Calgary Stores, Stocking Questions, and preparing my tank for Mandarins

[Steve...]

I also got a question about ich... I have a 55 gal that had problems with ich and right now I have 2 fish in the tank with no signs of ich. Im planning to transfer these 2 fish into my new 220 gal tank later. Should I still treat the fish for ich before i throw them into the 220 DT even if they look healthy and fine? I will be stripping the tank down and using it as a QT.

[sphelps]

You still have to treat them to be certain they don't have ich and transfer it into the new tank, ASAIK some fish can transfer it without showing signs. In such cases I take a lighter quarantine approach. Any fish that appears healthy and doesn't show signs of ich but came from a potential source of ich I hold them at hypo-salinity for 8 days in a tank that always has hypo conditions. After 8 days they move from that tank to another tank with matched water conditions but completely separate with 100% uncontaminated water. In that tank they are slowly brought back up to normal salinity and closely monitored for another week or so. In theory ich can't make it through this treatment based on it's life cycle and how it's effected from hypo. Just make sure it's ich you're actually concerned about and not something else.

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by sphelps

ASAIK

Man I suck at abbreviations

[Steve...]

What if I put copper in the 55 gal tank and treat any potential threat of ich? Will the copper destroy the biological filtration?

[mikeclarke]

So because I never had ich in my qt tank and just in my display, I can't get more fish and put them in the qt? I am confused.

What I think everyone is saying is that I really need to catch all the fish in the display and put them in the qt tank. Then leave the display fishless to let the ich die because it has no hosts (it won't attach to inverts). The in the qt tank make the water hypo for a period of time to make sure the ich is dead or I could use copper. Once I know it is dead then I can put the in the display (after water matching). Then I can get more fish in the qt.

Where is an awesome place to get fish in Calgary once I have the ich sorted? What fish would people recommend?

[howdy20012002]

I think what people are suggesting is to capture all your current fish in your tank and put them in to a QT tank with the newcomers. then leave the main display tank completely fishless for 10 weeks and treat the QT with hyposalinity for that same time period.
If you don't have corals or many inverts I might suggest gathering up any inverts or corals and putting them into another smaller tank and treating your DT with hyposalinity for 2 months...otherwise you going to need a big QT tank with that many fish.
for the other question, use cupramine for treatment if you are going to use copper and make sure you test and retest...follow the directions as they as put forth by seachem..or the copper will kill your fish as quickly as the ich.
make sure you buy a chemical test kit.
copper will not destroy the biological filtre...however, any inverts in your tank will die off which could cause an ammonia spike...and if you test for ammonia, the copper in the system will cause a slight reading of ammonia.
I personally would suggest hyposalinity of around .10 for 2 months if you know it is only ich and not marine velvet.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by howdy20012002

I think what people are suggesting is to capture all your current fish in your tank and put them in to a QT tank with the newcomers.

Correct, that's what we're saying.

[sphelps]

I think 10 weeks might be a bit aggressive, once fish are removed worst case all the ich will be in Tomonts within 24 hours and that stage can only last up to 4 weeks after which they hatch and can only survive a couple days without a host. So realistically 5 weeks is actually enough, 6 weeks to be safe, 10 weeks to be overkill.

[Leah]

And do not use the water from the DT for your water changes. Got it? Good!

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by sphelps

I think 10 weeks might be a bit aggressive, once fish are removed worst case all the ich will be in Tomonts within 24 hours and that stage can only last up to 4 weeks after which they hatch and can only survive a couple days without a host. So realistically 5 weeks is actually enough, 6 weeks to be safe, 10 weeks to be overkill.

The 9-10 week time frame is the result of peer-reviewed work on cryptocarion irritans that showed in extreme cases tomonts could produce viable and infective tomites up to 72 days after encystment. It's an extreme case, obviously, and likely represents less than a tiny fraction of 1% that will stay encysted for that long, but all it takes is one to start the whole process over again. If you're going to go through the nightmare of catching all your fish and treating them, isn't it worth it to wait the extra few weeks to be sure?

ETA: stupid auto-correct, though '...produce viable and infective tomatoes' did read pretty well for an auto-correct fail.