Possible signs of marine ich and treatment

[mskvarenina]

SO my new fish have been in my new tank for about a week now. 2 of them have scratched against the coral now and then. Not a lot, but I have seem them do this.

There is no sign of dots on their skin yet.

I just added a UV light 2 days ago.

What should I do? I can't do a QT tank and I have some LR and snails and things so copper I don't think is an option.

Otherwise the fish look great. Swimming around, eating very well.

Will the UV be enough on it's own to kill the free swimming parasites and the fish will just recover on their own?

 

[KathyC]

SO my new fish have been in my new tank for about a week now. 2 of them have scratched against the coral now and then. Not a lot, but I have seem them do this.

There is no sign of dots on their skin yet.

I just added a UV light 2 days ago.

What should I do? I can't do a QT tank and I have some LR and snails and things so copper I don't think is an option.

Otherwise the fish look great. Swimming around, eating very well.

Will the UV be enough on it's own to kill the free swimming parasites and the fish will just recover on their own?

Unless they scratching (it's also called flashing) a lot, I wouldn't focus on that too much.
It's the gills you need to look at - do they look irritated, are they wider open than they should be, do the fish look as if they are breathing heavily..and obviously you would watch for white spots to appear. Eventually the white spots vanish from the fish (some folks think their fish are 'cured' when this happens, but it is simply the next step in the life of the parasite..

A couple of points - IF your fish get ich there is NO way to CURE them while in a reef tank. They would have to be moved to a Hospital tank and either treated with copper or via hyposalinity.
A UV light isn't really much help with Ich as when the ich cysts break open and dump the new load of parasites into your tank..they fall to the substrate - they don't 'swim' around in the tank where a UV bose would have an intake to suck them all in & kill them.

Keep your UV on the tank..(though keep in mind a UV will kill bad - as well as- good bacteria. This can slow down the maturing of a new tank somewhat.)
Cross your fingers that the fish just had an itch (nit ich..) they wanted to scratch on some corals and keep us updated

 

[mskvarenina]

Interesting.

Well I've got 8 fish in the tank. 4 of then have been there since start-up. Everybody looks great, they are all eating well. The gills look normal, the breathing looks fine. The red-tail trigger scratched once tonight during feeding, otherwise he was happily swimming around all night.

There are no visible white spots on anyone in the tank.

I'm going to keep the UV running, maybe it will cleanse the water as more and more water passes through it.