I have a slightly serious problem!

[MattMc]

I want to start off by stating that i am not that experienced in this field, although i am learning quiet quickly. i Recently added a powder brown tang to my small 55g tank. It is inhabited by other fish, inverts, and coral. The param of the water is close to perfect. Recently my pbt developed ich, he is a great fish and a little costly. I read pretty much everything there is to know on the parasite. But with an extremely limited budget in mind, i was wondering if there was anything i could do to the tank as a whole, or individually, instead of the purchase of a qt tank. College and other Bills wont keep my hobby down!!!

Please let me know
Matt :) /:(

[aaron23]

take out all the fish and do hyposalinity or use kick ick in conjunction with ruby reef - reef safe ich treatments - not sure if it will work but alot of people say it does. Another suggestion if u dont want to do hyposalinity take out all the fish get a QT and use copper - i recommend cupramine by seachem. hyposalinity cant be preformed with LR inverts corals etc. only fish.
Aaron.

[Steven Pro]

There is nothing that has been proven to work (copper, hyposalinity, or tank transfer) that won't require a second aquarium. It does not have to be another 55 gallon tank. Depending on what else you have, you might be able to use a 30.

[Angela Short]

Or just a cheap rubbermaid container works good in a pinch. I have housed fish and corals in a rubbermaid in a pinch. Whatever you do it is imperative to leave the tank fishless for at least 4 weeks most like 6 since the fish are already out, whats 2 more weeks. Kick ick and others are kinda pricy IMO so I would just put the money spent on a 50/50 cure on a refractometer and do hypo or opt for copper. Copper is 10 days I think but you have to leave the tank fishless anyways so why not go with hypo and not the chemical which is known to be hard on tangs? The price of seachem copper and a kit will go a long way twords a refractometer which is nice to have anyways. Just feed very sparingly and you will have to do a lot of vacumming and water changes to keep the ammonia down in any uncycled QT. If you have any filter pads or floss from a filter on the tank just rinse it out in the tank water (in a bucket) and toss it in the QT to help with bio. You can also run carbon in a HOB during hypo and change often to help keep params in check. Hate you are having trouble. :(

[MattMc]

Thank you all for the helpful hints i appreciate them alot
matt