ich on tang, heading out for vacation

my new yellow eye tang, who has been scared to death the whole eek+ I have had him, broke out all over with ich this morning. He had one little spot yesterday that I could see and today he was actually out in the open and i could see spots all over him, along with a little slime on his underside. Sigh... I am leaving tomorrow for a 6 day business trip... bad timing. SO... I dont know what the best course of action is but since copper is a dose it once for a month medication I took the rock out of his tank, put another big rock in (that has been in another QT tank and has been kicked with copper before) and got some big PVC for a tunnel for his privacy, and I dosed with copper. I am hoping this will knock out the ich before the ich knocks out the fish I hate leaving this up to an inexperienced caretaker but I have no choce. She'll feed him and that's the best I can ask.

One question... I have an internal filter in there that spits out air bubbles for oxygen. Should I max it out and have a heavy steady stream of bubbles so it is easier for the fish to breathe? I have no idea if that would be helpful or harmful so if you know lemme know! I am going with a medium amount until I hear otherwise. I just know if ich is in the gills it makes it hard to breathe and in the PVC tunnel there's prolly less flow in there...

if your worried about oxygen in the water then flow twards the surface will prove to be the best for gas exchange.sorry to hear about the outbreak..better than in a QT then the new 75.dang those tangs.

yeah man... at least he didnt wait one more day to break out or I would have returned home to a dead fish. The guy at the LFS said any time you get a tang the best thing to do is put it in copper, even if it looks healthy. He joked they break out in ich if you look at them funny Hopefully this is just an initial breakout and this wont be a concurrent problem once he is in the tank, but he just earned himself about a month and a half of QT. I just hope he survives my trip. I swear, preparing to leave when you have 7 tanks set up is a total pain in the a$$!

he's dead

sorry about the bad news man.there are other fish in the sea so to speak.i will be on the look out for a tang.
and i definatly hear you on leaving.i hate leaving for 10 hours let alone days.cheer up my friend.

thanks man... its so sad to see a gorgeous fish dead, especially when it is plucked from the reef. it was pretty terrified the whole time i had it. I thought it was warming up to me a little but it may have just been getting tired. Damn... poor guy...