how to cure black ich? help

R

rica5tully

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Feb 15, 2003
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My yellow tang is the only fish (so far) in my new reef setup. He's eating like crazy and seems very healthy and happy.

Several days ago he has two tiny black spots on him. Then they were gone. Now he has about 7-8 of them.

Question 1: how long do I let it go before I pull him out and put him in my quarantine tank?

I figure I might as well do it now, because I need to let the reef tank go fish-less for two weeks to clear the parasites out of IT so I can put other fish in there. Is that true?

Question 2: Will copper in my quarantine tank do the trick? I hate doing freshwater baths because they seem so stressful for fish. What about malachite green? Will that help?

Thanks, I'm just not sure how to procede so that A) my yellow tang will be o.k. and B) my reef tank will be ready for more fish later.
 
Q1--more than 2 weeks. Black ich can be very parvasive, and has as a different life cycle than the FW ich, even though people will tell you to treat them the same. I'd plan on leaving it fishless for 6 weeks. The sooner you get the tang out, the better off you and the fish will be.

Q2--Copper will indeed work. Read up on it's use, copper is very toxic and will kill off the biofilter, so you'll need to do daily, large water changes to prevent ammonia from becoming a problem.
 
Thank you for your help.

Is this the correct way to go about this:

1) move tang to 10-gallon quarantine tank, add copper
2) keep specific gravity at 1.025
3) keep bio-filter running, but do large water changes (how often?)
4) let reef tank sit fish-less for 6 weeks.


Is that it? Anything else?

Thank you very much
 
Update

UPDATE:

Over the past week, the black spots have disappeared from my yellow tang. (I've had him about two weeks now.) Yesterday he had one remaining spot and today it is gone. I've been feeding him as well as possible and he's seems very happy and healthy. (He's even eating out of my fingers!)

Question: is it possible that over several weeks time (like 5 or 6) the black ich in the tank will just go away if the tang manages to fight it off with his own immune system? Or is that tank just a sitting time-bomb waiting for my next addition of fish?

Question: This is only my first fish. Is it necessary to take him out (even though he's healthy now), and let the tank sit empty for six weeks in order to make sure it's clean for future fish additions? I just hate to put him through all that stress, but I will if I have to.

Thanks for your advice,
ET
 
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