Ich Help

OK, lets get to the point KickIch notoriously is rubbish and will do nothing.

There are two proven cures for ich - copper and hyposalinity. I will not recommend copper to you as it is toxic to everything, including fish and the angel and puffer are quite unresistant to it. Also it will corrupt all your sand and rock so you can never keep inverts again.

So your other real choice is hyposalinity, reducing the saltiness of the water. Your fish will all be able to deal with this,better than you think. I have used this method.
Note fish deal much better with going down in salinity than going up. So first you need a decent hydrometer or refractometer. No crappy swing arm jobs. Then you start taking out buckets of salt water, and putting in pH adjusted freshwater. Keep your kH and pH up else everything will die. Take your salinity down to 1.012, I took mine to 1.009 and that worked. As it only kills the free swimming stage this can take time, and if your fish are already loaded they may not make it I'm afraid.
Keep your salinity here for 6 weeks. No new livestock. None. There are some very tough strains of ich out there which only copper will kill, but this will sort out most.
After 6 weeks raise your salinity, taking about a week.
Garlic can work though it didn't for me, but everything else has to be perfect, which in your new tank it certainly isn't. Freshwater dips do not work. There is plenty of info on the web re this..try googling ich treatments or similar

Ear bashing time
You were stupid to 1. not QT everything, 2. Buy a dwarf angel as they are not easy to look after, 3 not have live rock and 4 not do any prereading of respected books.

I assume this is all on the 'sterling' advice of your lfs

kgalliher,

I had the same problem not long ago. I tried so called ICH treatments. The only thing that help is the following: I broke down and went to a large discount pet supply store (with Pets & Mart in the name) and purchased a Marineland Eclipse 12 gallon aquarium. It comes with a biowheel 3 stage filter, hood and light for $79. I also bought some gravel and a heater. I set up the tank, you can use a piece of PVC pipe in which the fish can hide. In total in will cost about $100 but you probably have more than that invested in the fish.

I treated them with copper and hyposalinity for 4 weeks in the 12 tank. If you add copper to your main tank, it will nuke the invertebrates. It is difficult, if not impossible to get all the copper completely out of the system.

I was able to save all 4 of the remaining fish. I left my invertebrates in the main tank. Now I use the 12 gallon tank to quarantine new fish for 3-4 weeks before putting them in my main tank. Hope this helps


Joe

J-Vee is right on the mark here; you need copper and a QT to save your fish, follow his advice and quick. You can skip the gravel, you will need to REALLY watch for ammonia; seed your biowheel with nitrobacter slime culture from healthy established system when adding fish. Hyposalinity will help also, but this late in the game you need more. IMO, for all the bad rap copper gets, it has saved more marine fish from ravenous parasites than any other treatment, and I have seen remarkable recoveries in 24-48 hours when used properly. The good news is, the cryptocaryon will starve in 4 weeks without a host (no fish) in the display. Leave the inverts as is.
Don't worry, many advanced marine aquarists have struggled with this and we were all "stupid" before we learned more. MANY beginners are only now discovering the delicate balance of long term mixing of fish and inverts, that's why many go with fish only systems with just a few LR's and crustaceans... it's easier to move the rock/crustaceans! Mix Marine ich in a large reef system with tons of places for the fish to hide and you have a nightmare. Keep reading and you will succeed.

I had a similar issue with my purple tang - covered in ich. The cure was garlic. It can be bought in a concentrated formula at the LFS. By adding it to the food, the fish ingest and the oil makes them taste bad to the parasites. After about 1-2 weeks, the problem was cured. I've been ich-free now for 3 months - including a change to a new tank. Once/week I add the garlic to the tank as a preventative measure.

Jon

Copper will kill Ich 100%, but it will also kill anything with copper based blood (which are most inverts, which is why it kills Ich so well). However Ich will NOT effect invertabrates, so move the infected fish to a QT tank and treat with copper, in abour 4-5 weeks without any fish in the Ich infected tank the Ich will die from lack of a host.