how long of an acclimation period did you give him to raise the sg from 1.008. sounds like he is having some bladder issues which is what they use to swim upright. Changing it too fast is like someone turning the gravity up and down on you. imagine going from moon gravity to earth gravity rapidly. little discombobulating. Is he still alive at this point?

 

I lowered the SG from 1.024 to 1.008 over a period of 4 days.

He was doing perfectly fine in the lower SG for about 3 weeks until yesterday when he started looking ill.

yes he is still alive but it looks like just barely, he is breathing heavy and laying on the bottom of the tank occasionally trying to swim but ends up not getting to far. would raising the salinity slightly possibly help?

 

Just got home from the GF's house to find him stiff as a board, dead.

This whole thing with Ich and fish dying on me just make me want to shut the whole tank down. except ive already invested about $700 into it...

 

Here's my thoughts on ich. A healthy no stress environment has been more effective in combating it than a qt tank with hypo salinity . Tangs are notorious for breaking out in ich spots when stressed. Most people will tell you feeding them well and keeping them happy will get rid of it. As Paulb says , years of diving he has never seen a fish with ich in the wild. Qt tanks add more stress in my opinion . Sure they are great for making sure you don't get velvet or those other things but a good supplier is going to qt fish before even offering them for sale anyway. Buying tank raised fish is always a good choice. The less we take fr living reefs the better.

 

I think the cause my be unrelated. How long did he stop eating before he passed?

 

Hard to say..... Could have been ich, could have been the longer term impact of the salinity, or could have been some other infection due to poor water quality. I have had mixed experience with hyposalinity treatment. I'm not sure it really wipes out ich. In my experience it has only reduced it, but I have also never gone as low as 1.008. I have a Powder Brown Tang that was covered in OOdinium in a simple QT with a double the recommended does of coppersafe for 2 weeks now and the ich is gone, skin discoloration is approaching normal, breathing is back slow again, and it is eating well. I do 100% water changes every 3-4 days using water from my main tank which matches the QT in both temp and salinity. This seems to be working well. Did you every actually test your ammonia or nitrites? Its possible even with 20% water changes that these levels built up to toxic levels that a Tang wouldn't be able to handle.

 

Hey guys thanks for the replys

well he stopped eating about 2 days ago out of no where cause he used to eat a ton, the hyposalinity treatment was really going great, before i put the tang in he was literally covered in ich spots within the 24 hours i actually first noticed it.

But i did everything right, tested the water quality every two days with the water change, and did the tank transfer (100% water change) twice.

i dont know im thinking it was just too much stress for him or something.

Keeping a fish happy and healthy in a tank with ich only allows the fish to use its immune system to fight it off, but it doesnt actually get rid of it. as soon as the fish gets stressed or lets its guard down, its immune system might dip and thats when ich will show up, ( so ive read)

Im basically just trying to rid my entire DT of ich by keeping it free of fish for two months. guess my clowns are on their own now

 

Sounds like a lot of stress, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that's what got it

 

See the ICH thread in my signature.

 

I totally concur with wopadobop...Over thirty years in this hobby and I will say that a healthy stress free enviroment does more than any hypo salinity or qt or medications. Tangs in captivity are prone to ich. Most, if left alone, will clear up in time...I will put a deposit on a fish for a few weeks before I bring it home, and make sure that it is healthy, it is always a crap shoot...You will never know what that poor fish went through before you got him home...Sorry for your loss

 

I agree, but in the absence if being able to watch the fish at the LFS for two weeks, specifically with tangs, I have always QTed at home in copper and then introduced the tang to my tank after I'm certain he is clean. As I mentioned above, I recently bought a powder brown for my new tank and it looked perfect in the store, but within a day of introducing it to a new QT with copper, the fish was covered in both Crypt and Oodinium. I don't think there was any way this fish would have recovered on its own, and the ich was already in him because I put him into a new tank with no other inhabitants and clean water. I did a 5 minute freshwater dip (while the fish was sleeping to minimize stress) and two days later he looked 90% better. Breathing slowed to normal and 3 weeks later he is still in QT in copper and appears totally clean. Another week and I will be putting him in my reef tank. While I agree with the comments about stress, I think it's a total gamble any other way and certainly not worth putting the rest of your tank at risk of a major ich outbreak.

 

Fw dip and copper do not work on cryp while its bored in the host.

 

I agree. This is why I have kept him in QT for what is coming up on a month.

 

Im sorry you have confused me.
If you agree then why do you treat a fish with copper and do a FW dip?

 

collegekidaquarium. The problem with HYPO is that it is inconsistent and results are hit and miss..

 

My tang was covered in Oodinium too.

 

I currently got a tiny blue tang that had ich. All I did was put it in a qt 20g with a hob filter and some pvc fittings to hide in and fed it a lot. All signs of ich are gone within a week and it loves seaweed. I'm still gonna qt it for 8 weeks so it gets used to me. Right now when I get near the tank it drops to the bottom and plays dead.

 

Add more PVC hiding spots that let him hide more. They play dead of they don't have a go hiding spot usually. Plus takes time for them to pick one.

 

ok now i have a question for everyone, how many of you guys actually quarantine your fish before you put them in your DT? it sounds like a lot of people are having success just simply adding fish to the DT and keeping the tank and fish healthy and stress free.

I hate the idea of having to QT every fish for a month but it was something i figured i would do to prevent another ich outbreak in the DT.

Currently my clowns are still in Hypo and my DT has been fishless for a little over a month

 

I firmly believe that hypo works for ich but it is a complicated process when dealing with several additions.

Keep in mind, that the tang's death could be completely unrelated to ich or hypo and that many other issues such as a disease or other stressor could be at fault.

