Ich on my flame angel. Please help I've never had ich before

[JohnK]

Since we are starting to talk about the (often hated, denied, dismissed, and generally unwelcome) topic of actually treating / eradicating -

As long as it actually is ICK, and not ICK and something else, Tank transfer really is the "new hypo". By that I mean, TT is far easier, less stressful on the fish, much quicker, and actually more reliable. Still none of the risks of copper, but it works whereas there have been an awful lot of stories of people who have tried hypo and had it fail to the point where the prevailing thinking these days is that there are hypo resistant strains of ick that can survive hypo. *8-12 weeks fallow time for the display/system is still required, but that ends up being 2 weeks of treatment and then 6-10 weeks of observation.

Management strategies do work to an extent, and in some cases people have had long term management experiences without ever seeing a horrible wipe out. Both Management, and eradication are possible and valid approaches. No discussion in ick treatment is worth reading if both approaches are not discussed. Personally I hope to live my life tuberculosis free, and I suspect that my fish would probably feel the same if I could ask them

 

[saltwaterB]

all garbage...ich (depending on strain of cryptocaryon we are talking about) can live in a dormant state almost indefinitely....

My personal experience...

125 gallon tank, started with all dry rock and dry sand...
2 separate QT tanks (40 gallon breeder) one for Fish and one for Corals and Inverts
all incoming livestock (no matter what) spent 8 weeks in these tanks.
Fish 6 weeks of hyposalinty (1.010) and last 2 weeks copper and Prazi
Corals and Inverts spent 8 weeks under observation in a completely Fish Fallow system (no substrate or rock in tank) UV on return water going 200gph...
after 2.5 years of doing this with EVERY organism that entered the system. Essentially all would say that this tank is completely 100% free of any chance of ich...right...???

WRONG !!! Had a power outage for 2 days...when everything came back on line...remaining Fish broke out with terrible ich.....WTF??? where did it come from??? answer it was always there...just dormant, until a stressful situation brought it on...


Experience #2 (and this one was witnessed first hand by all of our customers and dozens of people on this forum)
customer brought in a small Purple Tang....looked like he dropped it in powdered sugar, it was covered so bad with ich. I dropped it in my 70 gallon Elos display tank....(as a huge hush goes over the crowd) yes, right in to our display tank...3 weeks later not a spot of ich on him...and never saw any ich on any other Fish in that tank...and still have the rock and sand running on the Elos now from that tank along with about 6 Fish from that system....no ich???? oh it has to be there...but has never shown its face. answer...extremely stable and healthy system with amazing husbandry...and I run a UV sterilizer on my reef as well....I'm just sayin'

From what I have seen the best way for the average person to QT is the tank transfer method (while this is a newer method to me, and I have not done it myself) a lot of trusted people have great success with it, and its theories are sound.



All I can go with is all the info I can read, all the info customers and people share, and 24 years of experience with thousands of tanks.