New to the Hobby/forum/club. 75gallow Fowlr *Help ICH

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nortex

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First heres a little backstory about me. My name is Steve and I have kept African cichlids for 8-10years with much success. I recently decided it was time to take the plunge into saltwater with much excitement from my wife as she has been asking me to for years. Needless to say I now have a 75gallon bowfront FOWLR tank. Currently running a ReefOctopus HOB skimmer cascade 1000 canister filter and UV Sterilizer rated for a 110gallon. The canister filter is temporary as I will be making a sump in the next few months mainly using it for circulation.

I purchased some 60-70lbs of Live Rock and Live sand. The tank has been up and running for right at one month so we decided to add a fish. My ammonia is 0 Nitrates 0 and Nitrates 10.

We purchased a flame angel. I had been doing much reading about QT and SW fish ect. We got anxious and didn't wait 4 weeks to add it to the tank. I preformed a FW dip and put her into QT for a little over a week. She eats almost as much food as your willing to feed her and she looked healthy as an ox. Now that she is in the DT I see white spots on her and she is flashing. I checked the water quality and everything seems to be the same as the QT tank PH Salinity ect. She still eats regularly and swims around. I DO NOT want ICH to be a problem in my DT.

My plan is to remove the angel from the DT put her back into QT. Instead of treating with Hypo I plan to use to switch tank method of moving the fish from one QT tank to another ever 2-3 days. I have had much success with treating it this way with cichlids and have read many have with SW fish as well.

My question is in my DT can I raise the temperature to approx. 80 degrees to speed up the lifecycle of ICH so that I do not have to wait the full 6-8weeks for it to rid itself of the parasite. I have read with Marine ICH raising the temp should speed it up and in 2-3 weeks your tank can be rid of ich. So long as there is NO fish in the tank. What is yalls experience with this?

Also are there any options for me to just treat my DT tank and not remove the fish again to QT? As stated the tank does have live rock some of which have mushrooms growing on them. I hear so many mixed reviews about some of the products the LFS sells. Ideally I would rather not empty all the rock back out of the tank so I can net the fish but am willing to do so if I have to.

What is yalls opinion?
 
If you plan to keep the tank and FOWLR, than why not treat the display with copper? While you won't be able to keep any inverts in the tank, it's a viable options.

As far as I know, there are some strands of marine ich which can take upwards of 11 weeks to complete its life cycle. I have only had success at removing marine ich keeping the display tank fallow for 12 weeks and treating the fish with hypo.

Good luck on your endeavor, which ever route you choose.
 
Concur with Hook'em as it seems there are strains of marine ich (MI) that can stay in the encysted tomont stage longer, even at reef temperatures of 80 degrees. I think that is why historically you will see a trend toward recommendations for leaving the display tank fallow for a longer period of time. 10 - 12 weeks would be safe in my experience with varying degrees of success for shorter periods of time such as 4 - 6 weeks.

I've read about success with the tank transfer method as well with 4 moves with 3 days between each move so please keep us updated on how it goes if you go that route. You can combine tank transfer with hypo from what I've read as well.

I haven't kept angels but hear they are sensitive to copper treatment if you want to try something in-tank. Other angel owners can probably chime in with their experiences. That would leave hyposalinity as an option for in-tank treatment. I haven't tried or researched other types of medications enough to be able to comment on them.
 
@Hook'em2006 wrote:
If you plan to keep the tank and FOWLR said:
I have never treated with copper... However I am no opposed to it. Should I just remove the rocks with the mushrooms and put them in 20gallon buckets with a light and my canister filter while treating tank and leave them in the buckets for 6-8 weeks? Or just nuke em and get more in the future.. Anyone with experience with treating angels with copper your input is appreciated.
Click to expand...
 
If you treat with copper it will most likely stay in your system to one degree or another unless you do a lot of work as the copper can leach into rocks, sand, etc and slowly leach back out which would keep you from keeping corals and other inverts in the future. I've had luck with reclaiming setups that used copper by ditching all the sand, cooking the rock in an acid bath, and running carbon and polyfilter pads to remove anything else that might leach or be leftover from silicone or equipment.
 
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