need some advice

[Reefer769]

hey!

one of my clowns seems to have ICH!! NOOO, its only one little white spot on the clear part of his fin, so it might be nothing, but i just want to make sure, so can anyone give me detailed instructions on how to SOAK MY FLAKES IN GARLIC?

ill try feeding them that for a couple of days, hopefully it will help.

[Leddy]

you can try the garlic, maybe get some selcon from a LFS. selcon is a vitamin c and b12 supplement, its good to soak frozen, flakes, pellets, etc. with this as well as garlic. i tried the garlic thing, but with little success. you might want to take the LR out of your 10 gal, put it in the 30, and treat them in the 10 with some sort of meds. dont treat them in your 30 with the LR, if you use a copper based med., methylene blue, malachite green, it will kill your LR, making it dead rock. i think thats how they are pronounced and spelled, but i'm not for sure. make sure its ich first, it may be a grain of sand on the fin. try the garlic method with the selcon, it may help. your tank may smell like garlic for a few days. good luck.


leddy

[Reefer769]

alright ill do that, only if i knew how to soak the flakes in it? i stil have no idea, thanks for the help though!

[Leddy]

just use a little tupperware container, i use a small dish that restaurants use to put like salad dressing and things in. put your flakes in that, then add some garlic extract, or minced garlic, or selcon and/or zoe, or all of them. before, i used fresh garlic cloves, minced really fine, but then i bought pre-minced garlic, and just used the liquid juice from the can. it may not be the best way, but give it a try. it doesn't kill the ich, but enhances the immune system of the fish to help them fight the parasite. your best bet would be to use some sort of medicine since you already have the 10gal. i recently fought ich, but i decided to remove all my fish for 6 or so weeks, to kill the parasite by not giving them a host(fish) to reproduce, thus killing the parasite's life cycle in time. from what i read, the ich is always present in the tank. it may seem to be gone for a few weeks, but can reappear overnight. it is always good to have a quarintine tank to treat them in, i was gonna do this, but since i'm planning on getting rid of my trigger and wrasse, i figure i'd rather take the safe route and be sure its gone for good. good luck, hope it helps.leddy

[Poseidon]

I would just take the Rock from your 10 and put in the 30. THen treat in the 10 gallon. Problem is the best med for Ich is Copper, but if you use that, you can NEVER use your 10 gallon tank for anything but a Fish only tank. Unless you do a VERY specific sterilization of the 10 after the treatment.

[Reefer769]

what are some good product names i can use to cure ich?

[Ninong]

It may or may not be ich. Lets see what it looks like tomorrow. One white spot is not confirmation that you have ich.

I assume that both of the clownfish are still in your ten gallon tank and not yet in your new 30-gal tank, right? If you are setting up the 30-gal tank as your new reef tank then you could convert the 10-gal tank to a quarantine/hospital tank. The fact that you have live rock and substrate in the 10-gal tank does complicate matters somewhat but I would definitely NOT take any live rock out of the 10-gal and put it in the new 30-gal unless it is your intention to make sure that the ich is in both tanks.

If you use copper in the 10-gal tank then you will kill the live rock and make it unsuitable to ever use in a reef tank. So you have to consider that before deciding if you want to use copper or not but one thing you cannot do is move the live rock to the new tank. You could use hyposalinity in the 10-gal tank without totally killing off the live rock and there would be no residual effects like there would be if you used copper.

Garlic is a "treatment" that is often employed in full reef tanks for fish that cannot be removed to a separate hospital tank. There are anecdotal reports that it is sometimes effective and there is a basis for its efficacy but it would not be my first choice if I had other choices available to me.

Here is a two-part article on ich that covers all the bases and discusses many different options:

Part I: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.htm
Part II: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-1...ture/index.htm

[zhenya]

I totally agree with Ninong.Why spread Ich(if it is indeed Ich) into another tank? If you like to convert your 10g tank into a hospital tank,why not simply remove your rock from 10g tank and quarantine it in the backet with fresh salt water and some small powerhead and maybe a heater? After few weeks you can add it safely to your 30g tank. Just a thought. After you remove your rock you can try using "Kick Ich" in the 10g tank. I had some success with it in FO tank few years back.

[Reefer769]

thanks guys, i really appreciate all your adivce, and comments .

i only have about 7lbs of live rock in my 10gal, so i really dont want to go through the trouble of keeping it in a bucket for weeks, maybe i will though, and ill just save a few $$. i also have another question, should i remove the gravel from the 10gal as well? or is that not neccessary?

-if this turns out NOT to be ich, then ill just empty out my 10gal, put it away for now, and hope for the best. maybe ill turn it into a sump when i get some more money , and buy a 5 1/2 gal q-tank/hospital, it would just be a lot easier.

thanks a lot guys!