low for the skimmer to effectively function.

Do be prepared to lose any encursting algae on the rock, though. It will come back. Also, be sure to use rock with little or no macroscopic organsism present. Remove them if they do. Base rock is best for this purpose. As for the sand, if you feel it harbors macroscopic life, then yes, I would remove as much of it as possible.

Lastly, 1.009 is not low enough to kill all Ich. You will need to go down to 1.007 to be sure, but beware, as fish death can occur at 1.006 and lower.

Matt:cool:

[snorvich]

Personally, I would remove the rock, catch the fish and move it to the hospital tank then treat it with copper.

[MatthewLaw]

i just got home and looked at my royal gramma. not a single spot/dot on him!!

can ick cycle this quickly (literally 12 hours)?

[laf-reef]

you may have first noticed the spots mid-cycle...

I agree that the best approach is to remove the live rock/coral, moved the fish to the hospital tank and put the live rock/coral back in the DT. I have had success using "Copper Power" for treating ich.

[BangkokMatt]

If the fish has stopped showing signs then I would leave your tank as it is. Most of us (if not all) have ich in our tanks. It is pretty easy to control with good husbandry, good water quality and healthy feeding.

[biger]

Read this article about ich. It helped me understand it much better and there is a part about the myths of ich always being present in our tanks.
From ATJ's site:

http://atj.net.au/marineaquaria/marineich.html

[MatthewLaw]

thanks for the website. very interesting!

[biger]

Your welcome, Lots of good info there. Good thing we got guys that put these kind of websites up to help the rest of us.

[Freed]

Salinity can be lowered to 1.009SG(the recommended low end hypo) in as little as a couple of days. Bringing SG back up should be slow and on the order of several days.

It's been proven that ich IS NOT in everyone's tank and can easily be prevented from ever getting in.

[MatthewLaw]

oh. i thought the SG lowering rate had to lower (more than 0.002-3 per day).