What have I done!!!!!

[9fishers]

I am so upset! I made a classic newbie mistake. I have had all of my fish out of the reef tank for 3+ weeks while I nursed Ich in QT.
I went out and bought the most adorable Citron Goby yesterday. As I was acclimating him, my DH said it was time to put him in the tank. So ahead I went. And as soon as I released this fast little guy into a 100 Lbs of LR, I realized I didn't dip him!!!! I meant to be sure to dip him in Formilin before he went in. Now he's in there and probably recontaminating my Ich free tank! I have a UV sterilizer, a cleaner shrimp as well as Peppermint shrimp.

72g
UV Ster.
100lbs LR
100lbs LS

How big of a threat is he to my system? How panicked should I be? I was planning to rerelease my Clowns this week.
Now what do I do??

Thanks guys!

Nicole

[seamonkey]

I am not the best person to answer this but personaly I have never dipped any fish. Did the little gony look nice and healthy? I would say as long as he looked healthy and showed no signs of major stress that you prolly won't have to worry at all. Wait for a couple days if it makes you feel safer to keep an eye on the goby to see how it looks and then if all looks fine I would start putting your other fish back in the tank.

[Robbie]

Why worry? Its too late now. As long as your tank is healthy and your fish are eating good I think you will be ok, you probably will not know for a week or so. I never QT my fish but if you just got over an ich out break I can understand your concern.

Robbie

well i think youll be okay, if he is the only fish in there, as well as the uv sterilizer, hell be okay.

[thefatman]

i've never dipped a fish either..

calm down. drink a brew and enjoy watching him

[Reefer Addict]

Since I'm currently battling a minor ich outbreak, I can understand your worry.

I've been reading up extensively on ich lately, and from what I can gather it's a pretty bizarre creature... basically it can show up at any time, even in 'ich-free' tanks.
UV definitely helps as a preventative but unless you can guarantee that every drop of water in the tank passes through before touching any of the other water in the tank then it won't be 100% effective...
It definitely makes a major dent in the ich population though, so I can recommend that you fire up the ol' UV for a little while if you're truly paranoid about it.

It seems the best preventative is to keep the fish in a stress-free environment and feed them a balanced diet so that their immune systems function well... most fish don't have a problem fighting off ich, but if they're stressed and not eating then their chances go downhill quickly.

My ich 'treatment' so far has included raising the tank temperature to 82 and soaking their food in freshly crushed garlic to stimulate feeding.

I've been doing this for about a week and the fish are all behaving normally though the ich hasn't totally cleared yet... the good thing is I haven't lost any fish.

I pretty much facilitated the ich outbreak in my tank by rearranging the rock twice in two weeks in my reef... the first time because I had to catch a pearlscale butterfly that was wreaking havoc on my corals, and the second time because I didn't like how the rock had stacked after the first redo.

This is also the reason I'm just leaving the fish in the tank and using the K.I.S.S. method of treatment... there's no way I want to restack that rock all over again, especially since I finally got it the way I like it after 5 months of trying. (thanks a lot Mr. Murphy)

I wouldn't worry too much though... just keep the other fish out of the tank a couple weeks longer if you're really worried about it and observe the goby to see if it shows any signs of ich... if not then keeping the fish healthy combined with UV treatment should be more than enough to keep your tank free from ich.

[Toadfish]

You need to go and tear down the tank, and scrub every last piece of substrate. No seriously, don't sweat it. Gobies have a high resistance to "ich". No matter what you do "ich" will almost certainly always be present in your tank. Keep the water parameters up to snuff, feed a variety of foods, and limit the stresses in your tank. Prevention is the best cure.

[squid]

[I meant to be sure to dip him in Formilin before he went in. )

Formilin has formaldihyde (?) which is used ti embolm (can't spell today) people when they die. That's some pretty potent stuff. I might reconsider using this product in the future.

We never used that in the store, we never sold it, never even thought of having it on our selves for customers to consider and offered natural alternitaves., cleaner shrimp, cleaner wrasse, adding garlic to dry food, etc.

That stuff (IMO) can cause more damage than you can imagine.

[thefatman]

squid, i'm certainly no expert, by any stretch of the imagination.. but i jsut read a thread about formalin the other day, and folkswere saying that it's actually in a lot of the off the shelf meds for sw fish.

not sure how much truth there is to that, but i recall reading it somewhere in the last few days. they were saying that it's in a lot more stuff than folks realize.

[squid]

OH PLEASE fatman, I don't think anyone is an expert, much less myself. I can only tell you our experience in our own store.

as for it's in a lot of the off the shelf meds, This could be true the only meds we sold at the store was myacin. and ONLY used it in extreme cases in the quarantee tank. Myacin is an antibioatoc (? again, forgive my spelling)

We found doing things the natural way tanks stayed healither for longer periods of time. OHHH there were times that a customer or two had such a bad ich outbreak nothing worked. There wern't enough cleaner shrimp or wrasses to keep up with it. but MOST of the time, it worked.

Every shipment we got in, we would almost always toss in the cleaner wrasses. I know a lot of people have a hard time with the cleaner wrasses because of their short life span in capativity, but the job they did in keeping the fish healthy was amasing.

[Reefer Addict]

I should add to my previous post that I have cleaner gobies and cleaner shrimp in my tank, so they are also helping with the 'treatment'.

I figured that catching all the fish and putting them in a small hospital tank (I only have a 10 gallon spare) would be more stressful and have worse consequences than just leaving them be.

It's not the ideal solution, but so far it looks like everything should pull through (knock on wood).

[9fishers]

See this smiley? Thats how I felt when I realized what I had done!

Well, you guys are right....too late to worry about it now. I'll sit back, relax, and try not to fret.

Didn't mean to start anything with the comment about Formalin. I know it's formaldehyde based and it has copper in it,too. At least Formalite1 does. I had planned to dip as a precaution...only put "disinfected" fish in the tank. I read that I should do this. Anyways, didnt do it.

Thanks for all the replys! My tank is healthy and stress free so I bet my little Goby will be just fine.

Cheers to you all
Nicole

[ScoobityDoobity]

calm down. drink a brew and enjoy watching him [/b][/quote]



Now thats how to solve all your problems!!! Wait!!! That IS how I solve all my problems!!!!LOL