Quarantine question

[Gourami Swami]

Bought my first fish the other day for my nano reef, a little tailspot blenny. Low and behold, 3 days later, poor little gyu is covered in ich. Never going back to that LFS. 

But anyway, I have read a good bit about marine ich now, and it seems my best bet is to quarantine him for 8 weeks, which will remove the ich from my reef, and treat him with copper sulfate while he is in quarantine. Correct?

 

I don't have a quarantine tank set up yet, I have an empty tank though. What can I do to instantly cycle the quarantine tank and move the blenny in there? In my freshwater tanks I would just move some bio-media from my established tanks' filter onto the new one. Is there something like that I can do? Maybe a little live rock rubble from the old tank? If I have to wait weeks to cycle the new tank and move the blenny in, I am afraid the blenny won't last until I can treat him. 

Any tips? And, to confirm, there is really no way to treat him in my tank without killing my coral? He is the only fish and will always probably be the only fish in this tank.

Thanks

[Clown79]

You can use filter media from an existing tank to help the process, doing waterchanges every day controls the ammonia in the qt tank.

[Gourami Swami]

Even if I do WCs every day, won't the presence of any ammonia stress the fish considerably? Which would be bad during an already stressful copper treatment? Would I be better off leaving the blenny in the reef while the QT tank cycles?

[Clown79]

16 minutes ago, Gourami Swami said:

Even if I do WCs every day, won't the presence of any ammonia stress the fish considerably? Which would be bad during an already stressful copper treatment? Would I be better off leaving the blenny in the reef while the QT tank cycles?

It may not make it 4 weeks waiting for the qt to cycle

[Humblefish]

Your best option is to use an air driven sponge filter and bacteria in a bottle (e.g. Bio-spira) to seed it. A tailspot blenny won't produce that much waste, so you only need a small amount of Bio-spira to keep ammonia under control. Your other option is to use a Seachem ammonia alert badge and just do water changes as needed. But be sure to dose copper into any replacement water before dumping it into the QT, so your copper level remains consistent at all times.

 

P.S. By "replacement water" I don't mean freshwater top-off. Only saltwater replaced during a water change.

[Gourami Swami]

49 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

It may not make it 4 weeks waiting for the qt to cycle

This is my concern also 😞 Bad situation either way. I guess the mistake I am learning from this, is that I should have had a QT tank on standby just in case. Did not think it would be necessary with only one fish ever being added to the tank. Oh well

10 minutes ago, Humblefish said:

Your best option is to use an air driven sponge filter and bacteria in a bottle (e.g. Bio-spira) to seed it. A tailspot blenny won't produce that much waste, so you only need a small amount of Bio-spira to keep ammonia under control. Your other option is to use a Seachem ammonia alert badge and just do water changes as needed. But be sure to dose copper into any replacement water before dumping it into the QT, so your copper level remains consistent at all times.

 

P.S. By "replacement water" I don't mean freshwater top-off. Only saltwater replaced during a water change.

Thank you- I can do that. I have a sponge filter and I can get some bio-spira on Monday. I will wait until I have the bio-spira to put the blenny in the QT

 

Thanks all. Any other advice?

 

[Humblefish]

9 minutes ago, Gourami Swami said:

Thanks all. Any other advice?

 

I would use either Cupramine or Copper Power to treat him. For Cupramine maintain 0.5ppm for 4 weeks; Copper Power 1.75ppm for 4 weeks.

 

Seachem or Salifert copper test kit for Cupramine. API or ideally the Hanna copper checker for Copper Power.

[Gourami Swami]

47 minutes ago, Humblefish said:

 

I would use either Cupramine or Copper Power to treat him. For Cupramine maintain 0.5ppm for 4 weeks; Copper Power 1.75ppm for 4 weeks.

 

Seachem or Salifert copper test kit for Cupramine. API or ideally the Hanna copper checker for Copper Power.

Another question- Is it possible for a fish to only show symptoms for a few hours? I am wondering now if I was too hasty to diagnose him. 

Last night, and for the few days prior, I saw no ich. This morning, when I woke up, I thought I saw it all over his head. This was right after I woke up, possibly not the most mentally alert time of day for me. Now, it is about 4 hours later, and looking at him he has some white spots on his head, but they look more like coloration of the fish than Ich, as I had feared. 

Looking up pictures of TSBs, the white spots do look like these on this fish's head.

Later when the lights are on, I will get some pictures of him and get your opinions. But, if the fish did have ich, would it be possible for it to have developed the spots overnight, and then lost them all 4 hours later?

[dandelion]

Not sure about waiting until Monday. You should not count on the biofiltration of a hospital tank anyways unless you have ha it running or unless you took the sponge filter from your DT. I would just do WC everyday to keep ammonia in control.

 

instead of copper sulfate, look up chloroquine or cupramine.

 

The spots might have been dusts only if it’s gone so quickly. If I were you I always quarantine my fish before putting them into a DT anyways.

[Humblefish]

20 minutes ago, Gourami Swami said:

 

That's not ich or velvet. Could just be stress spots or worst case, flukes. A 5 min FW dip would confirm flukes because you will see them drop off. Use a black bucket and look for white sesame seed looking things on the bottom.

[Gourami Swami]

6 hours ago, Humblefish said:

That's not ich or velvet. Could just be stress spots or worst case, flukes. A 5 min FW dip would confirm flukes because you will see them drop off. Use a black bucket and look for white sesame seed looking things on the bottom.

 

With the light on, I can see that there is indeed something wrong. Here is a picture, notice the white spots on fins and head

 

What do you guys think? Ich? Flukes? I can do the FW dip, but if you think it's ich I may not bother, don't want to stress the fish unneccessarily

[Tamberav]

The big spots look like 'stress spots' and the little white dots could be sand, hard to say. My fish will show up with a random dot or two on them but its a fine particle of sand which looks just like ich unfortunately 😛

 

I can't tell from the pic which it might be. 

[Gourami Swami]

Here is another pic from the other side, you can see the white spots a little better. Unfortunately I don't think it is just sand. Fish seems kind of stressed, has been sitting in that spot all day and occasionally "coughs"

[Tamberav]

57 minutes ago, Gourami Swami said:

Here is another pic from the other side, you can see the white spots a little better. Unfortunately I don't think it is just sand. Fish seems kind of stressed, has been sitting in that spot all day and occasionally "coughs"

Ya they seem fairly numerous, coughing can be a sign of flukes. Poor thing 😞

[Humblefish]

If you don't think that's sand, I would proceed with QT + copper treatment. A FW dip en route to QT will confirm/rule out flukes. If present, you will also need to treat with Prazipro.

[Gourami Swami]

Thanks, will do. Hope he gets better, is quite a cute little fish

[xthunt]

Another option for ich is tank transfer method. But you’d need 2 tanks, 2 heaters, and 2 filters, and water change every 72 hrs or less for 2 weeks minimum. You can treat with PraziPro in between transfers, in case of flukes.