Quarantining fish is a waste of time 100% of the time, if you don't also quarantine corals, rocks, etc.

Not too many people have the patience to quarantine frags for 6 weeks, and everytime you get a new one, the clock resets.

Neon gobies work fantastically IMO. They have a higher survivability rate than cleaner wrasses and eat pretty much whatever you give them as well. If not, Kents Garlic Extreme will stink out your whole house but it does work :biggrin:

I am going to get a couple of these for my new setup.

Here's my tank on things.. I have had ick on and off but only to new additions. It's never spread to my other fish. I have added/replaced 3 fish in my tank and haven't seen it since.... a lot depends on a bunch of other factors when buying fish and introducing them to a system as well IMO.

I have only lost 1 fish to ick (flame angel) and well, that probably wasn't a wise purchase and I do regret it.. Anywhoo,

What I have used in the past for ick is garlic and and good, stable water paramaters. That does the trick for me...

Good luck.. try stuffing him with garlic. Look into the fish suggested, and also Polyp Lab just came out with a new med for getting rid of ick.. might be worth checking out. I am going to myself, polyp lab seems to have some good stuff.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.php

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/20...ture/index.php

I have an achilles tang in his 7th week of quarantine right now. If I had put him in the main tank right away, he would of become another achilles tang statistic because he had marine velvet and ick.

A quarantine tank isn't that hard to set up. If you have a hob filter, you can keep the sponges for it in the sump of the main tank. When a new fish is expected in, just fill aquarium with water, add cheesy tank decorations for hiding places and use the already bacteria seeded sponges for your biological filtration.

After the fish are put in the main tank, you take the quarantine tank down, bleach everything, put new sponges in the sump and it is ready for the next fish

it's just harder for me because of a disablity, other wise i would have already been treating him. i want to try and stuff him with garlic and nori with selcon, but my rabbit and sailfin are total hogs! lol

I love the idea of keeping the HOB sponges in the sump. I haven't added any new fish to my tank for a while and I was unsure of what to do with my QT tank but now I will be tearing it down and just throwing the filter sponge in the sump until I need to QT again. Thanks for the great tip Marie!

I am sure you know this but Hippos's need more meat than veggies. Buy him some Freeze Dried marine plankton and soak that in Garlic and Selcon instead. Freeze Dried foods are GREAT for adding vitamins etc.

Good luck leaving him in the Main tank. Ill keep my fingers crossed for you.

If you are unable to setup the quarantine tank, how did you set up the main tank? If someone helped you, Can that same person help you with Quarantine as well?

Where do you live in Calgary? Perhaps someone close to you could assist if you run into more trouble.

I have a Hippo/Regal also, showed ich in the first week, treated food with Selcon, and still do, make sure the fish eats well, Skunk Cleaner Shrimp took care of the rest. Ich lasted three days, now ich-free for a month. I agree that most systems contain ich, but a healthy, well fed fish, unstressed, will not get it.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...n/5f96d3b4.jpg
I forgot to mention, I feed New Life Spectrum Marine pellets soaked in Selcon in the morning, I think it's Garlic fortified.

i'll give him some mysis soaked in garlic tonight, i've also been feeding selcon every day. he actually looks better today, so i'm hoping I can fatten him up and get him through it.

I could probably get my roomie to help me with a quarrintine, he is just a little lazy lol

:)