im doinf this at 4 in the morninf lol cause im really concerned and i just want it to be over with since i had just bought a pair of clownfish not even a week ago. the female seems to be the only one showing signs right now but i know that they also like to attack the gills so im just gonna treat them all and put them in a hospita l tank. im trying the method freshwater dip and also putting some ich attack in the dipping water as welland then just keeping them in the qt for 4 weeks a month or so till the ich dies off in my display tank then i will ad them again. i dont wanna use copper cause eventually i wanna have inverts and coral and i heard it can mess your entire system up for awhile. i had to go a little crazy with my filter for the hospital tank cause my only other filtration is a fx5 but it is in a pretty decent size tank a rubber made one. i am worried though cause the tank was never cycled i just got it running today
my clownfish has ich any ideas?
- Thread starter nickolasb
- Start date
Good luck with the ich. If you plan to let the ich die off completely in your DT, it needs to stay fallow for at least 8 weeks. Freshwater dip is not guaranteed to cure the ich, there is only 3 things that will get rid of the ich on a fish for sure: copper, hypo or tank transfer. Anything else and you risk it reoccuring. Even after you introduce your clowns back into the DT, you still need to work hard not to reintroduce it. Anything new non-fish must be quarantined (coral, inverts, live rock) thereafter for two months without fish. Fish as well, but they don't need to be in QT for the two months - it is enough that they are ich free. If you use tank transfer, you could add the fish after about two weeks.
My plan as well was to get rid of ich in my 180 by leaving it fishless for two months. Have not gotten to it mainly because I lack a second 6 foot long tank to use as a hospital tank. The idea of the extra stress to the fish from catching and being in a 4 foot tank for two months was also a concern to me. Ended up treating the tank with ICH-X, added a cleaner shrimp, and hoping for the best. Still had quite a few losses, but surprisingly the two hippo tangs are among the survivors. They are nursed back to being healthy and keep fighting the ich off naturally. Yes, it is still in the tank, but there hasn't been any outbreaks. Seen my chocolate tang have a few spots a week ago, and the spots were gone within few days. I am using the ich as a stress indicator from now on.
My plan as well was to get rid of ich in my 180 by leaving it fishless for two months. Have not gotten to it mainly because I lack a second 6 foot long tank to use as a hospital tank. The idea of the extra stress to the fish from catching and being in a 4 foot tank for two months was also a concern to me. Ended up treating the tank with ICH-X, added a cleaner shrimp, and hoping for the best. Still had quite a few losses, but surprisingly the two hippo tangs are among the survivors. They are nursed back to being healthy and keep fighting the ich off naturally. Yes, it is still in the tank, but there hasn't been any outbreaks. Seen my chocolate tang have a few spots a week ago, and the spots were gone within few days. I am using the ich as a stress indicator from now on.
thats what im thinking was the trigger for ich. mine had to stay in abag for about 4 hours from being stuck in a traffic jam then i finally got home and go them into the tank and i noticed in a few days this spot on the female. i didnt think anything of it at first till i saw it in good light and could clearly tell it was ich. im using ich-x as well. is that suppose to kill the ich and is it safe for inverts? cause i didnt know if it was like copper or not so i made a quick qt to get them all out cause i wasnt sure if it would mess my whole tank up for a long time like copper cause i do wanna get corals and inverts on down the road when everything is perfect so i can start breeding. but what i did was made up a freshwater dip with the ich-x and followed the dip method whish is 10ml per 1 gallon and keep them in for 15 minutes but i held bACK a little on the mesurements and left them in for five the puffer made it the full 5 minutes and the female clown did as well but the male i kept in for 2 cause he started stressing fast but he didnt have any ich that i could see and my blue devil didnt handle it very long either but they are all doing fine now and im gonna take a look tomorrow and see if she has anymore white spots.
