Emergency: Marine Ich!

[Danno]

I woke up this morning turned on the lights and went to class I wasn't able to look at my tanks. I came back and was going to feed my Damsel his breakfast and he has marine ich! I have no idea what to do. I don't have any quarentine tank either. I also don't want to use copper products seeing that I want to have inverts in the tank. Water parimeters are just fine.

Temperature: 78.9F
Specific Gravity: 1.024
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: less then 5
pH: 8.3
LR: 10 pounds
LS: 10 pounds
Running Carbon & Phosguard

Residents: Blue Damsel 3cms long, 1 Turbo Snail

Anyone have any ideas!?

 

[SkiFletch]

Lower your sg slowly to say 1.019 and keep the fish well fed with garlic suppliments. Might be a good idea to get a light timer for the tank

 

[Danno]

Will do. My pet store has "Garlic Guard". Is that a good product also along with the garlic food?

 

[SkiFletch]

Yeah, in most cases garlic guard is a liquid. You should soak your food for 10-20 mins in it before feeding.

 

[Danno]

Won't the flakes decompose in it? Should I soak it and then try to dry the food?

 

[SkiFletch]

I'd put a pinch of food in the bottom of a shot glass, add a drop of suppliment, wait 10-20 mins. Then add some tank water to the glass and slowly feed the fish. The flakes will be soggy and wont float very well, so feed them over a min or two so the damsel has a chance to eat them

 

[Danno]

Thanks for all the help SkiFletch! Ill get over to the pet shop within the hour.

 

[bunjiweb]

Great advice there.

To provent getting ich/whitespot in the future make you need to make sure you reduce stress on the fish. It may be you acclimatised the fish too early, the water parameters had a sudden fluctuation, be it temperature or water chemistry. Also are you sure there are no bad hitchikers that may have tried to attack your fish at night stressing the fish leading to possible whitespot break-out.

Ben

 

[Danno]

I have no idea if there are any bad hitchhikers in my tank. There are only 4 that I know of. Two of them I dont have confirmation. One is in a hole. All I can see of it is a small pincher that just sits in a hole. It is about 1/8th of an inch. It doesn't move in the night. The other ones I have no idea what they are. I think they are worms. I turned on a flashlight last night and saw them. They stay in tiny holes in the live rock and when I flashed them when I saw them they retracted in the holes. Im guessing they are about 1/2 an inch. They are white. The other two that I identified are Serpulid Worms (round non moving things) and the other is a harmless variety of amphipods.

EDIT
I just looked at my Damsel and the ich stuff is almost gone on him. Maybe the flicking is helping?

 

[Danno]

Well I ended up not being able to get to the pet store. I don't have a car and everyone else is busy....I have a ride for tomarrow. I hope everything will be ok.

 

[Danno]

Update:

I wasn't able to get the garlic guard seeing that I wasn't able to get to the pet store. I put my SG to 1.019 and all the ich is gone. No returning signs too. Seems like that worked!



Thanks guys.