[Help] Is it ich?

[u/Lil_bird97]

Hi! Got a Tomini Tang 10 days ago from my local fish store. Yesterday noticed some semi-transparent dots on his fins and face. Today looks like there are more of them. I am afraid it’s ich, but not sure.
The tang was quarantined for a month at a fish store. It adapted fast, swimming around, constantly munching on algae and asking for food (I feed frozen food from Ocean Nutrition + FishV vitamins from Aquaforest twice a day, additionally some Ocean nutrition flakes 1-2 times a day).
I have Cupramin, copper tests and a plastic container ready just in case. But not sure if I should start treatment ASAP or wait a bit.
Tank info:
Tank size (volume) 250l (Nyos Opus 300)
Tank age 6 months
Lighting Radion XR15 G6 (one at the moment, on one side of the tank)
Filtration: Sump, Filter sock, Nyos Opus skimmer
pH 8,15
Temperature 25,5C
Nitrate 15-20
Phosphate 0,1
Calcium 415
Alkalinity 8,4

[u/midgit1]

How is breathing rate? Any flashing? Other signs on other fish?
It doesn’t really look like ich as ich looks like protruding fine salt granules stuck to the fish.
If he is acting normal, observe for now, since if it is ich then it is already in your tank so no point in stressing out a brand new fish.

[u/Lil_bird97 → u/midgit1]

Breathing as usual, no weird behavior so far.
Other fish is fine. But I already had ich before: it killed tiny royal gramma. Clowns and cardinal were fine. It was 4 months ago. I now run UV.

[u/strich → u/Lil_bird97]

UV doesn't eradicate ich from a tank - it will only help keep the ich population in check. So if you know you had ich in the past and didn't put the tank into hypo and/or go fallow for 45+ days then it'll still be there. Which can be fine - ich isn't always fatal and there is a school of thought that suggests that a healthy mature tank and fish can co-exist with ich indefinitely.

It's always impossible to give facts in these situations, but one hypothesis would be that this new fish has gotten the ich from your tank and it is currently fighting to build up some level of immunity to it. So long as it is well fed, low stress and happy it in all likelihood may recover and do fine.

Only other thing I'll say is that tangs are particularly susceptible to ich - I believe its because their slime coats are quite thin compared to most other fish. So this guy might get it a lot worse than the other fish.

Keep monitoring and if it looks like he's struggling then you need to take action. I recommend joining the Reef2Reef forums if you want professional fish medic advice at that stage.

[u/Lil_bird97 → u/strich]

Thank you! I know that if ich is in a tank the only way is to take out all fish for loooong time. But, in my apartment I don’t have space for QT tank. Only for temp “hospital” one.

[u/strich → u/Lil_bird97]

Yeah it's tough. I have been in the same boat. One option is the hyposalinity protocol where you drastically drop and maintain the water salinity in the tank down to 1.09 for 45 days, which eradicates the ich and the fish will be fine. However corals, inverts and a lot of algae will die. So you have to have none of that or a plastic tub setup you can chuck them into.

There are details on the R2R forum about how to go about it if you're interested. But, IMO wait and see if your fish gets worse for now.

[u/Nocare_ → u/Lil_bird97]

Agreed with strich. It's not for sure but if it is ich then it probably got it from the tank.

I don't know how space limited you are but I have seen some creative ways to get around it. There are methods that don't even need filtration to work because they use 100% water changes.

Good luck hope it's not ich.

[u/midgit1 → u/Lil_bird97]

I’d say observe for changes to those behaviors and look for is these white spots disappear after a couple days, then reappear after a few more in larger numbers and in different spots on the fish. Then Id be alarmed. If they stay there and grow, could be lymph which isn’t a big deal. If they just disappear and never come back, could be stuck sand or something which is also not a big deal. If white and red spots appear on the fish then it could be bacterial and kanaplex and metroplex are your best bets for that. Good luck for now.

[u/LawyerMermaidTattoo]

This does look like a parasite to me. Stress reduces the fish’s ability to fight off parasites, so they can sometimes flare up when you move the fish, even if they looked ok in the store. Rather than treating the parasite in the display tank, focus on stress reduction. Feed plenty of high quality food. Don’t make big changes to the tank. Let the fish settle in unbothered. Unless you never want to keep inverts in your tank, don’t treat with copper. You could move it to a treatment tank, but the stress of moving it again might do more harm than good.

[u/eroseman1]

Are you feeding nori? My tomini isn’t a big nori eater but I have a lot of algae in the tank for him.

[u/Lil_bird97 → u/eroseman1]

He refuses nori, but I give him flakes for herbivores, he eats flakes like crazy. Don’t know what they put in it 😅

[u/ReefPopiah]

It does look like ich, but I wouldn’t worry about it.

As long as they’re eating, continue feeding. Soak your food in garlic guard to house their immune system.

And make sure they’re not stressed in the tank by keep parameters stable. If your fish 4 months ago were stressed in your tank, something might still not be right. Don’t use clown and cardinals as a baseline because they’re both very hardy. Something in your tank is causing fishes to be stressed, so you need to figure out what that is.

Also, what’s yr salinity? If you don’t have corals you can go hypo salinity.

[u/Lil_bird97 → u/ReefPopiah]

They don’t look stressed. Normal fish behavior. Previous fish got it from the tank in was hold in. So I decided to only get quarantined fish from local reef shop, to reduce transport stress + make sure fish is healthy and eating good