Your thoughts on "Ich-Free" tanks - IS IT POSSIBLE?
 

Ok. I would like to know what you guys are doing for quarantining new arrivals. I want to know if you guys think it is actually possible to keep a completely ich-free tank. My tank has been up and running for about 5 months now. It is a 125g display with fuge and sps/lps/zoos, a Crocea clam, etc. I have about 12 fish in the display right now. EVERY single fish that has entered the display has undergone Cupramine treatment and came out of quarantine Ich-Free. I Set up the tank with ALL brand new sand, 100 Lbs of never-used dry Macro rock. I seeded the tank with rock from a tank that ran fallow(with out fish) for 8 weeks. I dip all coal with Coral Revive by two little fishies before they hit the tank. I have never seen ich in the display but today I think I may see 4 or 5 dots on my blue tang. Now keep in mind I followed all precautions to prevent ich. The only way I could see it entering the tank would be on a frag plug? There are so many myths out there in forums that its almost impossible to get a hold on ich. I know it is possible to keep a completely ich-free tank, but I want to know how many people actually do it and how you do. There is no possible way to make absolute sure ich does not enter without TREATING-not just quarantining(our eyes may miss something) every single thing that enters your tank. Every LFS I have ever been too has at least one fish with Ich. It is clearly in all of there systems. Please let me know what your thoughts are and what your quarantining methods are. Also include how long your tank has been running the way it is and if periodically you notice ich present(cysts on fish or flashing every once in a while). I can't imagine everyone keeps this parasite out of there tanks.

It doesn't matter if ich is there or not. A healthy fish will not get attacked by it.

Just like the flu for humans. It's always around, if you keep your hands clean and keep your body healthy you're not likely to get it.

Oh boy... This will turn into trouble!

I do agree with MarkoD on this topic, but you will get many points of view.

Just read and take from everyone what you wish to take.

I myself have never quarantined, and have never had issues and can say I have only lost 2 fish to ich, and that was several years ago. However, what helps with my success is dealing with LFS with a good process for making sure fish are healthy before selling to the public.

Ich is opportunistic as already been stated. Good water quality and health stock is the the prevention of Ich.


I quarantine my new stock more to insure the fish are truely healthy and to prevent other parasites/disease from entering my main display.

Ive only seen ich as a result of high stress... a move, a fight, bad water ect anything ive ever had could get it but wouldnt

Alright I understand there are many different views as to what ich is. I also realize it is basically impossible to keep out of your aquarium entirely. So I have a copperband and leapord wrasse in my quarantine right now. I noticed a few ich cysts on the copperband. A couple on his fins and one on his body. I have also seen him flashing a few times. If this was your quarantine would you:

A: Keep feeding them and keeping them healthy. In 6-8 weeks if they are healthy and the ich has subsided(fish has became more healthy and the ich has faded-not left the tank or fish per-say) - move them to the display.

B: Treat with hyposalinity

i bought a copperband that had ich.... i put it in my display and its now fine. it didnt eat frozen food for first few days but since it was in a display tank that had plenty of live food for it to hunt, it survived and is now doing great

Hmmmmm... I personally would just put them in the Display tank, but that is probably not what you want to hear. So I would go with option A.

Alright I have added a poll to the thread. I am really curious to see what people are doing. Everyone has different opinions on this so lets see how this turns out. . . Thanks for all the information so far

Without getting in to alot of explaining just soak all feedings with garlic. Simple "ich repellant" that works great. It's worked for me since I lost a tank full of fish due to ich about 8-9 years ago. Ich is in every tank but as others said a healthy fish should'nt get it. I've never quarantined either, just too lazy and have enough water in my house. Tank is enough work and dont need anymore tanks to worry about.

Is this what you have been doing for the last 8 years with no other known losses due to ich?

I believe adding a fish to a Q tank simply stresses them more. I buy a fish that appears healthy and eating, I add it to my tank. I've seen ich 3 or 4 times in my tanks over 10+ years, I fed extra garlic, everyone recovered fine.

Yes sir or miss. Trust me it works great.

