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Need urgent help please!

I came home to find two new carpet anemone deflated and see very small white spots on a bunch of my fish including a yellow tang, purple Tang and powder blue tang. Any idea what this is and how to treat proactively. I do not have a hospital or QT tank.
 

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diana a

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On my phone and photo is hard to see wil blue light. It sounds like Ick
 

amado

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The fish look stressed. How big is this tank?
how long has it been running ?
 

ecam

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Definite ick. And it looks bad. You will have to try and get this under control.

how many fish do you have in total ?

what size tank do you have?
and what size tank can you get a hold off ?
You will need to net them and setup a tank with copper to stem the tide here
 
Definitely looks like ick. You'll need to catch all the fish and treat them in a QT. Fortunately it looks like you don't have too much rock to remove.
 
The fish look stressed. How big is this tank?
how long has it been running ?
The tank is 140 gallons. It’s been running very nicely for over a year. Took it very slow with stocking the tank. Then recently I got two carpet nems that are both looking deflated and I feel may have caused the problem. I’m going to take them out ASAP and get them into isolation.
 

ecam

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Not quite sure anemones can carry the ick spores. So may not be the source of your outbreak
 
I just wonder if maybe the nem is dying and/secreting something in the water that is stressing the fish out. Is that possible?
 

Mark_C

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Never dealt with ich, so can't comment, but there is something going on in the tank affecting everything.
That nem in the picture with the scraper is on its way out as far as I know (and I may know nothing). When a nem is in seriously bad shape it begins to regurgitate its innards.
To me, it looks like thats well underway. I'd get it out of the tank asap and get it into a small QT, do not put it in the same QT with the fish.

Maybe parameters were balanced for your tank but borderline, nems added, nems not happy, nems start dying and puking nem stuff, parameters shift for the worse, ich grabs hold?

And, though I may be the laziest reefer on here, I'd actually check my tank parameters on this one.
Use a decent kit for alkalinity, phosphate, and nitrate, and any kit for ammonia (a cheap API is fine), check salinity and pH (again with pH a cheap kit is fine for a general number).
Then do a big 15-20g water change tomorrow and test it all again. If it helped, do another 15-20g the next day, test again, etc...
If parameters are a problem, you need to get them under control. Treating the ich is pointless if the cause remains.
 
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How did you add the nems to the tank? Did you add the water from the seller into the tank? It's possible the seller had ich and there were motile ich in the water. It could even be a prior purchase if you added the water in since ich can be a single motile parasite. A single one is totally unnoticeable and would look like a sand granule.

Anyways this is a tough battle. the old saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Ich requires like 30 pounds of cure. You have to remove all the fish and leave the tank fallow to break the cycle, This makes scientific sense to me but requires a large QT set up. Anecdotally I have read success stories of folks who do massive water changes (like Mark mentioned) and feed their fish heavily with garlic to keep appetite up and boost their health. Good luck!
 
I just wonder if maybe the nem is dying and/secreting something in the water that is stressing the fish out. Is that possible?
I’ve been told from a very experienced reefer that this product works well and treats whole tank with no bad side effects,, worth a try
 

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I tried ich management for awhile including UV, Selcon, Beta-glucan, and garlic. When ich showed up, I tried Dr. G's antiparasitic caviar, Polylab Medic, and General Cure-soaked foods in the DT. And I pulled out the fish that I could catch and dipped in Ruby Reef Rally Pro before throwing them in a QT. Those fish showed up with some new ich spots a few days later while still in QT.

I tried Copper Power and that seemed to work on the ich, though at 3+ weeks I had some fish that suddenly died. I think it's probably because they succumbed to a secondary bacterial infection. When I was all done, I put the fish back into the DT which had been fallow for 80 days. Unfortunately, I later had another outbreak of ich, but I'm not sure whether that was because of coral frags that I had bought and put in without QT.

This time I've taken all my fish out again but had to go through the pain of removing all the rock and combing the sand to catch the damn leopard wrasse. I'm doing tank transfer method with 2 cycles of Prazipro. After having gone through ich twice, I'm trying to make sure to keep it out forever. And I'm trying to do it with as few chemicals as possible. Yes, it's possible to do ich management and some would even argue that you can never fully get rid of ich. But any time the fish are stressed, your water quality goes down, or you stock heavily like I do, there's always the chance that some of the fish won't make it.

BTW, TTM doesn't have to take huge tanks and large water volumes. I'm going between 2 plastic tubs with 7.5 gallons in each of them, then when the fish are done with treatment, I've put them in a 45 gallon Rubbermaid that I'm using as a tank while waiting out the fallow period.
 
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