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

[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!

[NastayNatron]

Originally Posted by 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!

What fun would that be

[MarkoD]

No wonder Danielle has no ich. There's no fish

[daniella3d]

yes my 75 gallons tank is understocked with these:

1 niger trigger about 7"
1 copperband butterfly about 5"
3 pajama cardinals
1 mandarin

and a male mandarin in quarantine and 2 clownfish in quarantine awaiting to be in the tank.

Not enough fish? Should I add another niger trigger you think??

Originally Posted by MarkoD

No wonder Danielle has no ich. There's no fish

[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 .

[NastayNatron]

It must have came in on the coral as I make sure not to add any water from any other system into mine. Thanks for all the advice everyone this thread has helped me understand just how complex the whole ich idea really is haha

Originally Posted by 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