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

[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.

[NastayNatron]

Ich can be dormant on rock longer than 1 week. . . thats why you have to keep a tank fallow for 6-8 weeks to be sure all the ich dies before adding fish back in if you go through treatment. Like I said I have treated ALL fish with cupramine and took all precautions necessary to prevent ich. The only thing I did not do is quarantine coral. I dipped all coral in revive but am not about to set up another tank for coral quarantine. Maybe I got unlucky and it managed to come in on coral .

Either way I have decided that for the duration of this tank I am going to try the method of keeping the fish healthy in quarantine while feeding garlic and training them on different kinds of food. It would be pointless to treat with hypo or copper as it appears my tank already has ich in it.(I do not have an outbreak, just a couple spots on blue tang). The point of the quarantine will be to make sure something like velvet isn't introduced into the display. I am already planning an upgrade(aren't we all) in 3 or 4 years to a bigger tank with a fish room. If my experience with ich in these years leading up to the upgrade leads me to believe keeping it out of the tank is possible and the best route to go, I will put a strict coral quarantine into my new tank build.

I am deciding to try this for myself because I just got my system up and running and am starting to enjoy it. I do not want to tear the tank apart catching all the fish to treat them for ich at this stage. I would probably stress them half to death and do not have a qt big enough for them all. Thanks for all the insight. This is clearly a very debated topic in the hobby!

Originally Posted by 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.

[jorjef]

Why don't people just agree to disagree, hold onto what they believe is correct, go to their respective tanks and call it a day!

[Coralgurl]

For myself, with barely 8 months into this hobby, when dealing with the ich outbreak I recently had, I researched both sides, ich is always present or you have an ich free tank. I set up a qt and put my fish in. I don't know what I did wrong and why I lost so many fish. Maybe the ones that died really fast were really sick with ich and the stress of moving them killed them. Fine. Why I lost another fish last week, with 4 weeks clear of visible ich I have no clue. Not ammonia, not copper od. I just don't know. The copper treatment has stressed the chromis enough for it to form lympho. At this point I decided, this is not worth the stress on the fish, me or my family. I thought I was doing the best thing by setting up the qt and it simply did not work for me. I realize SW fish are quite hardy and I'm sure I did something wrong, which you have no idea how this makes me feel. For these reasons I will no longer qt fish. The article posted earlier in this thread makes a lot of sense, I have a lot more to learn but I'm not prepared to fight with a set up that led to more fish dying than it saved. For those that qt works, great! Nobody is going to convince me to continue to experiment with a qt at the expense of a fish regardless of the argument.

[daniella3d]

Well there may be hope for you. I have read that ich will depleate itself out of a tank after about 10 generations if there is no new addition. I don't know if it is true or not but if it is true, then you might actualy get ich free at some point. Good luck with it. It is good that you decided to still quarantine as marine velvet is not so forgiving as ich.

It is really sad to see that you still have ich since you took so much care to quarantine your fish. it's not fair. If you treated with Cupramine, I would think the ich got into your tank with coral or in the water the coral were in. Really bad luck

Originally Posted by NastayNatron

Ich can be dormant on rock longer than 1 week. . . thats why you have to keep a tank fallow for 6-8 weeks to be sure all the ich dies before adding fish back in if you go through treatment. Like I said I have treated ALL fish with cupramine and took all precautions necessary to prevent ich. The only thing I did not do is quarantine coral. I dipped all coral in revive but am not about to set up another tank for coral quarantine. Maybe I got unlucky and it managed to come in on coral .

[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?