i also cranked the heat up into my display tank to 92 not sure if thats gonna help much but i know it does with fresh water ich i was also thinking bout doing a water change and doing the hypo thing to maybe speed up the process a little then just add the salinity back when im ready to add the fish back. cause i was just thinking if i do see spot on my female again im gonna try the transfer method just give her a dip in between to make sure all the ich lets go or dies
Hypo salinity in your DT is not a good idea. It will kill a lot of beneficial inverts in there that are living in the sand and live rock. And no, ICH-X does not kill the ich the way copper does. If not overdosed it is somewhat reef safe. My coral and anemone did not like it much, they were all shrunk in. The way I see it it took care of the obvious symptoms, not the cause. The fish still had to fight it off, but the scales where tipped in the fish's favor. It depends on the individual fish how they pull through. A dip was not really an option for me as it is hard to catch fish that don't want to get caught, especially if there is lots of rock and hiding spaces.
For me personally it turned out that the hippo tangs came through just fine despite being labeled ich-magnets. A pair of ocellaris clowns didn't make it as well as a mandarin. Both are supposed to be somewhat hardy when it comes to ich. Not for me. So take that with a grain of salt. I wouldn't really call it a success, but it wasn't a total loss. On the bright side, if I would have lost every fish in the tank, I would have left it sit fallow and start over fresh.
For me personally it turned out that the hippo tangs came through just fine despite being labeled ich-magnets. A pair of ocellaris clowns didn't make it as well as a mandarin. Both are supposed to be somewhat hardy when it comes to ich. Not for me. So take that with a grain of salt. I wouldn't really call it a success, but it wasn't a total loss. On the bright side, if I would have lost every fish in the tank, I would have left it sit fallow and start over fresh.
im really surprised the mandarin didnt make it, ive read that mardarins are immune to ich. it's such a frustrating parasite you invest so much time and money and really like the fish then ich comes along and makes the hobby a pain. im still learning though the best protection against it is just prevent it
i wanna get my 55 cycling but i dont have a stand yet and it's the only thing stopping me. im on a budget what would you say is more important having a good skimmer or more media reactors? i wanna eventually move everything from my dpt now and to the 55 and make the old dpt a qt. im just waiting to find a good deal on a stand. i got plenty of filtration im actually thinking bout buy a sump or just making it depends if i feel like making one.
No fish is really immune to ich. The advantage a dragonette has is a much thicker slime coat so it is harder for the parasite to get under the skin. A lot of times it is not the ich itself that kills, but secondary infections. Tangs on the other hand have a very thin slime coat. But all that doesn't matter in the end, because your fish and your tank are unique. Take hippo tangs for example: they are really easy to keep and very hardy compared to some other tangs. I believe that, since even I can can keep them so far. They are also very popular, much more so than they should be considering how big they are. So I can also believe that they stress out easy if kept in a smallish tank. I am worried that my tank is too small and hope they will be fine in it long term. Right now they are still relatively small, but they have grown a lot since we got them.
ive thought about getting a hippo tang as well but the ich really scared me so im taking it easy i really would love to get a mandarin but i dont have an established salt now. i do have to established fw though. i dont have t o tend to them much at all. its just hard when it's not established yet and i need more proper equipment to make them more comfortable to take care of the watewr better to geet them through the cycle
If the 55 is your biggest tank, then a hippo is asking for trouble, IMO. For a mandarin you will need more than just a stable tank - they need to eat as well. And usually they don't adapt well to anything but copepods, so a refugium with more copepods in them than you know what to do with is a good start. A much easier dragonette is the scooter blenny. You still need copepods as main part of their diet, but they very easily accept frozen and other foods. Well, not that easy, but compared to a mandarin at least.
Cycling your tank? Don't need any media reactors and not even a skimmer. But I would get a skimmer before reactors. I don't have any reactors, just live sand, live rock, sump with skimmer and refugium. No mechanical filtration at all.
Cycling your tank? Don't need any media reactors and not even a skimmer. But I would get a skimmer before reactors. I don't have any reactors, just live sand, live rock, sump with skimmer and refugium. No mechanical filtration at all.
