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

[MarkoD]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

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.

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

[marie]

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.....

[Reef Pilot]

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.

[MarkoD]

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

[Coralgurl]

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.

[Lampshade]

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.

[marie]

Originally Posted by Lampshade

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

[rastaangel]

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

[MKLKT]

Originally Posted by Lampshade

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.

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.

[daniella3d]

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.