whole 55 gal with ick??

[ant81]

my whole 55 gallon has ick and i dont have a QT tank or hospital tank..i have a yellow tang, 6 bar angelfish, flame angel, copperband butterfly, and a clown fish...with love rock...what can i use and do to get rid of the ick without buying an extra tank? thanks

[Lazer Bubble]

Some say kick ich works well but i have not tried it. Sorry not mcuh experience with this. Good luck.

[Sirpentor]

IF NO CORALS ARE IN THE TANK
TRY GREENEX...
WORKED WONDERS FOR ME.
OR TRY GARLIC SUPPLEMENTED FOODS/ LOTS OF H20 CHANGES

[psiico]

Do you have any inverts? Do you plan to get any? Most ick medications will kill inverts and make the tank uninhabitable for them long term. You may want to spring for a QT system to avoid the hassle.

[tdhawk]

For the cost of Kick-It you could almost set-up a small QT. Bite the bullet buy a QT and use it. If it were me I would remove all the fish to a seperate tank for treatment. Let the display go fallow for min.6 weeks. This would break the ick life cycle. If you don't break the life cycle it will just be a matter of time before your next outbreak. Admittantly removing all the fish is a pita, that's why QT is a necessity before you introduce new fish in the first place.

[Reef Mike]

A QT is no quarantee that ick will not re-surface, hence I consider it a waste of money and space.

Healthy, happy fish usually don't get ick and if they do they fight it off.. If it were me, I would let nature run its course, but you can try GreenX or Kick ich..

Also catching fish is not always an easy undertaking..

Good Luck

Mike

For your info..

I have never used a QT tank, and my PB tang got ich but faught it off. Never spread to the other fish, and everybody is happy.

[jtremblay]

A QT is no quarantee that ick will not re-surface, hence I consider it a waste of money and space.

That's a myth, as has been explained many times here.

Ich, or c. irritans, is a parasite that has one host: fish. In the course of its life cycle, anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks, if the parasite doesn't find a host, it will die. After 6 weeks without fish, the tank will be completely, 100%, ich free.

Lots of good reading (http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=282934) at RC about this disease.

The only thing to add is that a BIG UV (approximately 1 to 1.5 watts / tank gallon processing water at 5X per hour) would also probably control ich in your system for the long term.

Jason