Get a cleaner shrimp!

[treesprite]

I had no idea that cleaner shrimp would actually clean fish of ich as people have claimed, but now I have seen it first hand in my own tank and want to make sure I pass on the advice.

 

I took the risk of putting fish in my tank without QT first, though usually I do QT. I got a Cherub angel from Aq One and a week later got a royal gramma from BRK. When I got the gramma I also got a cleaner shrimp. A couple days after I got the gramma, it was scratching and had white spots. I noticed that the angel was letting the shrimp clean it a lot, and thought perhaps the shrimp was keeping the angel from having ich, so after futily trying to catch the gramma for 3 hours, I gave up with the hope that the gramma would start letting the shrimp help it. By the end of the next day all traces and symptoms of the parasite were gone and have stayed gone, and it's been about 3 weeks.

 

So go get a cleaner shrimp and save yourself some heartache.

 

A side note & advice:

I saw no signs of ich in my tank before I added the gramma, and the angel I had put in the week before had been (so I'm told) at Aq One for several weeks healthy before I bought it, so I'm pretty sure the gramma was a carrier and stress brought the ich to illness proprotion on it. That "probable fact" has taught me that people would do best to not rely on even the greatest LFS fish intake process as a substitute for doing QT at home.

[Nate]

Gotta disagree with ya on this one. Cleaner shrimp do not eliminate ich problems. When I started in the hobby I had a huge ich issue with all of my tangs and I owned three cleaner shrimp. Shrimp will "clean" fish by taking ich parasites off the fish..but who knows if they are eating it..they probably just release it back into the water column. IMO The only permanent way to eliminate ich is QT. Fish may not show signs of ich while still carrying ich. Stress will lead to a break out. I am now ich free thanks to 6 weeks of copper treating in QT.

[GaryL]

to each his/her own....i never qt i feed a varied diet with real garlic(minced) and have cleaner shrimp...i introduced a powder brown tang with ich in my system even when i had big mama in there (tekken can back me up about her) and she ruled the roost but the PB recovered and the other fish never caught it.

 

and i actually never had a fish die of ich either. but i may be more attentive in my routine to feed and watch the fish, so i still recommend QT because it is the safer route. also if the fish needs to train on frozen or different foods because of the diet requirements.

 

i have only used copper on a FW tank and would say it worked nicely, just be careful of cross contamination in salt water.

 

just my experience it may not work for others.

[treesprite]

Whether the shrimp ate the parasites or simply cleared them off, it got the parasite off of the fish and is helping to keep the fish from getting sick again. I did turn on the little 9 watt uv sterilizer that I use on the QT, but in the ~100 gal sys volumn I don't believe it would have killed off the ich and cleared the fish that way (leaving it on just in case).

[davelin315]

Cleaner shrimp clean on the surface of the fish, not below the scales and skin. Ich lives beneath the skin and when you see it outside of the scales it's a sign that it's advanced. The cleaner shrimp will remove these external signs but cannot dig into the fish itself to retrieve the parasites there, so it's cosmetic. It does help to relieve the symptoms a bit, but it most certainly does not remove the parasite from your tank - nothing other than unfavorable conditions for long enough to kill all of the parasites off can do that (hyposalinity, medication, lack of suitable hosts).

[treesprite]

I'm wondering why so many people would promote them if there was no "real" disease control happening. What about cleaner wrasses and cleaner gobies? Wouldn't the case be the same for them?

[basser9]

there have been studies on the stomach content of cleaner shrimp and neon Gobi's and there is no dough that a neon gobie eats the ich off of a fish it has not been shown that a cleaner shrimp does but they eat those white cysts that people mistake for ick.......it is possible in a reef tank that a shrimp may be able to remove some ich right before it falls off the fish.......AS LONG AS I HAVE gobies and shrimp my fish have lived through ick infection years ago when i did not i lost most.......to me a neon gobie in a tank is a no brainer.

[Boret]

brasser9, do neon gobies have any incompatibility with Six-line wrasses?

[paul b]

I'm wondering why so many people would promote them if there was no "real" disease control happening. What about cleaner wrasses and cleaner gobies? Wouldn't the case be the same for them?

 

So many people promote them because the fact is that ich disappears on it's own most of the time. It is in most tanks weather you know it or not and it is still in your tank. As soon as one of your fish becomes a little less healthy you will see that ich again.

I have no cleaner shrimps and I have not quarantined in 30 years. I add NSW, crabs, snails, fish, worms, pods and bacteria from the sea almost every week and I have not seen ich. I used to have it all the time when my tank was new, before reefs were "invented" when my fish were not as healthy. But now my fish are always in breeding condition, they constantly spawn and they die of old age. Fish in that condition rarely get ich. If I have a fish about to die from either old age, or some other malady like being bit bad it will show ich and maybe even die from it, but no other fish, ever will get it.

