Blue Tang and Flame Angel with ich

[jimv]

Posted under fish by accident, reposting here.

I purchased a flame angel and blue tang and put them in two separate tanks. One was my QT and the other was my new display with no other fish in it (does have live rock and coral).

I tried treating the flame angel with cupramine in the QT. I started with the recommended half dose for the first 48 hours and 12 hours later it was dead. I know angels are sensitive to copper but had been reading that cupramine was safe for angels. What other method would have been a better choice? I have had little luck with hypo salinity.

I removed the blue tang from my new display and he is currently in QT. He is still at the half dose of cupramine and he seems fine. How long does my new display not need to remain fishless. 2 months to be safe? My old display is still housing all my healthy fish.

 

[Snid]

With Marine Ich, there is a cycle of its life. Part of the cycle is in the form of a cyst that falls off the fish and rests in the aquarium. It can take as long as 72 days for that cyst to rupture and introduce the parasitic form back into the water. So it's best to wait a little more than 72 days before reintroducing fish back into the system.

Please note that a fish can have Marine Ich without showing the spots, and the spots are just the part of the cycle where new cysts are forming on the fish. So don't assume that when the spots are gone, the disease is gone.

Sorry for the loss, and hopefully you can save the other guy. Best of luck to you!

 

[Steve L]

Flame angels are a crap shoot. They don't handle stress well at all and more die than survive their new home in your tank. If you can manage to keep one alive for more than a couple months odds are good it will live a long time as long as another new fish doesn't introduce a disease or parasite into the tank. Over the last year I've bought three of them between two tanks, and the one I have left survived a bout of pop-eye with no treatment, and has been going strong for almost a year.

Tangs are a bit tougher than flame angels and can completely recover from ich (sometimes on their own without meds) and usually handle the meds in a hospital tank when needed.

 

[jimv]

The tang is currently doing fine at fill dosage and eating in the QT. So I need to keep the display fish free for 10 weeks to be 100% sure the ich is gone?

 

[Steve L]

It's never 100% guaranteed that you will be completely rid of ich. It can lay dormant deep within the tissue of a fish or encrusted within their protective cocoon in a tank for a very long time. The best you can hope for is to pick new fish carefully, quarantine and even pre-treat them before they go into your display tank, and keep your fish healthy so the can fight the parasites themselves.