Ich

You can do a few things.

Do you have a bunch of coral in there?

If not you can do a few things. The best would be to remove all inverts & slowly start adding straight RO water. Monitor it daily until your salinity is 1.09. You will need a refractometer as it has to be at 1.09. this will kill the ich. You will need to maintain it for 4 weeks to make sure all it killed. If you go lower then 1.09 you can kill the fish, 1.10 wont kill the ich.

If you can remove the fish you can treat with formalin.

I would not add any copper based medications to your tank directly as it can stay in the system forever & kill all future inverts & corals.

Also start soaking all food in garlic, that will help the fishes immune system.

After you get the ich killed off we can talk about how to set up & maintain a QT system

GL
Craig

 

Personally, I'd go about it the other way. Set-up a QT tank for the fish and copper treat them for a month leaving your display fallow. It's much easier than trying to maintain a bullet proof 1.09 salinity level. I am currently using Mardel CopperSafe in my QT tank. All fish have been ich free for about 5 weeks now. I'm leaving my display fallow for 8 weeks just to be sure the parasite is dead. The "dormant" stage of the parasite is off fish and lasts 4 weeks for the majority of the parasites. Some can take up to 8 weeks, it's probably best to run your tank fallow for 8.

Don't ever treat your tank directly for these things. There are no treatments that are invert safe, and the ones that say they are usually don't work.

Just don't panic. And QT all of your new fish in the future!

 

Cleaner shrimp,cleaner wrass,small hogfish all eat ich and a uv sterilizer will kill ich in it's free floating stage.

 

You have the right info to never see Ich again. Hopefully you can save the current fish. If you are going to use Copper make sure the fish you are going to treat can take it.

 

Cleaner shrimp, cleaner wrasse, and hogfish are hit or miss and are not a solution. Uv sterilizers aren't a cure either and unless you're stirring up your substrate and blowing off your rocks and glass everyday, they won't do a very good job of ridding your tank of the parasite. Ich parasites like to fall off at night while the fish is holed up in its cave. They drop to the substrate just below, and then hatch again at night when the fish is back in the area sleeping. Pretty cool bit of evolution there, but a huge pain in an aquarists ***! The only "cure" is to take your fish out and run it fallow for a month or two.

 

Actualy ich is a parasite that bores under the fish's skin and forms a cyst that will take up to a week to burst thousands of new parasites into the water and they will float to the bottum of your tank and form another cyst that I beleve takes a nother day or two to burst.Then you have what is known a the free floating stage of the parasite witch is the best time to kill it and a uv steralizer will kill them at this stage and cleaners will kill and eat them at the other stages so this will lead to a cure.

 

IMO run the tank fallow for 8 weeks like mentioned. This is the best bet for making sure it is gone. Then NEVER add fish without quarantine. This is the guaranteed way to beat this, as I understand it. I also have personal experience in the success of this method. It is drastic but successful.
Again, IMHO. We could argue the finer aspects of the organism's biology and life cycle for weeks. There are different opinions here but I have never heard anyone say this hasn't worked for them. Although you may lose the infected fish but you shouldn't lose future friends. Bottom line, the organism has to have a host to live and its life cycle is fairly short.

 

^ This is sound advice I wasn't disagreing. Just stating other methods.