great...ich...

[Shep]

I believe my black ocellaris has ich. She was one of the first fish I put in the tank. The other was an orange clown that didn’t make it. Against my better judgment I bought a small damsel  to put in with her while the tank was cycling, up to that point the black clown was doing pretty good. Even though it was smaller, the damsel (like every one I have ever had) turned mean, intimidating and stressing the clown to the point where she stopped eating and began to look thin. A couple days ago I got an attitude and caught the damsel and got rid of him. The clown began showing spots and still was not eating yesterday so I pulled out an old 10 gallon tank with a HOB power filter, did a ten gallon water change, put the ten gallons of used water from the display tank in the QT, put a new filter cartridge in it and turned it on, easily caught the clown, put her in the QT and dosed it with copper (sea cure). This morning she seemed to be doing well. I believe she was stressed and not eating after being bullied by the damsel which weakened her, putting her at risk to succumb to the ich. I have read many, many places that ich is pretty much always present on most marine animals but when they are well fed, healthy, with a good immunity system, it is not able to take hold. The damsel showed no signs at all, and it would have been easy to see on him as he was a domino. I have also read where some people will let their display tank run empty for 8 weeks trying to remove the ich from the DT. This leads me (finally) to my question.

If it is so present, and will likely be present on the next fish that I buy, why couldn’t I put a couple cheap fish back in the DT (no more damsels), maybe green chromis or something non aggressive and relatively cheap. If they are eating good, healthy and not being bullied, shouldn’t they be good to go? Also with my QT running right now dosed with copper, if anything did show up, I could quickly and easily move them there.

The whole thing has gotten me very close to simply dosing the DT and grudgingly going forward with a FO tank.

Any thoughts/experience will be greatly appreciated.

shep

[Boonjob]

I would leave him in the DT(do not dose copper) and just feed him well(supplement garlic) and try not to stress him... Clowns especially Occellaris are hardy fish... Just give his lowered immune time to catch up, I am sure he will shake it.


As for keeping the DT clean for 8 weeks... I would only do this if you intend on doing an agressive regemented QT for all new specimen... If you get one fish in there with ich, then the entire system can be considered compromised. So unless you are stuck on QT, I wouldn't worry about it, and just concentrate more on keeping your fish happy...


I know it may be aggrevating to see him with ICH, but It's not worth "nuking" your tank with copper yet, IMHO.

If he was a $200+ Purple Tang and several other fish in the tank had it and the reef was fresh with little to no coral, and I had no other tank to hospitalize them in, then it may make a little more sense to nuke with copper. But just keep chugging I say.

[Shep]

cool, kind of what I wanted to hear...

thanx cody,
shep

[chromiumlux]

You can also try Selcon to soak food in. Has everything a sick fishy needs.

[Kenn]

The good news is ...it's a clown fish. IMO one of the toughest and most forgiving fish around. So fixing the problem shouldn't be too tough.

[volcano]

I agree with BoonJob on this one, I would avoid using copper.  However,  I go to the extreme and would take every fish out of the display.  QT all the fish for 10 weeks ( sometimes more if a fish will not kick the parasite. However, that tends to be rare) and put them through hyposalinity.  During the first 10 days of QT I lower the salinity very slowly, to 1.009 and maintain that for 7 weeks.  Then slowly raise the salinity  of the QT  over the next 10 days.  Finally, observe for  7 - 10 days and add the fish back.  I always QT a fish before adding to my DT.

[lazylivin]

That is a good practice Volcano.