I can put an ich infested fish in my tank (don't do this) and it will either die or be cured, but no other fish will get it.

My tank is 40 years old so this is not just a recent thing. I know all about ich and have been dealing with it all my life in my tank and wholesaler's tanks.

The next time you read about a cheaner shrimp curing ich, notice the experience level of the person making that claim.

 

That is why there is this rumor about cleaner shrimp.

There is also a rumor that a sea hare will eat all of your hair algae. Not going to happen, it disappears on it's own, seahare or not.

 

Good luck and have a great day.

Paul

Edited July 11, 2009 by paul b

[capsfan]

I lost my potter's angelfish to ich and the cleaner did not save it. My most expensive fish down the drain.

[treesprite]

I read through Wet Web Media's info on the subject - according to that group, cleaners help to control ich, be they fish or shrimp. Then I looked at a bunch of other sites. Every single thing I read is has supported the theory. Would someone please point me to whoever these experts are who do not support it?

[paul b]

I would not call myself an expert (there are no experts in this) but I have a reef tank for 40 years. I do my own research and my own wrighting. I was also called upon to cure various diseases in wholesalers tanks for many years.

My research also comes from 39 years of diving where I spent over 300 hours underwater.

I have also been dealing with ich since the early sixtees. If you know any "experts" that will say that a cleaner shrimp or fish will cure ich on anything, I will tell them they are totally wrong. You can give them my name. I remember when all of the experts started in the hobby I even know some of them personally.

I have never met anyone with real knowledge of the hobby to say that shrimp will cure ich.

It's not going to happen. The ich went away on it's own but, it is still in your tank

[Coral Hind]

I totally agree with you Paul. Ich is something that is basically in every tank. Most people only see ich when it has spread to the surface but it can actually affect or kill the fish without ever spreading to the surface. Although the cleaner shrimp may not wipe out Ich I am sure the fish still like the removal of the Ich from the surface or gills. Every little bit helps.

[Jon Lazar]

I read through Wet Web Media's info on the subject - according to that group, cleaners help to control ich, be they fish or shrimp. Then I looked at a bunch of other sites. Every single thing I read is has supported the theory. Would someone please point me to whoever these experts are who do not support it?

 

 

From Advanced Aquarist Online Magazine, 2004. This article was also referenced by Steven Pro in an article he wrote in Reefkeeping magazine (Oct 2004) on the importance of quartine and prophylactic treatment.

 

<quote>

Fish often succumb to cryptocaryonosis despite the presence of biological cleaners such as cleaner shrimp or cleaner wrasse. While cleaners will exhibit their instinctual "cleaning" behaviors, do not assume that they eat trophonts, or eat them in sufficient numbers to affect a cure. "Cleaner" species of fish are also subject to infection.

 

Alexandra Grutter studied the stomach contents of the common cleaner wrasse or Labroides dimidiatus and found that their diet consists of gnathiid isopods, scales, copepods and non-parasitic copepods (Grutter, 2000). Cryptocaryon irritans was not found in the stomach contents indicating that it is not a part of their diet."

 

- Bartelme, Terry. 2004. "News on the Warfront with Cryptocaryon irritans, Part 4." Advanced Aquarist Online Magazine, February 2004.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/feb2004/mini4.htm

 

- Grutter, A.S. "Ontogenetic Variation in the Diet of the Cleaner Fish Labroides dimidiatus and its Ecological Consequences." Marine Ecology Progress Series, 197, 241-246, 2000.

<end quote>

[basser9]

If THE FISH in your reef tank come down with ich and you can not remove them your fish will most likely make it through with the help of cleaners the neon gobie can remove enough of them to allow them to make it thru.......the very small ones will clean the gills out which helps the most.......dont care what any article says there as many people on everside of everything the only thing that matters is the studies on stomach content and that may not apply to shrimp because the studies were on a reef.Neon Gobi's are the one fish no tank should be without .....cheap.....captivebreed.....I HAD A REGAL TANG who ate red slime like it was candy try finding that in a book or in some stomach studies.EVERTHING from cleaners to UV to diatom filters to med food to immune stimulator's can add to the chances your fish will make it ....

[Jon Lazar]

If THE FISH in your reef tank come down with ich and you can not remove them your fish will most likely make it through with the help of cleaners the neon gobie can remove enough of them to allow them to make it thru.......the very small ones will clean the gills out which helps the most.......dont care what any article says there as many people on everside of everything the only thing that matters is the studies on stomach content and that may not apply to shrimp because the studies were on a reef.Neon Gobi's are the one fish no tank should be without .....cheap.....captivebreed.....I HAD A REGAL TANG who ate red slime like it was candy try finding that in a book or in some stomach studies.EVERTHING from cleaners to UV to diatom filters to med food to immune stimulator's can add to the chances your fish will make it ....

