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Ichy battle...


encideought

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So, I guess most people have to deal with this at some point, and now its my turn to do a little battle with ich. It's a bit of a long story, but the gist is I got a new fish (green clown goby) that I did NOT quarantine/dip and it brought some ich into my tank. I moved the new fish to a hospital tank where I'll be trying to do large water changes and keep it well fed for a month or so. I was thinking of trying to keep it in hyposalinity, but I haven't tried that yet.

 

The day after I removed the sick fish, I noticed my other 2 fish (a red firefish and a six-line wrasse) also now have a little ich on them...boo. I'm trying to do a lot more water changes (~20% every other day or so, it's a 24g tank) and also trying to feed them as much as possible to keep their immune systems up. I read a little about treating the food with garlic oil, but haven't tried that yet either. Oh, I also put a little nori in the tank (read something about how some fish like that), but neither fish seems interested.

 

Any other ideas? I'd like to take all fish out of the main tank for 6-8 weeks, but I just don't have the set-up to make that work unfortunately. The 2 fish still in the main tank don't really seem sick, and they're eating really well, they do have a few white spots though. I hope they can just get well enough to not get reinfected and the parasites in the tank will die out. Hopefully the fish in quarantine will pull through and stop getting infected too, but it looks a little rough at the moment.

 

Any other thoughts/comments? I haven't really kept a lot of marine fish before, so now I appreciate the importance of quarantine and a quick freshwater dip...too bad it's a little late. Anyone have a good way of getting garlic in the fish food? Anyone think it actually helps with ich? Anyone have experience with hyposalinity treatment?

 

Thanks for any help!

Nick

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Steve, thanks for posting that. I have read it many times before, but I always read it again whenever it comes up. It is a great reminder for all of us.

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I don't think I have ever read that before so thanks for posting it. This was a new fact for me, very interesting!

 

14. INTERESTING FIND: If no new MI is introduce into an infected aquarium, the MI already there continues to cycle through multiple generations until about 10 to 11 months when the MI has
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I hope everyone reads it. Not only to stop wasting their money on products that claim to "kill" ich but to also save some fish by doing it right. I didn't find that article until I was a year into the hobby and spent a lot of money, time and fish lives before doing it the right way.

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5. Not any of the treatments can be done in a display tank with true live rock. Must be done in a hospital tank or quarantine tank. The hyposalinity and the copper treatment would kill invertebrates, live rock, and other non-fish marine life. Substrates and carbonates interfere with a copper treatment. Use artificial SAFE decorations in the QT.

 

So, for a QT/hospital tank, what is an effective filtration method? Obviously you can do mechanical filtration sans activated carbon. And sponge filters. Can you use wet/dry filtration?

 

I am planning on moving my reef to a larger tank, which will be the only time I can catch some of my fish. Some of my fish are significant in size, so I'm probably going to use a substrateless 55 with some PVC tubes, etc. The question would be whether I use the 55 I have with an overflow or one of my other 55s, currently holding live rock for the larger tank. If I'm reading that article you posted correctly, the fish are going to be in the hospital tank for about 4 weeks?

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So, for a QT/hospital tank, what is an effective filtration method? Obviously you can do mechanical filtration sans activated carbon. And sponge filters. Can you use wet/dry filtration?

 

I am planning on moving my reef to a larger tank, which will be the only time I can catch some of my fish. Some of my fish are significant in size, so I'm probably going to use a substrateless 55 with some PVC tubes, etc. The question would be whether I use the 55 I have with an overflow or one of my other 55s, currently holding live rock for the larger tank. If I'm reading that article you posted correctly, the fish are going to be in the hospital tank for about 4 weeks?

 

 

12 weeks to be 100% sure you are going to kill all the ich. However, do you plan on adding corals in the future? If so, you will need to put those in another established tank with no fish for 12 weeks as well before being added to your display tank. Depending on the stage of the ich it can be attached to corals so you have to wait for the ich to go through a life cycle in another tank with no fish.

 

I stopped using QTs because in order to do it 100% right you need to have 3 tanks. I can't have 3 tanks setup to completely rid ich. You need one for corals only before they go to your display, another tank for fish only and then your display tank. Way too much work and it takes to fun out of the hobby for me.

 

As far as filtration you can use a simple HOB filter with Carbon. Just make sure to check the params and then do weekly or bi-weekly water changes.

 

What I do now is only buy from LFS or dealers that do the work for me (BRK, Wet Pets Hawii, Divers Den).

