Ick

[Psionicdragon]

If my tank is stable and the water is pretty good, will my fish recover from Ick? I noticed a bunch of my fish have ick and it may explain why my regal has not really come out of hiding and eat much.


I run ozone at the moment.

My parameters are:

Nitrate 2.5ppm
Ammonia/Nitrite 0 ppm
Phosphate .25
Salinity 1.022
Temperature 74-75 F

[leebca]

No.

What kind of "regal" do you have?

[Psionicdragon]

Regal Angel

My other fish (majority of tangs) got ick.

[leebca]

The Regal Angel is a difficult fish to get eating to start with. Anything wrong with the tank quality (water, tankmates, disease, etc.) is likely to stop it eating (if it was eating to begin with). "Pretty good" tank water isn't good enough for this challenging fish to get off to the right 'foot' and live long.

In the case of the Regal Angel, usually I put it into a QT when I get it to that it doesn't hide on me. I get it to eat in a space where it isn't bothered by other tankmates and 'distractions.' You might try that in the future. This is a good article on setting up a QT:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-10/sp/feature/index.htm

With disease in the tank the best procedure is to remove all fish to a hospital tank and treat with copper or perform a hyposalinity treatment. Let the tank go fishless, without adding anything to it for no less than 6 weeks. I prefer at least 8 weeks.

I wish you luck. :rollface:

[Psionicdragon]

I actually was going to do a QT again, but I had a few bad experiences as of lately with them.

The purple and yellow tangs are showing signs of ick. One of the purples look like it has HLLE.

[Psionicdragon]

In the past few QT, these events occured:

-the fish were qt in hypo longer than it should've because ick wouldn't leave even at 1.009
-the water quality keeps going down because the QT is too small (50 gal)
-equipments malfunction (new and used ones)
-fish will be in qt for a couple of month and die still

So.....after all the QT in the past 4 months, none made it to the main tank.

[backlash]

Just use copper and be done with it. My2c

[leebca]

I understand your frustration. Backlash has a point. If the hypo is something you can't control well, then use the copper treatment.

If the Ich lives at 1.009 then I would first check:
1) Did you do a proper diagnosis, i.e., is it really Marine Ich (Crytpocaryon irritans); and
2) You weren't recontaminating the QT with the disease.

Both the above are more common than you think.

The equipment is under your control. So. . .you need to get a grip on that.

The size of the QT? Many people only use a 15 gallon QT, so yours should be even more stable.

If the fish are dying in QT then you considstantly get dying fish (not impossible, but unlikely) or you have care issues that need resolving. Are you providing the best of conditions? Are you providing the best of nutrition? etc., etc. That article I linked to can give you a lot of information and support in this area.

Good luck! :)