Help!! Ick(?) Infection In Tank!

[ouccmich]

Can anyone out there help me? I think I have ich infecting the fish in my tank. I recently moved my lawnmower blennie into my quarantine tank to treat. I had quick cure and maracyn on hand, so that's what I'm using. I read that I should use quick cure for 2 weeks. I noticed my blue damsel has a white spot on her back fin....I need to catch her and put her in quarantine also.

I HAVE BEEN MESSING WITH THE LR TRYING TO CATCH HER FOR AN HOUR. ANYONE HAVE ANY TIPS??????????????????

Also, I think the others might end up coming down to, I don't know how many I should eventually put into a 10 gallon quarantine if necessary (if they show signs). Does anyone ever just treat ALL their fish in the regular tank (or is that a bad bad idea??). I have starfish (3) and hermits/snails. 75 gallon tank with 65 pounds of LR. 2 biowheel whisper filters, UV Sterilizer. I think it would probably be best to treat in the 10 gallon but I have no idea how I'm going to catch that fish. I also have yellow tang, 2 blue damsels, yellow tail damsel, green damsel, lawnmower blennie, 3 starfish, hermits/snails.


PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can anyone help????? Also, the lawnmower blennie doesn't have little white spots, just a large white patch that's getting larger on his left side. He was also rubbing his side on the sand and is breathing rapidly. Today I noticed a white spot on the back fin of my blue damsel. I'm assuming that's most likely what it is. Anyone have any comments/suggestions?? I'm new to this and would really hate to loose all my fish!

[TheReefer12]

I have heard it is a bad idea to treat your fish in the main tank. The bacteria that you want may be distroyed by the antibiotics that you use. The antibiotics are made to get rid of the bacteria causing the problem and may take out the good bacteria. Try searching for some additives that will not harm the bacteria in the tank.

Good luck,
Brian

[JennM]

You MUST NOT treat the main tank. Most if not all medications that are effective against Ich, will certainly kill your inverts and ruin your live rock. Good on you for having a quarantine tank! Should be bare bottomed with plastic decor that can be cleaned and sterilized.

It's a bummer to catch damsels, short of ripping the tank apart, there's no easy way to get them.

The fish you mentioned don't usually get ich though, are you sure that's what it is? A picture would be helpful if you can swing it.

Watch the yellow tang carefully - they are more prone to ich infestation than the others. Putting a yellow tang in a 10 g might do more harm than good at this point though.

The key to a cure is figuring out what is causing the outbreak in the first place, and fixing that. Fish get sick when they are stressed. Were the sick fishes being harrassed at all? Any new additions recently? All your equipment functioning fine? The "silent killer" is often found to be stray voltage in the tank - if you have a voltage meter, test your tank and make sure that no electricity is leaking into the tank.

When you remove the stressor - whatever that might be, the fish should stop getting sick.

If you determine your problem to be ich, treating in the Q tank with Cupramine is what I'd suggest, I have had very good results with it. If you go with that you'll need a test kit to monitor the dose, and I like Red Sea Copper tests. Easier to do and read than Seachem's test, and not all copper tests will read the stuff in Cupramine, but Red Sea tests do.

HTH

Jenn

[Kevin1000]

I HAVE BEEN MESSING WITH THE LR TRYING TO CATCH HER FOR AN HOUR. ANYONE HAVE ANY TIPS??????????????????

Damsels love to hide in those large barnicle shells - once the fish is inside the barnicle just net the entire barnicle and remove. I have used the barnicle approach to nab my lawnmower blenny as well.

I don't know how many I should eventually put into a 10 gallon quarantine if necessary (if they show signs)

Once your tank is infested with ich it would be prudent to treat all fish as if they have ich. If you leave your show tank without fish for 5-6 weeks the remaining ich in the show tank will die off in the tank.

I have not used Quick cure - I recall that Spanky recommended Quickcure for treating ich but he uses it in a concentrated short term bath application (similar to a formalin bath) - to my knowledge no one has claimed success using quick cure using the recommended doseage on the bottle.

If you QT tank is not large enough to hold all of your fish any large container like a large rubbermaid tub will work just fine. An effective Qt does not have to be fancy or expensive.

Heres a couple of links discussing how to QT.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-1...ture/index.htm
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/tr...tinetanks.html

Heres a link discussing ich

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/tr...marineich.html

Hope this helps.

[ouccmich]

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR HELPFUL ADVICE!

I will get something to rid the tank of possible stray voltage tomorrow. I haven't been able to get the damsel, I ordered a barnacle a few days ago (might actually have it tomorrow!). My quarantine tank is not bare bottom, but doesn't have any LR and will not ever have any inverts in it. It has some semi-fine sand and fake coral. The damsel is not itching on anything yet, but I did notice a bright white spot on her back fin. The tang (who I know is more susceptible) has not shown any white spots or itching signs.

Have there been any changes/stresses??? YES! I recently added some new LR, and 3 fish that I had in the 10 gallon that needed to be moved to the 75 gallon tank. Then I noticed the blennie's large white spot/iching/heavy breathing, moved him into the now empty "QT" tank. Today I noticed the white spot on one of the damsels that I recently added to the large tank. I will try to get a picture tomorrow. Is there anything else that it could be? I have a picture of the blennie on a previous attachment (I got NO responses to that attachment from a few days ago, so I'm assuming that no one knew what it was?!?!?!?).