Looking for advice

[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.

[daplatapus]

Just to be clear, with the tank transfer, only one of the two will ever be running at any given time, right? Siphoning out water to catch fish quickly thus handling them for maybe less than 30 secs a piece is far easier on them than hypo or copper for days. Their appetite is not affected, so they still get lots of energy during the process.
To be sure, it is a bit of work every 3 days for 2 weeks, but I've never lost a fish to ich since I've started QT'ing this way.
But it is just my preferred method. Just thought I'd throw it out there in case you hadn't considered it.
Good luck

[gregzz4]

You mentioned your fish are breathing heavier than normal. Probably due to MI in/on their gills.
Try adding an airstone to saturate the water, and don't overfeed as you'll be putting more load on your bacteria thus depleting more oxygen.

I'll add this ...

Hyposalinity, in my experience, is not stressful on fish.
Rather, it helps them spend more energy healing, and digesting food. This is because they aren't exerting as much energy towards osmoregulation.

It takes longer than the tt method, but if the DT is going to be fallow anyway, there's no harm in my mind. And I prefer not to handle my fish any more than necessary.

Only drawbacks to hypo (for me) are;
- Keeping the hypo pH up. I've solved this issue by using my controller, a pH probe an alk dosing pump. Plus I have an ATO on the QT so it's very stable.
- Keeping the hypo filtration bacteria boosted with a start-up liquid as hypo slows down bacterial metabolism (for lack of the proper terminology).