My battle with ich started with a newly purchased hippo tang about 7 month ago. It infected all the rest of the 5 tangs in the tank. Since I had a lot of coral in my tank I had no choice but to use a product called protomarin. I was lucky that one of the other reefer had 2 bottles of this stuff left over which I got for free. After dosing it for a couple of weeks with the addition of a uv light the ick got a bit better, but it came back again as it is the natural life cycle for them. Out of frustration I decide to give the protomarin one more shot and guess what, same thing happened. I talked to a lot of people, researched online for hours and it seems the only thing that could get rid of ich was copper. Still it comes with a great cost of a chance losing your fish. I really didn't want to chance it with copper plus there is no way I could catch any of these fish in a 210 fully stock tank without damaging something. So the last resort, I got selcom amino and garlic extract and feed the crap out of them every night. After 7 month the hippo still gets couple of dots here and there but I am confident that I am will win this battle.
So like what everyone suggested. Have a quarantine tank ready for all the new arrivals, dip all your corals before it goes into the display tank. The best personal advice i can offer is to feed you coral and fish well and try to use some king of selcom additive with a bit of garlic once a week with food for preventative measure.
Btw I forgot to mention about velvet. It can seem like your fishs are getting ick but velvet moves a lot faster then ick. It can wipe out a tank within a week or two. The only reason I say this is cause my clowns never got ick even at the height of the out break. I believe it due to there slime coat on there skin. If your clowns bite the bullet maybe it might not be ick after all.
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