ich!

[mexicanjavafish]

so i got a hippo tang as a graduation present, i just graduated yesterday

 

..but it's been through a bit of moving around and when i was working on the tank today i noticed a bunch of white spots on its fins and body :( :(

 

like i said, this fish was a special graduation present, and also the only reason i got such a big tank. i would be completely devastated to lose it..advice and/or help would be hugely appreciated!

 

~desperate!

[gmubeach]

You running a protien skimmer? Empty it out as soon as you can.... Then if you have a uv sterilzer it will help it die faster..

 

oh and happy graduation:) is it college or highschool and if its highschool what are your plans!

[mexicanjavafish]

you aren't the first person to mention a UV sterilizer, so it looks like i'll be getting one. is that the the only thing do to treat the one fish? i know it'll help the entire tank but i don't have one right now, and i don't have the money at the moment so it would be a while before i could install one..

 

oh and thanks about graduation, it's high school. i was going to go into education but about 2 weeks before school ended i started thinking to myself about how i really don't want to spend the rest of my life in a school! so i'm going into nursing . hopefully i'll stick to it, the more people i talk to about it and the more i look into it, the more excited i get

[gmubeach]

I used to date a nurse back in college its a VERY diffucult and demanding educational field, but on the plus side your in demand unlike me:) Anyway I got a small uv sterilzer for my tank it was like 50 dollars and keeps the ich off my fish... depends on how big your tank is.... a cleaner shrimp will keep the signes of ick and help with stressed fish.... but defently a uv sterlizer is the way to go ... there should be more ppl chiming in here? maybe its the hour of the night....

 

 

My only advice about college is do what makes you happy take the hardest courses(transferabilty) and stay on top of the work load.... oh and study groups

[jamesbuf]

It was probably stress from the move yesterday. That hippo is very fat and healthy, so it should easily survive this round of ich. You need to hook up a UV sterilizer ASAP to prevent the next wave of ich from killing the fish. Jason should have an extra UV sterilizer laying around. He said he fixed the one he got from me, so I'd ask him to hook up that one immediately. Keep feeding mysis shrimp and nori to help keep the hippo's engery up. I didn't have any complaints about ich on the other hippos I sold, so I'm not sure what's going on. I run 57watts of UV on just my 92gal, and I haven't seen the faintest trace of ich for quite some time.

[lanman]

so i got a hippo tang as a graduation present, i just graduated yesterday

 

..but it's been through a bit of moving around and when i was working on the tank today i noticed a bunch of white spots on its fins and body :( :(

 

like i said, this fish was a special graduation present, and also the only reason i got such a big tank. i would be completely devastated to lose it..advice and/or help would be hugely appreciated!

 

~desperate!

 

Feed the fish... keep it strong. Don't stress it. Add Selcon and Garlic to the food - and make sure he is eating it. UV will help keep the ich from coming back.

 

Congratulations on your graduation and choice of nursing school. But keep training; never stop - you will end up being a licensed nurse-practitioner or something, and you can work wherever you want. Nurses are NOT just nurses anymore.

 

bob

[davelin315]

Hmmm... you definitely have ich in your system and these guys are ich magnets. I would suggest that to prevent future problems (and you will have future problems if you tank temperature remains a problem which with summer coming...) you run a full course of something (hypo, medication, lying fallow) in order to get rid of the ich in your system.

 

As far as current treatment, it depends on the level of infection. These are subdural parasites and the white spots from what I remember are a sign of the infestation below the skin, so the "quick fixes" of cleaners is only an aesthetic measure and won't truly help them. You need to keep your fish strong and healthy, so the first course of action is to make sure that it's got a healthy diet. Plenty of vegetation soaked in garlic should help as well as some good meaty foods that have been supplemented. The more energy, the more it can fight off the parasites. The next step is to dip the fish if it's a big problem (freshwater or medicinal bath). If the fish is already too stressed, though, this may backfire. If you need to, consider medicating your tank if you have a set up that will allow it. I have used kick ich with some successes and failures before, make your own judgment on its effectiveness. The UV sterilizer, by the way, will only help to control populations, it won't help the fish in the short term necessarily if it's already infected as the UV will only help to lower the population of free swimming parasites that can attach to the fish, it won't kill off the ones that are already on the fish or the ones that don't pass through the sterilizer. It's a good preventative measure, but not enough by itself.

 

Not sure of Troy's comment about the protein skimmer, I don't think that will help or hurt either way except for improving the water quality and boosting the health of the fish overall.

[steveoutlaw]

Don't skimp on the UV sterilizer either. You need to get AT LEAST a 15w sterilizer and run the recommended flow through it. I've got a 90g tank and I had to get a 25w. Be careful about what the manufacturer says it's good for......a lot of these have ratings for use as a CLARIFIER for ponds and you need to use it as a STERILIZER.

