quarantine after ich?

"sophiefishstuff" wrote in
message ...
this is a query in the aftermath of a sad story - a month or so ago I
bought five baby (very baby) botia striatas and two female dwarf
gouramis. They'd come from a shop with a common filter system (and I
only have one spare tank) so I kept all seven fish in the same tank to
quarantine them, and treated with protozin at half strength as a
prophylactic. a week later, two striatas were dead. I kind of assumed
(after discussion with some loachy people) that they were very small and
undernourished from transport and that it had all been too stressful for
them. Next day, the other striatas were spotty. Sigh. To cut a long
story short, on Monday morning I found the last striata dead (I have a
feeling it was the protozin that killed him in the end, not the ich
which had I think just about cleared up).

My query is, how long should I wait before adding the gouramis to the
main tank, which contains a male dwarf gourami some rasboras and some
(slightly random) kuhlis? One gourami had two spots a couple of weeks
ago and has shown no signs since, the other has been consistently clear.
I'm extremely reluctant to add them at the moment, as this is the first
time I've had a disease in a tank and I would hate to infect the kuhlis,
not least because one is rare in the hobby (I haven't even managed to
find a photo of another one on the net).

any advice will be very gratefully received.
--
sophie

www.freewebs.com/fishstuff
(under construction. ish.)

If the Gourami are clear and you treated my guess is that they are over it -
if you want to be sure leave it a few more weeks whatever you are
comfortable with - keep up with gravel vacs and water changes to make sure
that you get any residual spores - a little salt and higher temps might also
help. IME some fish gain a resistance to Ich but it depends on whether your
existing tank fish have this resistance - problem is you won't know unless
you try (not a good idea). But one thing to bear in mind is that Ich is a
water borne infestation. So if you move the fish don't add any of the tank
water to your main tank....some people empty into a bucket and net them, I
net them out of the bag because I only have small volumes.....I learnt from
bitter experience never to mix store/infected water with mine (fortunately
only in terms of hard work clearing the tank of Ich introduced via their
water)

The first analysis of stress or other infection might be true on the other
fish....but it has been noted that stress is a major cause of fish becoming
susceptible to Ich....shipping or other movement of fish is most certainly
stressful. The symptoms can be hidden as the Ich can just exist in the gills
rather than you seeing the more typical signs. If your LFS already had Ich
spores in the water (which is very likely IME) - it was introduced with the
water....

Wishing you all the best
Gill