marine ich

Question
Ok I am running several saltwater tanks, my problem is this I quarintine all my fish before they enter any of my show tanks. All my tanks are the same parameters, salinity, copper, ph. One tank is RO/DI water when I put any fish from the quarintine system into the one RO tank my fish develop ich. I am completely lost again I have checked all my parameters on each and every tank exactly the same. Please if you haver any insight as to what I can do to prevent this from happening your advise would be greatly appreciated. PS once I dip them in frshwater 2 times the ich is gone and the fish are fine, and its only rh new fish I put into the one tank no other fish have it in the tank.

Thank You
Scott

Answer
Hi Scott,

Perhaps you should dip them in the freshwater (of proper temperature) first, before putting them into the quarantine tanks. Because as you know, when you purchase marine fish, even when they look extremely healthy, they can have many different parasites on them, including marine ich, which may not be in a visible stage yet.

You can also raise the temperature of your aquarium, to help shorten the life span of the marine ich, however this won't treat the fish. Raising temperatures when refering to treating ich is used to speed up the lifecycle of ich. Ich has a multistage lifecycle spanning about 6 weeks. At higher temps, the lifespan of each stage is shortened. When removing fish from the system to treat for ich, raising the tanks temperature can shorten the length of time you need to keep the fish out of the system.

In conclusion, many times no new additions had been made to the tank for weeks or months prior, and the ich was already in the system and when the fish became stressed, they became susceptible to ich.

Sincerely,
David