I find it interesting to see that people are just relying on garlic. I have always fed garlic as I read that it does help with the fishes immune system. Clearly if people have kept fish for 8+ years without treating every fish they see have ich, treating every fish probably isn't the way to go. Very interesting results so far. I will always quarantine to prevent things like velvet as I don't no what id do if I lost all my fish to something like that. But if the fish are doing fine after a 6 week quarantine than it sounds like they would be good to hit the display. Haven't made my final decision yet . . but im already leaning toward the garlic and healthy feeding route. O and its sir. Haha

no, ich is not in every tank. Ich is in every tank that do not go to the process of quarantine yes.

I don't have any ich in my main tank but I do a strict quarantine on eveything. Ich is a parasite, and it does not come out of thin air. It does not have to be there at all.

Healthy fish still have it wether you see it or not, and still suffer from it wether you see it or not. At the fist sign if weakness it will be an outbreak and fish death. It is best to quarantine and dip all new fish.

Look at the quarantine process of the www.liveaquaria.com Diver's den:

I don't go to that extend but I guess a formaline dip should be the first step on all fish.

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/g...al_pagesid=425

I dip my fish in Seachem Paraguard for 1 hour if they can stand it, but at least 30 minutes. Then I treat with Praziquantal for a week and that is a reef safe med that take care of flukes and internal parasites.

I had ich in my quarantine on a blue hippo tang and a kole tang and treated both well with hyposalinity.

In that time I was not doing the dip but now I do it and often that's enough to kill everything right from the start. I also have real formaline 37% but I find Paraguard safer.

Dont worry Daniella i'm not gonna argue with you. Your right about everything. Your know it all rants just get too annoying to deal with. Almost time to for me to start using the ignore user button like most others have.

you do have ich in your tank. it can come in on a coral, piece of rock.

unless you started with fresh sand, all dead rock, and never bought a coral from anyone. and sterilized every fish you put in your thank. ich exists in your tank

putting a fish in a small quarantine and treating it with chemicals stresses out the fish.

dont do it. it'll take all the fun out of it

I am pretty sure that at this time my main tank does not have ich.

I have the ultimate ich magnet, an achilles tang. Even after removing all the rock, stirring the sand bed up in the process and placing all the rock back in a different position (high stress) my tang has never had a single white spot on him.
All my fish were quarantined for 8 weeks and treated with cupramine for 2 of those weeks before being added to the display. I have an achilles tang (6 yrs), a regal angel(6yrs), 2 potters angels(2 yrs) and a copperband butterfly (3 yrs) all hard to keep fish with never any signs of ich.....

I'm no fan of Daniella either due to a past encounter about my Copperbands. However, have to agree with her this time, as I learned my lesson last year with not quarantining new fish.

Now I put all new fish through the hypo-salinity treatment. I just completed an 8 week treatment process a few months ago, and no problems this time when I put them into the display tank. I knew the new fish had ich, because a couple days after bringing them home from the lfs, they were scratching and flashing. The extra time in quarantine also allowed me to get them feeding well, and they were good and healthy by the time they were moved to the display tank.

I think a mistake some people make, too, is not having them in quarantine long enough.

I know there is a big debate about this subject, but I for one, will always be quarantining with hypo-salinity going forward. I do not want to risk introducing ich again into my display tank.

I've been on both sides. And I have lost more fish my 25 gallon quarantine than when I add fish directly to my 180 gallon display

I lost my coral beauty in my dt to ich just over a month ago. Other fish started showing signs so I set up a qt and moved them over. Started treating with copper, within 2 hours, clowns died. I did not overdose, I was extremely careful with dosing. Then I lost 3 more fish. They were eating well, looked ok and one by one died. Daily 30% water changes, I have 2 left. I will be placing the cardinal back in dt this weekend, chromis has developed something under it's fin so going to try treating him. I will not qt another fish. I think the stress of catching them to move caused more harm than good. I feed with selcon and garlic daily.

I agree with most on here aboutt he QT. The stress of being in QT is worse in many cases than the stress of a new tank. why do it twice? A BIG reason to do it is in an agressive system with fresh caught fish. They are not healthy enough to be in the DT yet because of the travel time, and will not last.

Easy solution, buy healthy fish :P

I also believe that ich is in every tank, If you put together an entire ecosystem of single celled creatures up to full size fish and managed to filter out one single celled creature in the mean time, you deserve a Nobel Prize.

