Looking for advice

[jeff690]

Hi,
I'm looking for some advice regarding my current situation. I am battling a really bad case of ich. I have done many hours of reading regarding various treatments (copper, antibiotics, garlic, hyposalinity. etc.) but I am unsure which one to do right now because I really don't want to stress out my fish any more than I already have. I know I screwed up by not putting them into a qt tank to begin with but I was under the impression it was best to feed them really well with garlic nori and Mysis rather than stress them out in a small qt tank. I've been doing this for 2 weeks and while it seemed they were getting better it now seems that its getting worse. All my fish are fat and for the most part eating but are all covered with spots and breathing a little heavy. No observed aggression. This tank was upgraded from my 28gal nano cube that I have sitting in storage now but was running for 5 years. I transplanted everything from that system on new years day and added some marco rock and aragamax dry sand. Tangs, cleaner shrimp, and more hermits were added 3 weeks ago

My tank specs are:
120 gallon starfire tank 48X24X24
40 gallon breeder sump with 3 sections and 3 filter socks
150 lbs live rock
120 lbs live aragonite sand
Neptune Apex system with WXM, 2 EB8, and AFS modules
Tunze 3155 ATO
Geo 612 calcium reactor
Vertex alpha cone 250 protein skimmer
2 vertex RX-U 1.5 reactors filled halfway with vertex Pro-Bio biopellets
2 Ecotech MP40WES powerheads
2 Ecotech XR30w Gen 3 Pro LED lights
ph 7.9 - 8.1
0 ammonia
0 nitrite
5 nitrate
0 phosphate
1480 magnesium
Alk 10
Calcium 430
all tests done with salifert test kits



My livestock:
2 skunk cleaner shrimp
6 sexy shrimp
2 fire cleaner shrimp
2 pom pom crabs
2 ocellaris clownfish 1.5 inch
1 Powder blue tang 5 inch
1 Chevron tang 3 inch
1 Hippo blue tang 3 inch
1 Diamond goby 4 inch
tank is mostly Zoas with a few mushrooms and a tube anemone



Options available to me:
Leaving them as they are and continue overfeeding
starting up the 28 gal nano cube as a qt
buying a 55gal freshwater system off of kijiji transplating its fish into the nano cube and using it to treat all my fish for 8 weeks while the DT goes fallow
QT with hyposalinity only
QT with cuprimine and possible maracyn 2



As you can see I have invested a lot of time and money into this system and am torn as to which way to go. Right now I am looking for any advice and positive opinions.

Thank you

[Trigger Man]

As always, the best bet would be to qt the fish and add cupramine, however I do worry about that many tangs in such a small qt for that long (I assume you would run a full treatment period). How about moving your shrimp, crabs, zoo's, shrums and tube, to the 28g and then treating the display with cupramine (you could move some sand and rock as well, however I treated a old display tank about your size with about 200 lbs live rock, way back with Cupramine with no long standing effects when I added corals afterwards). Of course run carbon after the treatment to get the medication out.

[jeff690]

Originally Posted by Trigger Man

As always, the best bet would be to qt the fish and add cupramine, however I do worry about that many tangs in such a small qt for that long (I assume you would run a full treatment period). How about moving your shrimp, crabs, zoo's, shrums and tube, to the 28g and then treating the display with cupramine (you could move some sand and rock as well, however I treated a old display tank about your size with about 200 lbs live rock, way back with Cupramine with no long standing effects when I added corals afterwards). Of course run carbon after the treatment to get the medication out.

Thanks for the reply. my only concern with doing it that way would be if I were to get some really sensitive corals in the future they would die because the copper never comes out of the rock and substrate 100%. When you dosed cupramine in the past did you have tangs? If you did have tangs did they stop eating on you?

[Trigger Man]

I did the copper dosing because of the tangs, at any given time I have had at least 3 tangs in my tanks. The Blue tang would be a bit more hesitant at first. I had all 3 of your tangs and a sohal and a kole for a while.

[daplatapus]

I didn't see any mention of the tank transfer method in your list of "have tried". It's by far the least stressful (IMHO) ways of dealing with ich. And if you understand the life cycle of the cryptocaryon (sp) it's why I think it's also the most successful if you have the gear to do it properly.

[jeff690]

Originally Posted by daplatapus

I didn't see any mention of the tank transfer method in your list of "have tried". It's by far the least stressful (IMHO) ways of dealing with ich. And if you understand the life cycle of the cryptocaryon (sp) it's why I think it's also the most successful if you have the gear to do it properly.

I wish I could do that but there's no way I can run 3 tanks at the same time. I worry about the stress of transferring fish all the time.