White Spot/Marine Ich

It was bound to happen at some point and 2 days ago I noticed that some of my fish looked like they had White Spot/Marine Ich.

I started to get suspicious when my Starry Blenny was acting a little odd.  He started to rub himself on the sand.  After posting on one of the marine forums to which I got a few different responses, but it was suggested that this could be the beginning of white spot. 

Each morning I do a quick head count of all my fish and the only one I could not see what my Red Stripe Angel.  Being pressed for time I had to leave the search till I got home.  That evening it took about 15 minutes before I spotted the Angel and sure enough it had lots of little white spots on its fins.  I also notice the same on 3 of my Yellow Damsels.

I knew that I had to start acting fast on this so I started to setup a quarantine tank which is a 50 liter tank and move all the fish into this so that I could treat them.

By the following morning my red stripe angel had died and I noticed that my firefish was also covered in white spot.  As with most things work was calling and this had to wait till later which was not ideal and a little frustrating.

I managed to finish work early and after getting some advice from the forums I had a plan of action which I was about to put into play.

1. Get some copper based treatment
2. Move fish into quarantine tank (not as easy as I thought)
3. Let fish settle down a little
4. Start treatment.
5. and wait.......

Local marine shop was very helpful and also gave some advice.  I have started day 1 of the treatment and have about 11 days to go.  When the signs of white spot are gone I will move the fish to a larger tank 110 liter tank for a further 3-4 weeks before moving them back into my display tank.  This will allow the white spot parasite (Cryptocaryon irritans) do die off as it wont be able to find a new host to live on.

Above is the quarantine tank.  Not idea, but will have to do for the treatment phase.

Going forward I will be introducing bio security.  This basically means that any new fish are quarantined for 3-4 weeks before they enter my display tank.  This will allow me to then keep an eye on them and if they do have any parasite to be treated before it gets into my display tank.  The other thing I will be looking into is a UV Sterilizer unit for my tank..