Fish Disease Help!!!

[mano1192]

I bought a yellow tang from a Petco (..yea I know...) about a week ago. He was eating a little at the store but seemed very stressed out as they had him in tiny little tanks. I thought he'd get better in my tank So he did fine for 2 days was eating and everything, then broke into ick on the 3rd day, I started treating with marine Rx-P right away. The next day my perc's fins started sliming, a blue fiji came down with white spots (ick) and the tang looked the same. Next day when I woke up the clown and the fiji were dead in my overflow box, and the tang looked hurting, wasnt eating barely swimming and his fins were splitting on the veins. So I took him and stuck him in my quarinteen tank where he died about 2 hours later. Now its been 3 days and the only fish I had left are a bass fish, 2 baby percs, and a engineer goby who i never see, I have continued the treatments up until yesturday and then last night I started to run carbon to remove any traces of the medicine. This morning when I woke up my goby was dead and the bass fish still seems fine, but one of the percs has cloudy eyes...none show any white spots, but the bass fish is rubbing himself on zoas and rocks. Seems all like symptoms of ick but my medicine does not seem to be helping.... any suggestions??? Am I treating for the wrong disease??? Any other meds you could suggest?? I've never had a disease in my tank ever... this sucks.. very discouraging...but at least my corals are OK

 

[MarkO]

you say you have a quarantine tank. I would use it. I'd use the water from your main tank. Add the fish, then treat with copper. I'd also recommned you not put any fish back in the display for a month. During which time you coudl increase the tank temp to about 83 deg.
Also, keep an eye on the quarantine tank. You don't want to stress the fish anymore, so make sure the parameters are all normal.

 

[Moe_K]

Yeah, if you can catch all the fish, stick them in the QT tank and treat 'em.
Best of luck to you.

 

[Bidadari]

Are you sure it's ich? IME, ich usually doesn't cause death so fast. I think usually it takes more than 2-3 days for ich outbreak to kill a healthy fish. Is Marine Rx-P a medicine for ich? I would not recommend using any medicine in the main tank. The best way to treat ich is hyposalinity treatment in a QT tank, and soak your fish food with garlic & selcon to boost your fish immune system.

 

[mano1192]

well I finally got the 2 perc into the QT tank and treated it with copper, I hope they get better! Im never getting anything from petco again, and I think I will be doing freshwater dips from now on with any new additions...

 

[offshore]

Yea, petco whiped out one of my tanks once too!

 

[merk1_99]

All the more reason to qt any fish for at least a month .before introducing into a main tank. Doesn't matter where you get your fish...they all should be qt'd.

 

[Moe_K]

I agree with merk.

You could get ich from any fish purchase. You could buy fish from Petco and get no ich. With every purchase, we take a chance.

 

[denvig]

Are you sure it's ich? IME, ich usually doesn't cause death so fast. I think usually it takes more than 2-3 days for ich outbreak to kill a healthy fish. Is Marine Rx-P a medicine for ich? I would not recommend using any medicine in the main tank. The best way to treat ich is hyposalinity treatment in a QT tank, and soak your fish food with garlic & selcon to boost your fish immune system.

I agree, you should not rush to use chemicals in a display tank. I would bet that this is what caused the stress and further outbreaks in your tank. My experience with chemicals in display tanks is that the cure is usually worse then the disease. Most times just making sure that you have pristine water and stable parameters does wonders and allows the fish to recover on it?s own.