[bulletsworld]

What the hobby and stores will never tell you is that fish disease is a BIG part of keeping fish. It's also the most stressful for people and main reasons people leave the hobby. You can lose hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on the hobby, with just fish a lone. It can be dishearting at times, stressful and expensive.

After treating fish diseases for years in this hobby. Ich is the least of your worries. Most tanks if not all have had or still have ich in their tanks. Ich can be managed by good water quality, water temp, garlic/ginger treatments, light limits, and non stressful tankmates. Providing the fish are all healthy also. Keep in mind that even if the fish is healthy, the scale-less fish (boxfish, puffers, lionfish, etc, just to name a few) will be the first fish to show parasites & can't manage it on their own.

A good UV sterilizer is good to have also. If you want to be in the hobby long, you must always quarantine everything (fish, inverts, rock, any new additions). TIP: got a ich breakout, take away the light. Ich swims towards the light. Black out the tank.

Although its true, the treatment can be worse than the disease. So, if there is no sign of stress, lack of apetite, scratching, flashing to the fish, I would see if it can be managed by above mentioned stategies.

If you decide to treat there are other other options to treat fish besides copper & hyposalinity. But either those options or other require extensive monitoring, water treatments, and a lot of your time.

Btw... the tang police will always tell you that you shouldn't have a tang in anything less than a 100 gallon. However, you can have a very small tang (yellow or regal) in a small tank. I see dime sized regals that wouldn't be able to handle lots of current & easily get stuck to powerheads. Especially if you know you are upgrading later to a bigger tank. If not, you can always re-sell or trade to someone with a bigger tank.

Hope this helps.