Would you buy this Pair??
 

I was going to pick up a mated pair of Black Clown fish that I picked out, when I noticed that one of them had two small spots of ich.
I was going to QT them anyway, should I just keep looking for a healthy pair??
The price is good, $60 for the pair.

These are my first Salt fish, not sure if I want to start off with sick fish :)


What do you think?

Keith

Rule n 1 Never buy a Sick fish. :beer:

That is also not a very good deal I would never buy a fish no matter how cool it was if it was sick. If I was given a sick fish and was able to help it in QT I would do that but I would not spend that kind of money on a sick fish. No need to rush there will be others out there.

+1...why look for trouble! Avoid a sick fish

Especially since you have no experience with ich.

I wouldn't buy any fish that was obviously infected with a parasite or any fish from a dealer who would knowingly sell them that way. The last thing a new hobbyist needs is a parasite battle. Ich isn't something to be taken lightly; this stuff has ruined the hobby for many, many people.

Agreed, never buy a visibly sick fish, but assume are fish are sick.

Yea especially when i got my pair for 100 bucks you will end up paying that remaining amount on medicine

If you knew the best treatments for ich and how to properly incoperate them, IE hyposalinity, you could buy them and treat them while quarantining. My advise is to Hypo every fish you receive while it is in quarantine, just because you keep a fish in quarantine does not mean it doesn't have ich in its gills, the only way to assure they don't have this parasite is to treat them as if they do everytime. Just my advice. I do agree though that if these are your first fish and you are not ready to treat ich, you should look for another pair, or have the LFS get you a new pair (but he now has ich in his tank, and any fish he gets could have ich as well).

With ich, in general most LFS's that receive fish from a supplier and do not quarantine them will have some ich in their tanks. Its why we quarantine our fish.

If you decide you do want to purchase these fish, look up the ich treatments and verify the fish is still eating well before you buy it. The choice is yours but I agree with others to look for another pair of clowns.

Experienced people are having more and more trouble eliminating ich; especially using hypo. I don't know if more resistant strains are evolving; but buying already infected fish, especially by a beginner, would be a terrible way to enter the hobby.....IMO. treating ich isn't always a sure thing; a newcomer intentionally buying the parasite (it comes free with the fish) goes against the grain of everything that newcomer should be trying to learn.

Hyposalinity refers to exposure of fish to a salt concentration that is lower than that in which they normally live (typical tropical marine systems range between 30–35 g/L (g/L=ppt)). Lower salinities are less easily tolerated by many common marine tropical species, which prefer a tighter range of salinity (stenohaline). Therefore, for many species, the lower the salinity, the shorter the time period the fish can tolerate. Freshwater or lower salinity dips (duration in minutes) or short or prolonged immersion baths (duration in hours or days) for tolerant fish species are commonly used to kill or reduce the numbers of external parasites on marine species. Since Cryptocaryon is deeply embedded, fresh water dips often do not reach and therefore do not affect the parasite.

However, Cryptocaryon has proven to be more challenging to treat using salinity changes. It is inherently difficult for most aquarists to properly maintain the appropriate level of hyposalinity due to evaporation, auto top offs, etc. If proper hyposalinity is not maintained, the clock restarts.

Because trophonts and tomonts are more protected, longer dips and baths will be required than for many other species of parasites. Exposure to freshwater for up to 18 hours did not seem to affect Cryptocaryon trophonts on the host (Colorni 1985). Prolonged exposure to 15–16 g/L salinity or less (Cheung et al. 1979; Colorni 1985) appeared to affect some life stages. Tomonts of one strain of Cryptocaryon were effectively killed after 48 hours of exposure to 15 g/L or less (Colorni 1985). Temperature will also determine whether hyposalinity will control the parasite, with temperatures outside the optimal range (23–30°C) causing greater breakdown of tomonts (Cheung et al. 1979).

More recently, studies have demonstrated different salinity tolerances among strains of Cryptocaryon. Yambot (2003) described one Taiwanese outbreak occurring in sea bream Sparus sarba at a salinity of 5 g/L, and another outbreak in sea perch Lates calcarifer occurring at a salinity of 10 g/L. These two strains were successfully propagated in the laboratory at 7 and 10 g/L, respectively, and are well below previously documented preferred salinities.

One suggested protocol that may have some effectiveness, depending upon temperature and the strain's salinity tolerance, is to maintain water at 15 g/L for 21–30 days (Noga 1996; Kinsler, pers. comm.). Salinity should be reduced gradually by 5 to 10 g/L per day until 15 g/L is reached.