To those landing fish: how are you controlling parasites?

[Rikko]

Hi all,

Question for any who have worked in retail or wholesale where you land and hold your own fish for a while... What steps do you take?
We're finding that an unacceptably high percentage of fish coming off a trans ship are developing ich 2-3 days after landing. We've been dipping them in FW for about a minute before they hit the holding tanks.
One fish system is copperized and the majority of the fish that go in there show light infestation or none after a few days and generally do all right.
The other system is a hypo system and it seems that every tang, butterfly, and angel that drops in gets covered after a few days.
Temperature is both system stays between 77-80F.

Copper is an easy answer, but I don't especially like holding fish for what could potentially be months in a system with high copper, nor the potential liabilities if a customer dumps a bag full of copperized water into his nano reef and kills off his inverts.
Both systems have UV sterilizers running. I'm not so sure they do much more plugged in than not.

What have the old hands done over the years to manage ich? Quarantining an entire shipment of fish in a back room is unreasonable for any retail store I've ever seen. Are there better dips that we could be using? Crank the temperature for a few days?

I've seen stores with tanks covered in ich, yet many that seem to consistently have great looking holding tanks at any time.. What's the secret?

Thanks for any suggestions

 

[Kalkbreath]

If your not seeing the ick until after three days.... its coming from your own system.
Chances are that your under dosing the copper [because everyone wants to ]....then taking what little copper you have in the water out with the UV light. Even down draft Skimmers remove copper quite well.
Test the copper level with a real test kit.
I love Seachems , but their Copper doesn't knock the parasite off fish very well .....unless you over dose.
Use a non chelated product to solve problems {like RegalChemical}and a chelated like Coppermine to keep it under control.
Lastly Remember that fish with ich dont make it during a 20 hourtrip from the Indo Pacific. So there is a better chance that your fish are getting the bloodsuckers during their first nite sleep after the trip ........either the transhippers reox water or the acclimation tanks .