I feel for ya and hear ya. I struggle with the whole qt/hospital tank thing for bigger fish like tangs and large angels. They really seem to not handle they cramped quarters and lack of security very well. Then there is the whole netting of the fish issue that I wont go in to. A tough decision for you for sure.

Oh no! I am so sorry to hear this :(

May sound harsh but to live in my tank, the fishes have to be able to survive and fight off ich. Its just not avoidable in my tank and has been there going on three years now.

I have yet to loose a fish to ich in the display though, only in QT.

Right now I monitor it closely and as long as there is no scratching or signs of stress, I just feed well and keep the water clean. It seems to come and go. Before adding my Powder Brown, I think I was getting way ahead of the ich--he seems to be stressing the tank enough now to cause a new outbreak.

If a fish were to ever get bad enough to need QT, I would probably Qt them and sell. Replace the fish with another who can hopefully fight it off. Wouldn't be easy to do but like you said, if you QT them and put them back, they will most likely just get really bad again.

Its such a hard thing to deal with :(

Good luck!

If it was my tank, I would pull all the fish and treat.

If that is what you are going to do then I would set up more then 1 quarantine tank, maybe even 3 or 4 to spread out the fish load.

I have an empty hagen 48 (48x12x20) It just needs some cleaning if you want to borrow it.

Thanks.
You know what really gets to me? My SF Tang has been with me for over a year, living in my 90 gal. One of the reasons I wanted another tank was I felt he needed a bigger home. He wasn't aggressive or anything, I just wanted a bigger tank for him as well as some other larger fish. So I put him in the new larger tank and now I may be killing him. Pi$$es me Off! I sure hope he makes it. If not, I may rethink the whole purpose for this new tank. It was supposed to be all about the fish. (Large swimming area, bare bottom, and big skimmer.) The 90 gal was going to be pretty much all corals and just a few fish. The way I feel right now I may end up with two SPS tanks. At least when I lose a coral I don't feel as bad.

Man that is rough. I hate to loose fish too. Thats why I have stopped with QT.

The last QT I did was hypo. 6 weeks no fish in the display and fish in 1.008. Fish got ich about 3 weeks after going back to the display. No new fish added. Tried it all over again for 8 weeks and lost my favorite fish in QT this time. Again, still got ich. Never again. I did a ridiculous amounts of reading and found the longest documented case of ich surviving without a host was just over 3 months. Not all strains can do this and I think its rare but who knows what strain is in the tank...there are apparently hundreds.

Some are thought to have a decent immunity to hypo now too. Why not? Everything evolves. Especially hardy parasites like ich.

I am one that believes if this problem is not dealt with from the beginning at wholesalers and collectors holding tanks, it will get out of hand one day to the point the ich parasite will be a "super bug" kind of thing. May get hard to treat.

Its hard to treat already...hypo is not always going to work and copper destroys a tangs gut fauna. I would never copper tangs personally. I think it takes years off their lives.

Where did you read about copper destroying a tangs gut fauna? I had to treat my achilles 3 yrs ago with cupramine (he had marine velvet)

My older brother is a marine biologist and has told me.

Here is Bob Fenner talking a bit about it:

<Surgeonfishes have a mix of microbes, bacteria, protozoans... more that like E. coli in our intestines, or better, similar organisms in termites allowing them to utilize cellulose... With loss of these obligate co-digesters, the animal hosts suffer from nutritional deficiencies... Where do the Surgeonfishes et al. pick up these helpers? From ingestion in the wild (sediment, detritus, fecal pellets... Perhaps having a not-too clean system, with other healthy Tangs would re-seed the impugned fishes guts. Bob Fenner>

<Likely a cumulative nutritional disorder... very common with this species (and other tangs)... due often to the "urban-myth" of feeding them terrestrial greens like the nutritionally zero lettuces... A related possibility is the loss of gut fauna from exposure to copper, other medications, that kill off the necessary microbes in their "stomachs"... Does any of this sound familiar? There are other less likely causes of mortality... internal parasites, genetic defects... Bob Fenner>

Do some searching on the web...there is plenty of info about tangs and meds.

The choice at the time was to lose him within hours or treat, I'm still glad I treated

Yeah, I read your old thread the other night. I too have been reading everything I can find on Ich, and I still don't know the answer. (Apparently there already is a Super Parasite showing up now).
I quarantine all my new fish in a permanent QT set-up with live rock, skimmer, etc. for 2 to 3 weeks just to observe them, fatten them up, and to make sure they`re healthy before going into the DT. If they do indeed have something I remove them and treat in a other hospital tank. I`ve had good success with quarantining them but not so good when having to treat a fish. Sometimes I think treatment is every bit as bad as the affliction. This time I couldn`t because of the unfortunate arrival times of the two fish I had ordered. In hindsight, I should have set up another QT and put them both in quarantine. Then I wouldn`t have Ich in my system now. I`ve got company coming tonight so there`s not much I can do about it tonight anyway. I`ll think it over tonight and decide to leave them be or remove them all for 8 weeks.

Oh yeah it unavoidable sometimes. I wasn't insinuating that you did the wring thing. Sorry if it came across that way.

I was just warning Lance to be careful and not use copper unless necessary like in your case. Velvet kills within a day sometimes and does need rapid and aggressive treatment. I would would have done the same.