Except that particular creature can't survive for an extended period of time without a host (fish) so if everything wet that goes into your tank is kept for a minimum of 6 weeks in a fishless system, then Voila.......no ich :mrgreen:

My tank has no ick in it, never has and NEVER will... But I go to extreme lenghts
language removed

This is more or less my view as well, and I share Marko's too.

I personally just believe in having a robust balance of all classes of animal in my tank from the bacterial level up to fish and coral. Keeping healthy levels of necessary nutrients in the water, low stress environment with ample area to have territory and taking care to understand what environment the fish came from previously.

It's kinda like how certain corals really don't need acclimation at all; temperature at the most. Certain animals lack the necessary ability to shift salt levels from between their skin and the outside water and require a prolonged acclimation for that reason. Blanket methods are just a waste of time and likely give a false sense of security. The same is true of quarantine and using a lot of additives.

Be responsible in your purchases, use a LFS that follows proper methods of receiving livestock. If anything THAT should be your quarantine, no? Put the fish on hold/put money down and pick it up after sufficient time.

I'd imagine a quarantine tank is the most stressful environment that the fish will experience on its trip to your tank. Your heart is in the right place but I'm not a believer.

I don't know what you guys are doing because I never lost a fish in quarantine. At some point I had a hippo tang, a kole tang and a clownfish in quarantine in a 20 gallons tank for 5 weeks.

I did 5 weeks quarantine on my copperband and this was the perfect opportunity to teach it to eat well and fatten him up since he was so skinny and infested with flukes.

How can one lose a fish in quarantine? too far gone with the ich parasite so they can't come back? I had fish in quarantine with ich and they all make it in top shape through the hyposalinity process.

To much copper? ammonia? what? Saltwater fish are tough, they don't just die from being in a small tank for a few weeks. They endure like 48 hours of being bounced around in small bags in their peee when they are shipped. And what about how they are often kept while waiting to be bought? they sometimes spend days or weeks in small containers...yet they survive to reach our homes.

currently I have 2 clownfish and a mandarin in quarantine for 3 weeks. I am teaching the mandarin to eat different type of food and I put my female clownfish in quarantine with the new smaller male to make sure they would go well together before putting the new one in the tank. It would be a nightmare to fetch him out of the tank if they would not be compatible and would be fighting so it is a lot easier to bring the female in with the new fish (I can treat fast if something come up) and see how they get along together, right there.

Asking the store to keep the fish for a while is a moot point, because at anytime that fish can be contaminated by any new addition and although it would seem healthy it might just have cought velvet or other nasty disease minutes or hours before you go pick it up. Unless you buy from a reputated seller fish that go through very strict quarantine process like liveaquaria diver's den, it's a very big risk to trust LFS for quarantine. Just too many fish and a connected system for most.

The way I see it, it's a lot less trouble to quarantine apparently healthy fish than to have to catch all the fish from the main tank and once they are really sick it's a lot harder on them all. Most people wait until their fish start dying before they decide to catch them and treat them but they are already too far gone.

Here we go again....

the point is that putting a fish in quarantine will stress it out more than if you put it directly in the large display tank. Given that its less stressed in the display tank, it is more likely to start eating and in result more likely to fight off any parasite or disease naturally. Like you said, "saltwater fish are tough". they dont need chemicals or hyposalinity, they need to feel comfortable and fed. Nature then takes its course

They are less stressed in the display tank? are you sure of that? what if they have to adjust to other fish and being chased around and attacked?

Why would a well setup quarantine tank being any more stressful than going into a display tank? a tank is a tank and it's not the ocean (although that to should be quite stressfull in the surviving predators etc process). The fish is alone and does not have to witstand other fish attack or adjust to other fish territory so how can that be stressful? Given the QT is large enough and there is some hiding place or liverock, how is that more stressful?

If they don't need hypo or chemical then why do they die from ich in the DT? How many people here put new fish in their display tank only to see them being chased around by other fish for a week and sometime more?

yeah yeah...I know, here we go again you will say but those are valid points.

But what about the existing fish?

