My fish are developing Saltwater ich, how do I cure this?

My 55 gal tank has:a serpent star (legs are falling off), yellow tang (getting infected), powder brown tank (already infected), 2 damsels (only 1 infected), 2 clowns (ok for now), 2 shrimp, 4 red claws snails, 3 horseshoe crabs, plus 3 corals (flower pot, hammer, metallic frog??)

My fish are developing Saltwater ich, how do I cure this?
You can treat this, but I'm afraid you have a lot more problems than just ich in your tank. Ich won't make your serpent star lose its legs. You have about twice the number of fish that your tank should accommodate, and a few too many species that are going to show territorial aggression (you should only have one tang, and either the clowns or the damsels). The horseshoe crabs will all outgrow your tank (or worse, die while buried in the substrate and release a lot of ammonia, possibly killing the rest of your livestock).



Back to your immediate problem of ich - any medication you can use can also kill your inverts, so you'll need a separate tank capable of holding ALL of your fish, regardless of whether they're currently infected or not. Ich is a parasite with multiple stages in its life cycle, and only one of these occurs ON the fish - the rest are in the water. It's only a matter of time before the rest become infected. Treatment can be with medication or using hyposalinty (lower the amount of salt in the water to 1.015 SLOWLY.



There's another option of doing freshwater dips, and even though this will affect the parasites on your fish, the ones still in the water or substrate in your tank will still be present and can reinfect the fish if you put them back.



As long as there are no fish in the tank for the parasites to infect, they'll die out on their own, but this will take 6-8 weeks to be reasonable sure it's died off.
Reply:Ich is a very common disease that almost fish keeper will sadly run into at some point. Saying that, aquarium stores are very prepared for it. They should have tons of different medications for ich, just ask them. I know I've seen a lot.

Since most of your tank is infected, I would medicate your whole tank.
Reply:Unfortunatley, salt water ich is a little tougher to get rid of, especially in a reef tank, or tank with invertebrates and corals.

Mosr meds you use will kill your shrimp, snails, corals and crabs.

A good method to try might be to give the infected shrimp a dip. You can do a medicated dip, or a freshwater dip. Sometimes the cure can be a tough as the disease, so i'd research the best method of dipping them before I got started. Some med dips will tell you 1 should do it, in that case, be sure to dip all the sick fish the same day. Most however, will tell you to do it more than once, as the parasite can still be in the tank, or laying eggs in the gravel. Killing the ones on the fish don't prevent the ones in the tank from grabbing on later.

At this stage, with that many infected fish, it's probably to late to pull the sick and put them in a sick tank. Something to think about for the future.

I would also try to figure out how you got it. New fish? Big temperature change? Some other stressful situation? Water quality or maintenance problem?
Reply:Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Aquarian Liquid Super Ick Cure 4 0z $2.99



Can be used in saltwater tanks- cures within 24 hrs- and prevents secondary infections



I'm sure you can find it locally though- or any type of equal product