Ok, i need some help

[patrick214]

I recently had my pink-square anthia die. The tank is a 215 gallon with a 30 gallon sump. The inhabitants are now a Powder blue tang, Regal tang, Maroon clown, Flame Angel, Blue damsel, and a Target mandarin. The pink-square's demise happened fairly quickly over the course of a couple days with his tail rotting off and than death. I had the anthia for around 6 months. I'm assuming it was some sort of secondary infection associated with the Ick. The tank has had ick since I introduced the hippo about 6 or 7 months ago. The Powder bue has always had ick on him since day one, and ive had him for around 3 months. The PBT has also always had a vision problem that seemed to be disappearing with food soaked in zoe, zoecon, garlic, marinec, and beta glucan. But around the same time the anthias condtion began degrading the PBT's vision started going downhill again. He does not even see the food put in the aquarium anymore although he knows its feeding time. He does however know where his algae sheets go and he still eats the Julian sprungs seaweed clips soaked in lots of vitamins. Unfortunately removing these animals is just not an option. Even though the PBT seems to always have some kind of ick the only other inhabitants that show any physical signs are the hippo getting a couple spots when he is stressed. The rest of the fish appear to be fine and ive had them forever now. Since the anthia died I started doing daily water changes from the bottom of tank. I intend on doing this for atleast another week. My parameters are Ca:420, Alk:8, Mg: 1400, Ph, 8.2-8.4, SG: 1.025-1.0255. I really dont know what to do.I dont know if his eyesight is a secondary infection to his ick or if he damaged his eye in transport and an infection developed. I've read VitaminD could help alot with eyesight but I may need help beyond vitamins now. I believe most peoples tank have a resident population of parasites that exist in balance with the tank and I would like to achieve some kind of balance by tipping the scales in favor of my fish and against this POS ick. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[saltwater junky]

is the eyes cloudy at all?

 

[patrick214]

maybe a little cloudy, it looks almost like a spot of ick on his eyes or something.

 

[dannybradley]

I've seen eye infections many times be associated with elevated NO3 levels. This isn't always true, but a lot of times it has been. I've found that after a massive water change cloudy eye tends to start going away on its own. If you want to go the antibiotic route I would use.

Seachem Kanaplex and Seachem Focus mixed with food in a 1:1 ratio per 1 tsp. approx. of food. I wouldn't medicate with food without using Focus. It causes the medication to stick to the food, so it doesn't all end up in the water column.

http://www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/Focus.html">http://www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/Focus.html</a>
[IMG]http://www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/KanaPlex.html">http://www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/KanaPlex.html</a>

 

[patrick214]

I am fairly certain NO3 isnt the issue. I have a DSB and perform regular water changes, in fact i did a large one recently Nitrates read at 0 on my api kit reguarly. would these medications affect corals or inverts?

 

[patrick214]

I have some old Metronidazole, and focus that was used on an old tank of mine. But I have always been skeptical about adding these to my tank.

 

[jgoal55]

the antibiotics that Danny mentioned have worked great for me in FW however I have never tried them in SW but wouldn't hesitate given the reputation of the company and how well they worked for me in the past. They might cure your eye disease but I don't think they will even scare the ick.

Also, I think the problem you run into is that dosing a 215 gallon tank is gonna make you go through medicine faster than you go through salt.


I know this isn't what you want to hear, and I may very well be wrong about this, but with such a bad case of ick you might have to QT the fish.

I know you say removing the fish is not an option but if you are doing large water changes anyway (which is good), maybe you should consider draining half the water and then put the other half into two of the biggest containers you can find (Brute's hold 44 gallons). I would guesstimate depending on how much rock and sand you have that you dont have 215 gallons of water. Let's say you have 170.....drain about a 100 put the rest into the brutes....catch the fish while they are flopping around on the sand.....place them in QT.......pump the water from the brutes back into the tank....put new water to fill the rest back up.....and bam....all your fish are out.

From there proceed to FW Dip all the fish with methalyne blue and keep them in QT for six weeks. By the end all the ick will be out of the main tank cuz it wont have anything to host with. (see Brandon's FW dip post for more details).

Ick sucks....but when it's this advanced this is the only way I know that actually gets rid of it.

Good Luck.

 

[patrick214]

You are right and i know this is the best way. I have absolutely no experience with this though and dont doubt my ability to screw it all up if i attempted it. freshwater dips methalyne blue? it all baffles me. Plus i dont know how the PBT would fare if i removed him from his home. ive also read some horror stories too about people whove done exactly what u said over and over and continue to get ick every time they reintroduce the fish....

 

[dannybradley]

I would not dose the entire tank with those medications. That would have a negative effect on some corals(Seachem hasn't catorgorized this yet). If used in the food it will not make an impact on the tank.

If you want to treat ich also you can add the metronidazole to the mix as 1:1:1 Focus:Metronidazole:Kanaplex. I wouldn't use a ton of vitamins in the food. They are typically quite concentrated. Whatever the fish can't use has to be filtered out by the liver and can have a negative effect over a long period of time. This is double true when you add antibiotics to the mix.

 

[patrick214]

You saying i shouldnt use vitamins period or just while medicating?

 

[patrick214]

I use alot of vitamins daily.

 

[dannybradley]

It also wouldn't hurt to add a few cleaner shrimp to the tank. It worked like a charm on my blue tang's chronic ich. It took her a full 3 weeks of cleanings to beat it.

 

[dannybradley]

I would use some. Read the directions on the bottles and then divide by how many bottles you're using. Zoe is like 4 drops per feeding. Zoecon is 2 drops per feeding. Vitamin C is 1 drop per 50 gallons

 

[patrick214]

I have two cleaners and two fire shrimp that show no interest whatsoever in cleaning

 

[dannybradley]

I hate when that happens.

 

[jgoal55]

Hey Patrick...when I tried it my first time i freaked out....I tought for sure i was murdering my fish...but when it was all said and done...they were so much better off....they ate better, swam better, slept better, everything better.....I just couldn't deal with having the ick anymore and it had killed a couple of my favorite fish by the time i finally gave in.....

I know alot of tanks have ick and the fish seem to do ok with it in there but if you really think about it just takes that one fish that you really, really love to get it bad enough that it kills it....That powder blue is one of my favorites and I'd hate to see it succumb to ick.

Granted, I only have a 30 gallon so when i did it it was a whole heck of a lot easier but my tank has been completely ick free since. I would guess that most of the stories you hear that the ick comes back after a dip it's because they weren't in QT long enough or the person added something from the display into the QT and the ick carried over. Also, the QT should be run at hyposalinity for the entire 6 weeks (more if you have the patience) and the week before they are reintroduced should be spent bringing the salinity of the QT back up to normal.

Brandon (screen name "xypdzq" or something like that), has a whole post on this that is really clear and while it is scary it is so worth it! the trick is that once its all done you can never put another fish into that display without it being in QT first....it's just not worth the risk.

I'd be glad to help in any way i can but I am definitely not the expert. But if you have any questions I'll do my best to help out. I will say that I can promise you if done correctly you wont regret it at all.....

Either way, best of luck.