Ich treatment plan

[super stooge]

Okay guys, time for the latest in our hourly series of ich threads.

Long story short, my 180g reef has had ich creep into it. Its going to be impossible for me to catch all of my fish for treatment so I have no choice to break down the tank, remove the rock and get the fish like that. Initially this was a devastating thought but the fish have to be moved to a new tank in about two months anyway so ill just move the timeline forward on that and set up in the new tank again instead.

The current plan is to remove all of the rock, inverts and corals and take them to the new tank along with my powerheads, lights, controller and other systems. The new tank will run fallow with all my corals for about 8 weeks to break the ich life cycle.

The question is what happens with the fish for treatment. I've used hypo salinity to treat ich successfully in the past but lost a number of fish during the treatment and struggled to keep water params stable in the minimalistic hospital tank.

Im considering using tank transfer between two large plastic tubs this time around. TTM seems like the more effective of the two methods from what I have read and should be easier on my fishy friends.

Herein lies the problem though; I have too many fish friends! All together I have 19 fish in my tank and while I may be able to get away with keeping all of them together for the two weeks of the TTM, I dont want to house that many fish in my small quarantine tank for a further 6 weeks beyond that while I wait for the fallow tank.

So with all of the background out of the way, I have two options:

Option 1:

remove the live rock and coral and use my current 180g display as a massive hospital tank with which to undergo hypo. Keep my beefy skimmer and return running on the tank for the duration of the treatment. Once hypo is complete, raise the salt back up and keep them housed in the rockless dt until the new tank fallow period is complete.
Pros: By far the easiest method in terms of labour. No need to transfer back and forth between plastic containers. skimmer and large water volume help to ensure stable water params
Cons: hypo may not be 100% effective and will be quite harsh on the fish possibly leading to more losses

Option 2:

Remove everything from the current tank, fish go into plastic tubs and undergo TTM. My issue here is that I would again want to house the fish in my empty 180g display for the remaining 6 week period in order to give them space and maintain water quality. I'd need some way to sterilise my current dt though. doing the inside of the glass is easy enough, but how can I guarantee the entire tank is sterile? Inside the pipes? Between each baffle? inside the skimmer and pumps? If I were to add bleach to the tank after everything is out and run it for a day or two, then drain it, clean it and leave it dry for a week and a half, would this kill off any remaining life stages in the tank?
Pros: TTM has a better chance of eradicating ich and is easier on the fish resulting in fewer losses.
Cons: if even a single cyst survives in my current DT after cleaning, the fish will be re-infected after they come out of the tubs making the whole treatment pointless.

BONUS QUESTION:
What do I do with my mandarin? treat him as in invert and take him to the new tank with the corals after a freshwater dip? put him through the ich treatments and hope I can feed him bottled pods for 8 weeks or something?

Thanks guys

[scuzy]

Sorry since you have so many fish it'll be hard either way. But hypo is the least intrusive. You could also try cp but cp may not always work I've done ttm on all my fish and find it the best method. Maybe just use your current 180 but not run it through sump fill just enough to overflow line?

[ThRoewer]

The first question would be "how bad is the infection?" If it's just light you could do TTM in batches until you have all fish clear.

I personally would do hyposalinity, except maybe with fish that need live food like mandarins, pipefish and the like. Those I would put through TTM and then into a suitable holding reef tank.
The rest of the fish I would treat with hyposalinity. That doesn't have to be done in a sterile empty tank. I have treated my Baja California tank with my bluespot jawfish with hyposalinity after removing all the inverts. It worked quite well even though I really neglected them afterwards and didn't even bother to raise the salinity until it got back to normal by evaporation - about 5 months later (it's a jawfish tank and tightly covered).
The only losses I had were 3 blennies that turned out to be tropical and who didn't like the cold winter temperatures (no heater, no chiller - temperatures go as low as 16°C in the winter and as high as 30°C in the summer, just like in the wild.)

If you add coral sand and some dead reef rock for the fish to use as shelter then the water hardness and pH should never get below the critical limits.

CP is something that I would not use against Cryptocaryon. The effectiveness is too shaky and the required treatment duration will likely cause some losses.

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[dxdoan]

For your mandarins I would complete a seperate TTM in a small 10 litre container and purchase decapsulated brine shrimp, hatch them and then feed them to your mandarins.
Obviously if your running 2 TTMs 1x for large fish and 1x mandarins it would mean you need access to 4x everything, like heater, sponge filter etc... hope you have some handy

[JustinM]

My mandarin has been in qt for about 3 months now eating nutramar ova. He wouldn't eat anything but pods and I was worried about him in qt but tried Nutramar ova and he went right for it. Just waiting on Cp so I can treat prophylactically before he goes in DT.

[titaniumauto]

anyone treat the achilles tang with cupramine ?

[titaniumauto]

without killing it ? LOL

[titaniumauto]

hypo doesnt seem to work right now .....

[Jdub968]

How about removing the sand from the DT and running hypo in it this should kill all the ick that's in those hard to get places you talked about throw the sand away and all inverts could go into the buckets with a heater, power head and light