When you introduce a new fish within your community of existing fish you run the risk of losing them all, doesn't that bother you? If your fish are healthy why would you risk their lives and make them sick by adding a new fish carrying a disease? I love my fish and don't want to see them dead or sick. Doesn't that make sense?

A display tank is larger, has rock and other fish. My fish don't chase each other around because I've provided enough space so they can all establish their own territories. Putting a fish alone in a relatively small tank is more stressful. I've observed in my tank that fish feel more comfortable in numbers.

And since this thread is about ich. Why would adding an infected fish affect all the other fish in the tank? If they're happy and healthy it won't matter. And once you put the new fish in, once it's happy it'll fight the parisite and that's it. (doesn't take 6-8 weeks in a small 20 gallon tank)

If you're so sure that you don't have ich in your tank then prove it.

Do a test. Chase your least favorite fish around with a net for an hour or 2.

Daniella, the fish can become stressed by being placed in a smaall bare tank with nowhere to hide and no other fish to distract all the predators that the new fish is sure are there, just waiting to get it. This can cause stress.

I always add new fish directly to the DT, sometimes there is a bit of chasing, but there are plenty of places to hide and the fish always settles in much quicker than I've seen in QT tanks.

This is my experience and my preference. It's how I've always operated and I've never lost a fish to ich in 14 yrs of keeping saltwater fish. It may not be your preference, but we'll have to just agree to disagree.

Readers can hear my story and your story and decide. You don't need to sell your story so strongly.

I may have ich in my tank, but my fish are healthy and fight it off. Same as my house..I'm sure there are cold and flu virii here, but I don't have a cold or the flu. I can't quarantine any new person or object coming into my house, and surprisingly, nobody in my house is dying. I just added new fish to my tank, no ich, no death, just happy fish.

This works for me and many others. If you have an established QT system, then great, glad that works for you, but it's not what I would do myself.

in 7 or 8 years of reefing and maybe 10 different tanks I have never had Ich...

not once.

Mostly have kept basslets though...

Have to agree with Daniella again...
 

Don't know how you guys can say a QT tank is more stressful than a display tank. I have a few pvc pipes in my QT for them to hide in, where they feel safe, and they are acclimatized to new foods while they go through the hyposalinity. And they are very easy to catch when you remove the pipes and use a big net.

I want them healthy and strong before they go into my display tank, where they get harassed by a bully yellow tang, and a nasty bulldog cinnamon clown. That is where they face their biggest stress for the first few days, as my long time inhabitants don't take kindly to newcomers. Even my normally docile foxface would take a few runs at the new fish.

Like I said before, I lost fish in my DT before I did QT, now I don't with the QT first, and no more ich.

And I think this exemplifies the theme here. This is what works for you and I would encourage you to keep doing things this way. This does not, however, work for me, and I've been extremely successful with not using QT tank, and I'll continue doing things that way.

So a person wondering what do do can look at both methods, try them both if that's what they want to do, and decide which works best for them. Pretty easy stuff :)

Some good info here on pretty much the same subject if you're interested:
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/...ths-facts.html

And FYI quarantine works if done initially, ie before being introduced into the display. It doesn't usually work if the fish is already in the display and then moved over into quarantine due to illness. This is typically where the debate comes from but you're arguing over two different things. Also your QT doesn't have to be small, it can be bigger than the display if you want.

As you can see, certain people are extremists and are not very flexible when communicating on these forums. As I stated prior, take everyones advice and hopefully you can decide how you wish to do things.

Always, remember have fun and play well with others! :lol:

I have tried both methods. I always wanted a blonde Naso tang. I tried 3 times and all 3 died in quarantine because they wouldn't eat (I did garlic and tried every food I could find)

Since then I have given up on qt. I have since then added a heniochus, copperband, purple tang and hippo tang. At first they all just picked at rocks but now eat frozen and pellet food.

I am convinced if these fish didn't have food to pick at off the rocks Initially that they would have starved to death

Getting new fish, esp picky eaters like copperbands, is definitely a challenge. I found that when there are more than one fish together in a tank, they learn to eat from each other, probably triggering some feeding instinct when they see another one doing it. So maybe this is why you had better luck in your display tank.

In one case, I had two copperbands in the same tank separated by an eggcrate divider, and I am convinced they taught each other to feed, sort of like monkey see, monkey do.