 

also, I agree with bob.......feed that fish and add garlic and selcon to everything you feed it.

 

Good luck!

[dschflier]

Another thing to consider is a diatom filter. The diatom filter can help filter out the ich that drops off the fish and are in the aquarium. It will not get the ich off the fish but I have used this in conjunction with all of the other things mentioned and have had great luck.

[rottloverr]

I am just getting over a ich break out. I used a combination of Kick Ich, UV, lots and lots of garlic and selcom, water changes, turning my skimmer off while treating and prayers!

 

Good luck !

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[mexicanjavafish]

ich is gone .

[steveoutlaw]

Well??? Tell us how you defeated it!

[mexicanjavafish]

i actually didnt...and i'm not quite sure how it happened. i went to check on my tank and when the tang popped out from it's hiding spot the ich was gone! i have medicine for my tank, it's not kick ich but it's similar, if not the same thing with a different name, i've soaked the nori in garlic since day one before the ich, and i'm looking into getting a good uv sterilizer to prevent this from happening again!

 

thanks everyone for the advice

[Integral9]

Sounds like the ich is just entering the next phase of it's cycle. Be careful. I lost my hippo that way. Sick one week, healthy for a few days, sick again... etc. About 3 weeks went by before it bit it. Then passed on the parasites to the rest of my tank. Long story short, everybody died.

 

Ich is always present in your tank. healthy fish just fight it off before the population gets large enough to wipe them out. The parasite lays it's eggs in the sand band, so a UV will never kill all the ich unless you run all your water through it and don't have a sand bed. And even then I would have doubts.

 

The best way (also the most time consuming) is to do a hypo salinity. I have tried it and it does work with even a very sick fish and is low stress if done right. Put the little guy in a hospital tank w/ just a sprinkle of sand from your sand bed (like a tablespoon's worth) and a couple small bits of rubble. Also a PVC pipe will provide a place for it get comfortable. Drop the salinity slowly (like over several hours to days) down to 10. Keep it there for about 3 weeks. Then raise it back up to 24, again, slowly. You have to wait another 3 weeks to be sure the ich just didn't go dormant and reappear. After that it should be good to go back into your tank. Btw. Durring the entire 6-8 week process you'll have to watch for ammonia and nitrate spikes and do water changes fairly regularly to keep them in check.

 

If the infection is weak, then you can use fortified foods as mentioned above in this thread to treat it. My Scopas survived it's ich episode that way and I didn't have to pull it out of my tank and I didn't have to set up another tank and go through all the hassle of making sure it didn't cycle since it was a new tank. Hypo salinity works like a charm, but it's time consuming.

 

My experience with Kick-Ich is that it's a waste of money as it didn't do what it was supposed to. I think it just stressed out the rest of the fish in my tank and may have contributed to their downfall as they then got infected and died.

 

UVs are nice, and they are a good preventative measure, but I don't think they'll provide a solution to a preexisting condition. It's probably cheaper to setup a hospital tank and do a hyposalinity.

 

Best of Luck

[Jon Lazar]

I second the hyposalinity treatment, but instead of three weeks hypo and three weeks observation, I use the full 6 weeks hyposalinity.

 

Copper, hyposalinity, and the "transfer method" are the only documented ways to stop ich. All the methods above are good advice for making the environment better, or because they bolster the fishes' overall health and enable them to fight off the parasitic infection themselves, but I've never seen study results cited that would indicate an effectiveness against ich.

 

Jon

[Rascal]

Chiming in with the minority view. I am one of those who believes that ich is always present in most tanks, no matter what you do, and that healthy unstressed fish aren't bothered by it. Unless the fish is really suffering or it looks like it is spreading to more and more fish, I would just work on improving the environment (the food, garlic, uv recommendations), and minimizing stress (beware temp swings for hippos) and let the fish fight it off on their own. Unlike Marine Velvet, Ich won't wipe out your tank in a matter of days. You will be able to see the progression over time.

 

I know I've had ich in my tank from just about the beginning - 4 years if you count the old tank, from which all of the fish, rock and most of the sand were transferred. I have never done any of the full tank treatments. At the beginning of my current tank's life I would see spots on my hippo every couple of months or so, then I went six months without anything, and I don't think I've seen a spot on a fish since probably last August. In addition to all of the recommendations above, I am a big believer in biological cleaners. I always try to keep a few skunk cleaner shrimp and I really love the ORA neon gobies. All of them have their own "stations" in the tank. Not only do they help keep your fish healthy but they are also very cool to watch, especially the blue neon goby sticking to the side of the yellow tang.