my Coral Beauty Angelfish

Question
Hey Jennifer,
I woke up this morning and noticed that my Coral Beauty Angelfish had some little white spots on his face??
i was wondering if he is sick, and what i can do to help?

Answer
Hi Casey. It sounds like there is the possibility that your angelfish may have ich. Ich can be extremely hard to treat in a tank housing invertebrates because the only real effective treatment for it is to use a copper based medication and that is toxic to inverts. You can try using a product called ruby reef kick ich. I have never had much success with this product however I only tried it once. Most of the time when a seemingly healthy fish comes down with ich it can be attributed to some sort of stress factor going on in your tank like poor water quality, an overstocked tank, poor nutrition, or stress due to being picked on. If it is not too bad you can try to see if a cleaner shrimp will help him out by picking the parasites off the fishes skin but this won't control any future outbreaks. The use of a small hospital tank with a copper based medication in it is the best way to treat the fish. To treat the tank is whole other story. You may have to remove all inverts and treat your tank or remove all fish to a hospital tank and treat them leaving the main tank free of any fish host for a total of thirty days. That is how long it takes for ich to complete its life cycle and without a fish host to complete that life cycle the ich will just die off. Lowering your salinity to 1.019 helps to control outbreaks however this treatment should be done slowly and with the help of some kind of treatment medication. When you have a mixed fish and invert tank you should always employ the use of a quarantine tank before adding any new fish to your already established tank. It may sound like a costly pain in the you know what but it will save you tons of trouble and money in the long run. A quarantine tank does not need to be fancy. You need a filter heater and regular cheap lighting. The tank should be bare bottomed in order to keep it cleaner and filled up with your tanks water. You can put a terricota flower pot turned on its side for a safe refuge and that is all you need. Prevention of these kinds of things is always better than dealing with them after the fact. I wonder why a quarantine tank is not bought as a much needed piece of equipment when setting up any tank that will also house inverts; it should be.