Edited by forrealb50
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Regarding "ich never goes away on its own" : it CAN stop adversely affecting the fish, including without aggressive treatment. Too many fish in a small tank makes things worse. Sometimes removal of fish and aggressive treatment of fish can stress the fish out, further decreasing ability to recover health. I generally leave the fish alone and they recover (exception being when the fish were crammed in a 15g tank waiting to go in a bigger tank).

 

IMO QTing gobies is too hard on them. Using copper for gobies can kill them.

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I always let the fish deal with it until they get better. I don't have time/room for a QT tank, and often times you end up stressing the fish out by trying to catch them resulting in a bigger outbreak or death. I haven't lost a fish to ick in several years.

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  • 2 months later...

Quote

Ich is also a very well understood parasite,

 

 

Not really. We think we know all about ich like we think we know about a lot of things but the truth is that we "always" think we know all there is until we learn something new.

Many people think that if they have ich in their tank it is a death sentence, and in many tanks it is. But in other tanks, it is not a problem at all and is a non issue.

Why is that? We don't really know. We know the ich life cycle, how it is affected by temperature, how copper and hypo kill it, what it likes to watch on TV but we still can't say for certain why it is not a problem in some tanks and a horror in others.

We do a lot of guessing and some of us call others of us liers, (well not out loud anyway)

I do know a few things. In a new tank it can easily kill everything in a couple of days. No doubt about that. What is a new tank? That could be 5 years old. If a tank is very sterile with meticulous cleaning, it may not harbor the necessary bacteria needed to reduce stress to the point where the fish feel comfortable. Uncomfortable in a fish is stress. Most of our fish are stressed anyway because, well, they are captive in a small glass box in a few inches of water. That is stressful no matter what we do.

Fish may and often are bullied, that is also stress. Eating foods that are not recognized or swimming alone instead of a school is also stressful. A fish has a very good immune system, it has to because it is inhaling seawater that is full of pathogens and paracites.

The seawater is actually an extension of the fishes circulatory system because the blood cells come into direct contact with the water through the gills. It is the same with us if we were to breath in bacteria viruses and paracites.

The fishes immune system will protect it from almost anything commonly in seawater and ich is very common in sea water and probably all wild fish have it. If it were not for copper, there would be no salt water fish hobby.

But the immune system of a fish does not work like ours. We can sit around eating potato chips drinking beer while watching Oprah and we will probably not get sick. Well eventually we would but not right away.

A fish is different. They were made to spawn and they spawn all the time, constantly as a matter of fact. To produce eggs a fish has to be in excellent shape because it is a huge burden on a fish to fill itself with oil filled eggs that can take up a third of the fishes weight.

In this condition (IMO) fish almost never get sick. No disease and no paracites.

Why? I don't know, but they are. How do I know? Because I know.

As I said, they need certain things to be in excellent health and flakes and pellets are not going to cut it.

I feel that it is much better to boost the fishes immune system to the point that it will fight off disease for itself than to worry about every malady that the fish comes into contact with.

We as humans inoculate ourselves with weak diseases to prevent them in the future and it works. Fish evolved with these diseases and if we keep then in perfect shape, they also will be immune to diseases.

There is nothing wrong with quaranting, if you feel it is the way to go then do it but besides that, get your fish into breeding condition and they will live forever with "almost" no worry of diseases.

Just my opinion of course.

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Wow, I totally forgot about this thread. I guess it's time for a little update. So, within a couple days of my original post, the big winter storm rolled through and caused the substation near our house to explode (which was actually pretty awesome, it was brighter than daylight outside even though it was night. The sky kept changing from blue, to green, to red, to white...crazy). So, our power ended up being out for ~3 whole days. Thankfully when the power went out last summer I decided to buy a little generator to keep us warm. It's not much, but enough to power a space heater, a few lights, and some heaters for my tank. My wife, daughter, dog, and I were all holed up in a tiny room with the heat, and my tank was stranded out in the living room where the temperature got down to the 30's! I don't think the temp in the tank ever went below 60 though, which still seems pretty chilly.

 

During this time I grabbed the goby (who was still looking pretty awful), threw it in a bag, and tossed it into my main tank. The goby didn't make it through the first night unfortunately. I think the original stress of getting captured, shipped, purchased, starved, overtaken by ich, netted and moved to a new tank, then netted again and going into a bag, then less than optimal temperatures was just too much. The other fish basically hunkered down for the power outage and waited it out.

 

When the power came back on both fish seemed happy and healthy. I was pretty sure a lot of stuff would be sick in my tank (and a number of things did seem less healthy) but for the most part everything pulled through okay. The fire shrimp, sea star, crabs, and basically all corals pulled through great much to my delight.

