Foxface with ich: take it out, or leave the tank stable?

[danelam]

My foxface has a few spots of ich on him. I'm a bit freaked - first ich I've had to face. I've been messing with the tank a bit the past few days: aquascape, sorting out anemones etc so I guess it's stressed.

Some people recommend leaving it in the tank and feeding it lots of selcon/garlic enriched foods to encourage it to fight off the ich.

Others say QT then copper.

I can do either. What do you guys think?

 

[danelam]

please give me some advice

 

[ming]

Do you care if your other fish gets ich too?

 

[danelam]

well yes I do care if they get ich, but heard they might not necessarily get it

 

[danelam]

the hardest part is catching it~!

 

[ming]

Yes, They might not necessarily get it.
Lets pull some random numbers.. lets say theres a 20% chance they might not get ich if you left it.
If you QT, theres a 60% chance they might not get ich.
Are you willing to take the extra effort to help their odds? Or are you a gambler?

Also, the chances of curing the ich increases with other medication IMO instead of just garlic/selcon
Garlic/selcon is more of a preventative measure, then a cure to me

 

[danelam]

well yeah i wanna give my fishes the best cahnce possible. I'm also worried about the stability of my QT

 

[masterswimmer]

well yes I do care if they get ich, but heard they might not necessarily get it

Correct...........However, a lot depends on the age, maturity, health and stability of your system. I haven't added ANY fish to my display in over two years. Very rarely, but on occasion my hippo tang or kole tang will develop a spot or two. Invariably it will be gone the next day.

I am NOT saying your other fish will or will not come down with ich. However, based on all your other threads it seems your system is very unstable. Therefore I would suggest taking precaution and QT'ing your infected fish. If any other fish develop signs of ich, I'd remove them and consider removing all the fish, putting them in QT and treating them with copper. At that point I also recommend leaving your tank fallow (no fish at all) for a minimum of six weeks.

While this is going on, I'd suggest keeping your hands out of your system and allow it time to settle down and mature.

swimmer

 

[danelam]

Alright - it's in QT now with copper. Was a ***** to catch.
Running UV on display and hoping for the best.

 

[basiab]

Do you have any other fish in the tank or did you remove all fish. You need to leave your display tank fishless for 4-6 weeks which should kill off the ick since they will not have a host fish which they need to servive. Also raise the tempurature in the display tank. This causes the ick cycle to go faster thus killing more when they reach the stage that they need a fish.
The UV may help but in itself is not a solution.

 

[gnatp2]

If you still have fish in the main display, ich will be present in that tank forever. Obviously everyone has their own opinion and there are a few different ways to treat it, but if he only has a couple spots, I'd go for some Garlic Xtreme soaked nori sheets and let him eat those. I did this with a foxface once and he was fine the next day.

Paul B wrote a thread about the mysteries of ich. Check that out as well. Overall, if you have a well balanced healthy system, there is a much better chance that all the fish will be fine living in a tank where ich is present. If the foxface has been in the tank for a long time and then just developed ich, there is a good chance that there is something whacked out in your tank.

Nate

 

[suntzu]

It sounds like you have a fairly new system. I had the same problem in the past when I setup my system. At first it was one fish with ich. I left it alone thinking it may pass, but before I knew it, it caught like wild fire. All my fish ended up with ich. I moved all of them to the QT tank after I discovered how bad it was when I got home at 1am one weekend. I ended up spending all night setting up the QT tank. I did hyposality and raised the tempature. And left it as such for four weeks. Unforunately, not all of my fish survived. But fortunately, most did. I wished I had treated the fishes sooner and not left it to chance. I also learned to the value of QT fish from LFS.