 

That is very true, it would be near impossible to really know the cause of why it died in this circumstance. I'm pretty firm on believing it was not ich that caused this. the QT has been in full hypo along with two tank transfers, im confident that ich has been completely eradicated as far as QT goes.


Would it be completely stupid to start raising the salinity for my clowns to get them back in the DT now? Like i said the DT has been fishless for over month, I couldnt say if ich was still present in my DT but it sounds like a lot of people are going about just keeping the fish healthy and stress free and ich present itself.

So who actually QT's all their new fish?

 

I do not QT my fish. My latest run in with Ich was on a new Tomini and he survived just fine.
In the past 4 years I have had only two cases and the latest was the most severe case, prior to that it was just one spot.

In most cases of Ich the amount of stress from being brought home, to acclimation is the main cause in a weakened immune system.

Also folks are seriously misinformed of what a good QT is.
Which all of this is talked about in the "ICH" sticky..

 

My long winded answer..... When I set up my tank a few months ago, I bought fish that I knew were generally less likely to get ich.... These included 2 anthias, fox face rabbit fish, 4 chromis, 2 firefish, a royal gramma and 2 clowns. I introduced all of these fish within days of each other and I had no major ich outbreaks. I did lose one of the firefish which was replaced. I also introduced a juvenile kol tang and flasher wrasse without QT. The tang and wrasse ate the first day and were out and about, and by the 2nd-3rd day, they were in hiding breathing heavily and then died. I didn't see ich, but I suspect they had it. Another month has passed and all remaining 11 fish are healthy, appear clean and eat well. My powder brown tang also looks clean in QT and I plan to move him to my DT in another week. My practice is to only QT fish species that are more ich prone.

Three weeks ago I bought a powder brown tang which is now in a QT and as mentioned above, had a bad ich outbreak. I know there are differing opinions, but for ich-prone fish like tangs, its my practice to QT with copper, simply because I have had the most success following this method. Over 20 years of keeping saltwater tanks (FOWLR), almost everytime I bought a tang it came down with some type of ich.

 

Thanks for the reply's guys,

from what ive read, tangs tend to be "ich magnets" compared to others.

my question is, wont your tang just get ich again once introduced back into your DT?

 

Well, tangs have thinner slime coats, which make them more vulnerable to catch ich and get it worse.

If there is still ich in your tank when you put it back in the tank, then yes, it will get it again. If there is not ich in the tank, it won't get it no matter how stressed it gets.

None of my other fish have ich, so my hope is it is dormant or non-existent in my tank when it comes time to add him. People say its always present in your tank, but I don't buy this. From what I have read it needs a host. Since none of my fish appear to have ich, I'm hopeful that its gone. We will see.

If one of the fish in the tank has had ich, all your fish have ich. They may not show visible signs of ich, but that doesn't mean it isn't completing it's lifecycle over and over and only affecting vulnerable non visible areas like the gills or inside the nostrils. It is this that has given the rise to the idea that it is always in the tank. Your fish have built a partial immunity. There have been some reports of fish developing total immunity to a strain over time, but it's not something you can count on. But to totally rid it from a tank you have to both remove it from all the fish (through hypo, copper, TTM) and run the tank fishless long enough to kill it in the tank. Unfortunately it is difficult to test fish or the tank to reassure yourself it is gone before setting the tank back up with all your fish, and then w/o QT you can add it back with your next addition and start the whole process over again.

 

None of my other fish have ich, so my hope is it is dormant or non-existent in my tank when it comes time to add him. People say its always present in your tank, but I don't buy this. From what I have read it needs a host. Since none of my fish appear to have ich, I'm hopeful that its gone. We will see.

 

Well I lost my tang yesterday. I got home from work and it was laying on its side breating like it sprinted a marathon. I went to the store to see if they had anything and all they had was NOX-ICH. It turned the tank green and the fish died. Not blaming the stuff at all as I'm guessing it was too late for anything.

Just weird because it was actually starting to look good the day before.

 

sorry for your loss.

they called the blue hippo tang "The King Of Ich" for a reason.

I had a good convo with a 20yr veteran who sold tangs awhile back and he said just about every tang in the wild comes areas where the water temp is consistently the same temp year round.

in his 20yr experience the two main reasons for ich with tangs is:

1) any temp change beyond a tight 3, maybe 4 degree swing. if you tank temp is over 4 degrees higher with your lights on and cooler during the night, its a trainwreck waiting to happen for tangs.

2) any salinity changes beyond a 3 to 4 point swing also spells disaster for tangs. so if your salinity is 1.024 after a waterchange and you don't have a autotopoff system in place and your salinity creeps to 1.027+ during evaporation, the tang is likely to get sick and get ICH .....

he also stressed using a refractometer and testing the salinity every other day for any swings. If you use a swingarm salinity tester, it might as well say TONKA TOY on the side of it because its many times way off and a piece of junk.

 

I have a QT, and I make sure it is safely set up before buying new fish, which reduces my impulse tenancies, but ultimately, I reresearch acclimation and disease trends of specific fish while they are acclimating, and watch how they respond. In the end, most of my choices seem to be low-risk and happy, so they usually end up directly in the DT. So far that trend hasn't bit me in the oopsy-daisy, and the researching keeps me from rushing the acclimation. I'm pro-QT, but mostly for preparedness reasons. I also look at every single tank in the LFS before I buy, and don't buy anything live there for at least a couple weeks if I see anything that truly concerns me. Shipping is stressful, so die-off, though unfortunate, does not always equate to reason for concern. A staffer who can't, or won't, answer questions honestly about what's going on, always is.
I'm not so disciplined with QT for my freshwater folks and it has been roughly twenty years since I've had anything to stress over materialise in my tanks.
Most recently, the water from my DT decided to move in with my neighbor. Having the QT still set up greatly reduced my pet losses.