ICH Treatment... NEED someone with experience treating fish!

Is your tank FOWLR? You can't use copper based treatments in Reef tanks and you shouldn't use them in tanks you plan to make into a reef in the future. Copper is toxic to invertebrates.

The big thing with ich is to not over react. Avoid things that causes additional stress on the fish and feed them lots of food (with some garlic) so that their immune system can stay strong and help fight it off on their own.

 

+1 JB Also, work to improve your water quality. Good quality skimmer, maybe some mechanical filtration, something to keep the nitrates in check (whether that be a remote deep sandbed, tank sandbed, sulphur notrate reactor or biopellet reactor), and stable parameters. Auto-top off, keeping water temp swing down, etc.

To treat, set up a QT Tank with 1.009 salinity and a copper treatment. Ich can survive at 1.011, so getting it down to 1.009 is very important. I use Seachem Cupramine for a copper supplement. Pet's Playhouse sells it.

Good luck...ich takes out a lot of fish...especially tangs.

--AJ

 

Couple of things, just because a skimmer is expensive, doesn't mean that its great or properly sized for your tank. Also, water quality is more than just a skimmer. Things like carbon & GFO reactors help get toxins and phosphates (among other things). Length of time your tank has been established, volume of clean up critters, amount of food and frequency of feeding, stability of pH, salinity and temp, etc. It takes a number of things working together to give you best water quality. You've not indicated what your water parameters are. When was the last time you measured and what were they?

When using hyposalinity and copper treatments together, you can do it in a couple of different ways:

1) Hyposalinity to 1.009 and cooper treatment at 50% recommend dose.
2) Hyposalinity first, then return sanity to normal and treat with full copper dose. Hyposalinity by itself will not treat certain diseases that cooper will and that's why it's a good idea to use them together.

I've used both together before with no issues...but its your fish...do what you want. Good luck.

--AJ

 

Hey Money (is it just Money, or G-Money, Mike or do you have another preferred name?),
Deep sand beds do a lot of removing nitrates from your water (see http://www.wetwebmedia.com/deepsandbeds.htm or http://www.reef-eden.net/DSBs.htm or http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic59558-13-1.aspx) but if you don't have the appropriate clean up crew, they can leave the excess food on the bottom of your tank and become a nitrate source. Nassarious snails, sand sifting gobies (such as diamond goby), sand sifting stars, are all great to have if you have a sand bed. Your params look good; your salinity is arguably a little low (1.024, most prefer 1.026), but acceptable. Are you using an Auto-top off to keep the salinity stable? What kind of temp and pH swing do you see in a 24 hour period? Also, what are the inhabitants of the tank? If you have fish picking on other fish can induce stress. Stress will cause any underlying issues a fish may have to come out.  Also, make sure that you're doing regular water changes.
The fact is, it sounds like your biggest issue is not having a quarantine tank. Take that 55 gallon tank that you're selling and make it into a quarantine tank for 2 months. Lower the salinity and keep all your fish in there. Without the fish in your main tank, the ich will die in there, and with the low salinity in your QT tank, the ich will die in there. After the two months, you should be ich free. Just make sure to put any new fish through the same process.
Good luck Money.
--AJ

 

Mike,
I have around 200 gallons in my system and I see temp swings. The volume of water will not guarantee temps staying at a set point. You probably want to add more snails. 12 for a 180 is too few. Probably more like 50 to 90 mixed variety of snails (some say even as much as 1 snail per gallon) would be on par with what you need.

As for your 55, if you don't run copper in it, you (or someone else) can use it for a reef tank at a later date.

--AJ

 

Depends on what you have in your "live" rock. Live rock can be classified as anything from rock that's seeded with just beneficial bacterias to rock that's covered with feather dusters, pods, desirable macro algae, etc. If you don't have anything specifically desirable on the rock, then you can let it go thru the hypo process. The bacteria will make it through and actually help with the water quality in your QT tank. If you have stuff that you want to keep, then you should do something else with it. If there's things on there that will die by leaving them in hypo, it could cause enough die off to cause a water cycle and you don't want that in your QT tank...just more stress on your fish.

All things considered, you have a couple hundred dollars worth of fish there; you need to decide if it's worth buying something to put them in for your hypo treatment, moving your live sand and rock to other containers and putting them in the 55g tank, or what you're going to do. Every minute you delay your decision reduces the chances for your fish to make it through treatment. If you decide not to take action, you should give them to someone who can.

--AJ

 

I have made a DIY fishing net out of bird net.  I'm not sure what they call the "bird net" at the hardware store, but it's a nylon screen type material with the squares about 1/2" in size, but they could be smaller and it would function the same.  Just not standard window screen as you need it to move through the water quickly.  Cut a large square of net about 2' x 2'.  Weight the corners and then drop it on top of the fish.  Then you can gently go in and grab them with your hands.  Be careful not to let them struggle too much and try to scoop them out quickly so they don't get a chance to get their fins all tied up in the net.  This has worked for me well when fish traps have failed.   You can even throw the net over fish and rocks and still get the fish out. 
Specifically, the net that I put together and used had frag plugs for the weights and rubber bands to hold the frag plugs onto the net.  I also put a plug between the corners so there was a total of 8 weights.  This may be a two person job...one to chase into the area where you're ready with the net, and the other to drop the net.
Good luck.
--AJ