[madamekiki]

I work for a small family owned pet store. A couple of months ago our resident saltwater expert quit. I've been working in the fish room a couple of days a week because I have some saltwater knowledge. I have only been in the hobby a little over a year. About a week ago I noticed we had a tang in our 180gal reef display that had ich. after two hours of trying to catch him I had to give up because the store was closing for the day. The regular fish guy, who claims to have knowledge of saltwater but I've discovered is a moron, says nothing is wrong with the fish, his spots come and go every month. Now a week later we have noticed ich also on a yellow tang and a foxface rabbitfish. Due to the amount of live rock in the tank these fish are impossible to catch. Another two hours was spent trying to catch them last night. The tank has tons of corals both soft and hard as well as many inverts. Some of the corals are attatched to very large pieces of rock and even if we could get those pieces of rock out with the corals attatched to them we have no where to put them. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we can treat the tank or catch the fish or well anything to help with our ichy problem. any input would be helpful.

thanks,
rachel

[leebca]

Sorry to hear of the problem, rachel.

Unfortunately the only successful Marine Ich (Cryptocaryon irritans) treatments are done on fish outside of the display aquarium. You can get that and additional information from this post: Marine Ich - Myths and Facts

The 'in-reef' treatments usually don't work in truly diagnosed cases of Marine Ich.

Since you are not selling the fish, at least you won't be selling diseased fishes. But if anything else comes out of the display (like someone buys a coral or other invert) then the person should be told that there is Marine Ich in the aquarium and that the invert from the display is not infected, but it may carry the disease.

On the slightly brighter side. . .If you and the store people are absolutely sure NOT to introduce any new Marine Ich parasites into that system, then the ones there will die off in about 11 months. The MI reach a point where they are no longer infective when they are isolated. But if that display is part of a larger system where other fish are coming/going and/or if someone accidental puts into the aquarium more Marine Ich parasites, then the display will continue to harbor the disease.

[madamekiki]

thanks for your advice lee...sadly the powder brown tang died today...there are still two more fish in the reef that appear to have ich as well but thankfully the tank is on it's own sump. i guess we'll just have to wait this one out or try to trick the little buggers into nets.