Your thoughts on "Ich-Free" tanks - IS IT POSSIBLE?

[Aquattro]

I believe adding a fish to a Q tank simply stresses them more. I buy a fish that appears healthy and eating, I add it to my tank. I've seen ich 3 or 4 times in my tanks over 10+ years, I fed extra garlic, everyone recovered fine.

[daniella3d]

no, ich is not in every tank. Ich is in every tank that do not go to the process of quarantine yes.

I don't have any ich in my main tank but I do a strict quarantine on eveything. Ich is a parasite, and it does not come out of thin air. It does not have to be there at all.

Healthy fish still have it wether you see it or not, and still suffer from it wether you see it or not. At the fist sign if weakness it will be an outbreak and fish death. It is best to quarantine and dip all new fish.

Look at the quarantine process of the www.liveaquaria.com Diver's den:

I don't go to that extend but I guess a formaline dip should be the first step on all fish.

http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/g...al_pagesid=425

I dip my fish in Seachem Paraguard for 1 hour if they can stand it, but at least 30 minutes. Then I treat with Praziquantal for a week and that is a reef safe med that take care of flukes and internal parasites.

I had ich in my quarantine on a blue hippo tang and a kole tang and treated both well with hyposalinity.

In that time I was not doing the dip but now I do it and often that's enough to kill everything right from the start. I also have real formaline 37% but I find Paraguard safer.

Originally Posted by Madreefer

Without getting in to alot of explaining just soak all feedings with garlic. Simple "ich repellant" that works great. It's worked for me since I lost a tank full of fish due to ich about 8-9 years ago. Ich is in every tank but as others said a healthy fish should'nt get it. I've never quarantined either, just too lazy and have enough water in my house. Tank is enough work and dont need anymore tanks to worry about.

[CandyCane]

Every fish has ich dormant inside of it. When the fish gets really stressed its immune system drops and the ich parasite grows and shows up on the fish. Just keep it in the quarantine tank until the ich starts to fade. Feed the quarantine tank small amounts of food 3 times a day to keep the fish healthy. Keep water changes often and the ich will die off as the fishes immune system recovers. I also had a blue tang that got ich, it dissapeared after a month of feeding garlic soaked fresh plankton. I also noticed if I missed a day of feeding the ich returned so the food is really important for the healing proces.

[globaldesigns]

As you can see, certain people are extremists and are not very flexible when communicating on these forums. As I stated prior, take everyones advice and hopefully you can decide how you wish to do things.

Always, remember have fun and play well with others!

[MarkoD]

I have tried both methods. I always wanted a blonde Naso tang. I tried 3 times and all 3 died in quarantine because they wouldn't eat (I did garlic and tried every food I could find)

Since then I have given up on qt. I have since then added a heniochus, copperband, purple tang and hippo tang. At first they all just picked at rocks but now eat frozen and pellet food.

I am convinced if these fish didn't have food to pick at off the rocks Initially that they would have starved to death

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by MarkoD

I have tried both methods. I always wanted a blonde Naso tang. I tried 3 times and all 3 died in quarantine because they wouldn't eat (I did garlic and tried every food I could find)

Since then I have given up on qt. I have since then added a heniochus, copperband, purple tang and hippo tang. At first they all just picked at rocks but now eat frozen and pellet food.

I am convinced if these fish didn't have food to pick at off the rocks Initially that they would have starved to death

Getting new fish, esp picky eaters like copperbands, is definitely a challenge. I found that when there are more than one fish together in a tank, they learn to eat from each other, probably triggering some feeding instinct when they see another one doing it. So maybe this is why you had better luck in your display tank.

In one case, I had two copperbands in the same tank separated by an eggcrate divider, and I am convinced they taught each other to feed, sort of like monkey see, monkey do.

[NastayNatron]

So in order to keep an ich-free display you would have to quarantine everything going in. For those of us who keep sps this means another complete setup with good lights, flow, water quality and everything else needed to keep them happy for there 6-8 week coral quarantine. The fish quarantine is not the part I have trouble swallowing. It doesn't cost alot or take an awful lot of effort to run a small fish only quarantine. The problem is for the coral. Is anyone actually doing this? If you claim your tank is ich-free then you must be quarantining all coral that comes on a rock or plug for 6-8 weeks. . . . Seems pretty intense to me. . . I don't think the gf would agree to another tank for coral quarantine haha

All great arguments . . . good thread so far

[Reef Pilot]

It's the fish that need to be qt for 6 to 8 weeks, not the corals, because of the life cycle. If you read the article on that link that was just posted by sphelps, it explains it pretty well.

With corals, you dip them in Revive (or something similar), and have a separate QT for them, with no fish, for a week or so, before adding them to the DT. I haven't bought any new corals for a while, so haven't done this myself, but that is the best practice as I understand it. I am sure there are others on this forum, that could tell you more about that.

[daniella3d]

I don't quarantine coral usual unless I know for sure there was ich in the tank it's coming from, I disinfect them though, with revive and also a lugol bath. Doubt anything will survive this. Revive also kill red bugs.

However I do not put the water from the bag into my aquarium.

I think the most way people get their tank contaminated is by introducing a contaminated fish. It can come from coral possibly, but that must be a rare occurence and a real bad luck.

Originally Posted by NastayNatron

So in order to keep an ich-free display you The fish quarantine is not the part I have trouble swallowing. It doesn't cost alot or take an awful lot of effort to run a small fish only quarantine. The problem is for the coral. Is anyone actually doing this?