 

SO, long story short, the ich was never really an issue for any of the fish in my tank except for the new guy. I really should have made sure he was eating happily before releasing him into the tank, so if I ever get another tiny-mouth fish again (which is doubtful), I'll give that a shot.

 

Thanks for the info everyone, hopefully this thread will be useful to other people worried about how to avoid/deal with ich. For me it really wasn't a big deal in the end.

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  • 7 months later...

I use no ich made by fish vet....it has worked for me in the past and does a great job...also to combat my fish from getting any other outbreaks I feed them garlic and selcon to help boost there imune system.....I alternate the garlic and selcon twice a week with the food i feed and have not had a ich problem since then.....

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  • 2 months later...

Thanks for the info. I am just now going thru my 1st outbreak of MI. IT SUCKS ! According to the article, I can do nothing. Any ideas? I already lost 2 fish and 5 others have it now.

 

 

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Unless you are going to catch them and medicate in a seperate system, about all you can do is keep them well fed and stress free.

 

Most healthy fish can fight off ich, I had a Powder Blue some time ago that was the only fish in the system showed any signs of having ich.

 

Most people say feed garlic but it never helped him, keep them fat and happy and cross your fingers.

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They have to eat...by Kole is not (or barely) eating! It doesnt look good for himcry.gif

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They have to eat...by Kole is not (or barely) eating! It doesnt look good for himcry.gif

 

Have you tried any live food? Blackworms maybe, mine go nuts over them.

 

Was he the last fish introduced? Anyone picking on him?

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No...everyone was great and happy until I put a Powder Blue in there and developed ich the next day. He died next day and now here I am...angry.gif cry.gif excl.gif

 

 

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Thats how mine started, everyone else fought it off.

 

I tried No ich and all the snake oils, but the only thing that really works is to quarantine and treat with meds before they go in the DT.

 

Just try to keep their stress levels down, good luck.

 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

One product I found works quite well is Microbe-lift from Herbtana. The only draw-back to it is that you'll have to turn off UV sterilizers, skimmers, and OZ generators. But, I also found that if you do about a 50% water change right before you start using it, you're typically ok. Treatment seems to work after about 4 days (as observed in fish behavior), but make sure you still treat for the full 10 days, otherwise you'll have a return to the problem within a few days.

 

My Pacific Blue Tang had a bad case of it a while back, and was looking very bad. Got a hold of this thru my LFS, and the next day he actually started moving around a bit again. By day 3 he seemed to have returned to normal, so I stopped the treatment. Bad mistake. Two days later he was sick again. Did the full 10 days, and he's been fine ever since. As an added bonus, this stuff actually smells rather pleasant as well.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 6 months later...

Ok... The first shortcut I made ends in disaster. I added fish without QT first and now I'm paying for it with ICH. Its 125g and with the rockwork. coral, and about 14 fish (Regal Yellow bellied, Striatus Tang, 2 PurpleTilefish, 2 Gudgeons, 2 Scooter Bleenies, 2 Mandrians, 2 Sandsifters, African Leopard Wrasse , and a Indo-pacific Wrasse.) Some small fish, like the scooter blennies will make it next to impossible to get all of the fish out to leave the tank empty. Plus my only other tank is a 10g (ironically enough) QT tank. So I am not sure what to do. I already lost one tilefish. and the white spots JUST appeared... I inspect them everyday- when they decide to show up. Sometimes they stay hidden. Everything is a few weeks to a month and a half old.

 

The posting says.... 14. INTERESTING FIND: If no new MI is introduce into an infected aquarium, the MI already there continues to cycle through multiple generations until about 10 to 11 months when the MI has �worn itself out� and becomes less infective. A tank can be free of an MI infestation if it is never exposed to new MI parasites for over 11 months.

 

Ok, do nothing and in 11 months MI will be gone on its own. -- However, I realize I will loose some fish. But some people tell me moving them will stress them more and I may loose them because of that!

 

Do fish that show the "white spot" always die if left untreated??

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No, not all fish with spots will die. I've had them pull through before - feed high quality foods and keep them fed seems to help.

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Thanks. I was wondering if I should pull the two that have spots out and treat with copper? I know I should assume they all have it but was thinking these two are most infected and hopefully keep their gills from getting more infested.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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  • 7 months later...

Just noticed signs of ich on one of my clowns today.  No idea how it got ich as I haven't added any fish, or corals in several months!  I removed a couple pieces of rock and coral over the past couple of days, but that's it.  I don't get it...

It's eating, and acting fine.  As are the other fish.

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