Advice? ich treatment

I am a fan of Crystallized Peroxide Salts. A brand name would be Medic by Polyp Lab. However unless you see active ich, hyposalinity along with higher end QT temps (80-84 or so) You shouldn't need to treat unless you actually see an active outbreak.

 

Peroxide salts are copper free and reef safe when mixed correctly. Coper is a VERY effective killer of protozoans. It will also kill all shrimps, and a very VERY wide swath of snails, starfish, and crabs. Essentially all inverts that aren't coral. although some coral are susceptible. If you have the QT set up with just the fish, and the fish are healthy (not showing signs of distress) the copper dosing is of no danger. as always READ THE DIRECTIONS, FOLLOW THEM CLOSELY, and get a copper test as you will have to watch the levels to dose properly.

 

You can't copper all fish. Wrasse and puffers are just two of I think 5 groups of fish sensitive to copper. It's almost a futile effort to accomplish what your after.

With that said, if you want your QT tank to have a bio filter, you need to have another hospital tank you can treat in. Copper will obsorbs into the rock, sand, and silicone in the tank and various plastic tubing. Most likely you want to QT anything in the QT tank and using copper in it is a poor choice.

 

Experimentation on your own and scientific reviews are your only ally in this game. A review by Johnny reefer on amazon needs to be taken with huge spoonfuls of salt. Look to opinion based on hobbies ts who have been around for more than 5 years, and any scientific papers you can get your salt fingers on. With that asside. Unless you are dealing with an active outbreak, relax. QT os preventative. And with the right temps within 8 weeks anything g your qt that is not breaking out is safe.

If you treat a tank either copper. It's a copper tank. You need to then treat it with heavy metal detoxification treatments to then get around that. Regardless of a water change or not. Any substrate (which shouldn't exist in qt any way) is contaminated and troublesome to clean.

Have you had an ich outbreak in the past? I feel like this is a little bit of superstition mixed with caution...

 

Here are my quick 2 cents

The tank transfer method is pretty much 99% effective, low stress on your fish, and safe for everything else if you do it correctly. I will do this with every fish before it goes into my main system, whether it shows infection or not.

Copper is lethal to ich. And many other things including dozens of angels, puffers, wrasses, etc. Not something to fool around with.

Hypo works very well too, but takes a long long time and you have to be diligent about salinity level (must use refractometer).