 

 

I like neon gobies too, and think they're a great addition to every tank. I even bred them and raised the fry. Maybe cleaner species like neon gobies and cleaner shrimp help somewhat with ich. But there's no real evidence that they can control or eliminate ich, or even make survival more likely.

 

I've had fish that survived ich. Was it because there was a neon goby in the tank? Was it because I feed lots of enriched frozen food? Was it because I'm a Saggitarius? Who knows? You'd have to run a controlled experiment with lots of fish in nearly identical circumstances to draw a solid cause-effect link between the presence of cleaner species and increased fish survival. Everything else is just anecdotal observations.

 

The danger here is that people assume that you can drop a new fish into a tank without any quarantine or proactive treatment, and so long as you have a cleaner shrimp or neon goby in your tank, you're ich problem will be solved. You can't, and it won't.

 

Jon

[treesprite]

I usually do QT, but for reasons too tedious to explain, I did not QT these last 2.

 

Reducing the numbers of parasites on the fish can do 2 things to help the fish survive. First, the fish will be less stressed by symptoms, thereby increasing the fish's ability to recover without special human intervention. Second, the fish will be less likely to scratch, which reduces the chance of damage that would possibly increase the risk of a secondary bacterial infection. Given this, I believe that having a cleaner can help to keep fish from dying from infection for those fish who allow themselves to be serviced.

 

It has been a few weeks since I saw the ich - I think by now if a fish had still been sick and not (by whatever method) recovered, it would be acting sick regardless of whether or not the parasites were visible on the body. I think having the cleaner prevent the fish's desire to scratch (i.e., reduced symptoms as someone suggested), helped the fish be better able to recover.

 

A question I have is, if a fish does have immunity, would ich parasites still show up on it's body even though not making the fish succumb to serious illness? I'm asking because if that is the case, the fish could have indeed already been immune (going on the theory that fish may be able to build immunity).

[paul b]

It is my theory that fish do not become immune to ich through some immune response like when we become vaccinated but I feel they do not become infected if they are in excellent health. Fish in breeding condition rarely get ich. I can say that because in the last 35 years of my tank there has never been ich. Before that there was, when the tank was new and it was a fish only. We didn't have reefs then. There was ich on everything and if it were not for copper, there would not be a salt water fish hobby. We had to keep copper in the water almost continousely.

Now for all these years I personally do not have to quarantine because many of my fish are breeding. They are also living long enough to die of old age, some almost 20 years old. I use some NSW right from NY with no treatment, I add bacteria from the sea along with barnacles, crabs, seaweed, pods etc. I am very sure there is plenty of ich in my tank. I will see it if something is about to die from old age or something else but never will I ever see it on any other fish. I have no cleaner shrimp, neon gobies or other cleaners.

I know those fish will not remove enough ich to do anything. If you have ich in your tank, you have uncountable tromphants or baby ich if you will. Those things will swim around all over the place until they infect something. If a cleaner fish eats 10 paracites, there are 10,000 others infecting your fish, unless they are in breeding condition, then for some reason, the paracites have a very hard time infecting anything.

If your fish that can breed do not breed or at least make breeding jestures, they are no where near as healthy as you believe them to be and they are very suseptable to ich. If you want to keep cleaner fish, go ahead, they are interesting and a nice addition to a reef but if you are adding them to cure ich, you are wasting your time. They will not hurt but the ich disappeared on it's own.

[davelin315]

They will not hurt but the ich disappeared on it's own.

Actually, it's my belief that they will in fact hurt. If a fish is stressed out enough that it is susceptible to ich, it's possible that it will get to the point where it's condition is so deteriorated that the harassment of a cleaner in the tank will kill it. I can't remember the guy's name, but we had someone out here for our summer symposium a few years ago who I asked this exact question of. He confirmed what I had always believed that a cleaner shrimp can help to alleviate some of the symptoms on a healthy specimen but that it didn't cure anything and in fact, was not doing anything to alleviate the parasite itself, just the symptoms of the parasite. Perhaps this helped with the overall comfort of the fish which in turn could help it live through the parasitic infection, but it also could have the opposite effect.

[Boret]

Maybe then it won't cure a very sick specimen but might help with the healthy livestock coping with the infection.

[treesprite]

Maybe then it won't cure a very sick specimen but might help with the healthy livestock coping with the infection.

That makes sense.

[Sikryd]

I QT EVERYTHING - including snails - which can carry stuff on them and introduce parasites/bugs/worms into the tank. It takes a little extra work but is working well for me so far.

I have a cleaner shrimp and wrasse purely for astetics. The symbiotic relationship is cool.