Well the other option is to wait for all your fish to die, wait another 72 days then get new fish.

If you have room for a reef tank you have room for a QT tank. You may need a bigger one due to the fact ich made it into your display but you can run it just for this period then sell the tank and get a smaller tank to use when you add one or 2 or 3 fish at a time ect.

Anyone used Hikari Ich-X or Polyp Lab Medic Parasite Treatment? These are reef safe treatments. I was thinking to remove the one fish that is badly infected to treat him with copper in a separate tank and treat the whole tank with one of these treatments. While these milder treatments may or may not work, infected fish can be caught easy, since its box fish and treated with aggressive type medicine.


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First, there are no reef safe treatments. Second, if one fish has it, all potentially have or will have it. Many tanks can do fine with ich in the system, never seeing an outbreak, but it's still there waiting.
The only real way is above, removing all fish for treatment, and leaving the tank empty for 3 months. Otherwise, it's a gamble.

I once had an ich outbreak, fed heavily with garlic, and it went away for years. Another time I had an outbreak (recently) and lost most of my fish. So, you just have to decide which way you want to go :)

People just never learn... I have pretty well given up preaching on this topic. The prevention is so much easier than the cure, and laziness, rationalization and ignorance are all just poor excuses.

Best operating practices is one discussion, but it should also be mentioned that Tangs are not always the easiest fish to care for. Having a proper QT system, and following procedures previously mentioned isn't going to guarantee results. You could still have aggression problems, nutrition issues, or general water condition problems. I love having tangs, but some are easier than others, and often they can have you pulling your hair out.

I know a lot of people don't like UV's but just throwing it out there.

We had some bad ich outbreaks about a year back, our powder blue was just covered with it. Not being reasonable to set up quarantines for all of our fish, I found a good UV system. Took about 6 weeks till there was no visible signs of ich, ran the UV for another 6 weeks to be safe and took it out.
The UV wasn't cheap but cost less that replacing our fish.

Sorry to hear about he loss of your tangs. Have you thought about being patient and waiting for a good healthy one to outgrow another tank locally? Two of our tangs came from other tanks, already a good size and healthy.

What's the downside of UVs? I wouldn't keep tangs without one.

I wouldn't waste my money on UV. It's not going to stop or prevent ich. ich is always in the tank unless you take measures to remove it as discussed above.

+1. Also unless you have a huge tank, mulitple tangs is just going to continue to cause you issues. Tangs are naturally prone to ich, and sticking them in a confined space only makes it way worse. Those fish swim miles a day in the ocean. If you try cramming several in a tank any less then 150, I believe you will not have very good success. Not to say it can't be done, but I personally dont like taking fish out of the ocean and putting them in a tank that isn't suitable for them and then watching them slowly die.

From what I read, a lot of people think UV's will kill off the good as well as the bad. Makes sense in theory.

As for effectiveness of UV on ich... maybe my timing was just really good but I went from every cycle of ich being worse than the last to a clean tank in about 6 weeks. Tank has been clear from ich since.