Ich?

[conner]

I got my 1st fish yesterday, at southwest reef. it is a fiji foxface, about 4 inches long, and I think it has maring ich. i don't know if it had it at the petstore or not, but it ate last night and is swimming around all over the front and sides of the tank, along the walls. he acts like he's fine, but on his head and his 2 fins on his side,(i forgot what they are called), there are little white dots. PLEASE HELP!

[Mrs_Witchdoctor]

if they look like little spots of sugar or salt deposits it's probably ich. If it is ich you can get a cleaner shrimp to pick them off and he'll be fine. I'd keep an eye on those spots today and tomorrow and see what happens. If he's eating that's a great sign that's he's happy in his new home. In prep for a cleaner shrimp I'd check your salinity to see if it's around 1.022-1.023. Don't do any drastic water changes but check it so you know. Don't hesitate to call if you want to we'll be around all day. :) Congratulations on your first fish! You and your family have a great Thanksgiving! Jen

[conner]

well i don't think i should get a cleaner shrimp yet. i got this guy yesterday and so there should be a minor spike in ammonia and nitrites. also the tank is only a week old today. (thanksgiving). i will keep the thought of a cleaner shrimp open though. also, right now the fiji (Bottles is his name yes i name my fish) is hiding under the filter, slanted a little bit. other than that he seems fine. his breath might be a bit labored, im not sure what it should be. actually, my dad believes that he got some of it off, so he doesn't think it is ich. (i think my dad just has wishful thinking). thanks for the help. oh wait, now he is swimming. he does seem to have lost some of it, but that might be wishfull thinking on my part. ok, adios!

[leena]

Conner,

I can drop off a QT tank, some good books, and some treatmets if you need. What's a holiday without a little pet emergency, right? =)

270-0322
Colleen

[conner]

thanks, Colleen, but im not even sure it's ich anymore. it looks like almost all of the ich is gone. there are only 3 little dots left and they don't look much like ich anymore. they are harder to see. i dunno what they are, but i'm not sure they're ich anymore. also, the fish is acting great. swimming around all over the place, and he ate again last night. i'm not sure what it is, but i don't think it was ich. ok, well, seeya!

[J-Hook]

I had read a while back when i was first getting started that soaking a fishs food that may have ick in garlic oil will help because the parasites cant stand the garlic (similar to giving dogs brewers yeast tablets and such I guess?) I was skeptical (I had bought a midnight dogface puffer that was the COOLEST most interactive fish ever! It turned out he had the ick real bad at coral island when they first got him in, but he had cleared up. I guess he still had a little ichness, or he got it from somewhere else.) ANYWAYS, the puffer died before i read about the garlic thing, (his death brought about my curiosity on what i could do) I Soaked my Huma humas food in the garlic for a few weeks and he pulled thru. I had also dosed my tank with copper but my substrate soaked it up and Rob and the guys couldnt get a reading of copper in my system. (125 gallon with 2 inch layer of Crushed Coral in the bottom). Anywho, just thought Id share that interesting tidbit!
JT

[tigersax7]

I hate to say this so no offence to any one....but....DO NOT USE GARLIC...its very bad, I know there is a lot of stuff floating around out there about garlic being able to cure ich adn some people even swear by it...
So lets start by saying that since ich is a parisitic infection so the cleaner shimp will be effective at keeping the ich at bay, but it is not a treatment (Sorry Jen/Eric) the ich will still be there. but on the plus side ich is also a living organism and has a disticnt life cycle that we can use to treat it.
Now the white spots/crystals that most people associate with ich is essentaly waist products produced by the parasite. the important thing to note is that the white spots are temporary and work in cycles. So one minute your fish might be covered from head to tail with white spots and an hour late look normal. So with this in mind keep an eye out for other sympthoms such as constant rubbing on the glass and rock work. If you see or even suspect any of these remove the fish from you main tank and place it into a quarantine tank and begin treatment. With our little fishy friends it is always beter to ere on the side of caution.

Now for the fun part, the treatment, in treating any ailment of fish or coral it is best to start with the least invasive moving to invasive. In the case of ich my exsperiance has been that hypo-salinity (or low specific gravity) is very effective at treating ich, its not very harmful to the fish and dose not require any additional chemicals. The way it works is that below a certian salinity level the ich parasite can not reproduce, meaning that over time they will die out. Colleen will probaly corect me on this but the target specific gravity you should aim for is around 1.011 but not above 1.012 or the treatment will not work. An aditional note is that this low of a salinity is very harmful to just about every thing but fish, so us a 20 gallon/long (this is a large fish for a 10 gallon might be to small) tank for a quarantine woith a simple hang-on-back filter, som small pieces of PVC pipe for the fish to hide in and an air stone if desired. To prep you quarantine tank for the fish start off by filling it half way with water from your tank, then and about one quarter more of new salt water. Next move you fish to the quarantine tank and slowly ad fresh water over the course of several houres untill the target salinity has been reached. Finaly the fish must remain in the quarantine tank at this salinity for 2-4 weeks, do daily water top off's with fresh water to keep the salinity in the desired range. Most important keep a sharp eye on the fish if its condition worsens, by this I mean it starts eating less and less, starts to look frail and thin you need to try another treatment.
If the above treatment fails you should first reasses the fish's sympthoms because some ailments in their early stages can resemble ich. If you still suspect ich you should try daily dips in a copper based medication such as coopermine. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT to remember not to get any of this medication in the main tank it is leathal to corals and invets, and it will soak into the rock and substrate where it can leach back into the system at a later time. To do the dip you should remove the fish from the quarantine tank into a much smaller containier like tuperware or a specimine cup, add the corect dossage of copper and let the fish sit in this solution for 20 minutes. Next place the smaller container into a much larger comtainer and using a piece of airline tubing siphon water from the quarantine tank into the smaller container alowing it to over flow into the larger container untill most of the copper is out of the smaller container (where the fish is). finaly dump the fishand its water back into the quarantine tank. repeat this precess daily for about a week or intill the sympthoms go away. Then keepin the fish in qarantine repeat the procedure for hypo-salinity and keep the fish at this for at least 2 weeks. A final word of caution do not atempt do do both hypo-salinity and copper treatment at the same time because the fish might die from the stress.
Sorry this is so long, but contrary to popular belief ich is easily cured. And as always these are just my thoughts on the mater you do not have to use this as there are other treatments, but thses methods have worked for me and have been very sucessful. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Jason

[Mrs_Witchdoctor]

Great info thanks for posting! :) J

[tigersax7]

Thanks, but its Colleen who researched this and tought me about it.

Jason

[leena]

Hmm.. tigersax,

I take it you are talking about a different Colleen? Please for the fifteenhundreth time don't share your opinion and then give me credit for it. If you have something to say, say it, yourself.

I THINK..

Garlic is great. Its delicious in pasta. As a treatment? Can't hurt. Garlic has been used for hundreds of years in livestock as a treatment for parasites. Problem is, one guy will swear by it, and the next guy will swear it doesn't work.

Cleaner shrimps have a job to do in the ocean. Ich isn't really first choice on the menu for them either, they can't Cure your system, only manage it. Same with just really really good care. If your tank is in perfect health you may never see an ich outbreak until you stress your fish. You are managing the problem, but not solving it. As Jen said, they can help, but I really think these guys need to be left where they are needed.

Those white spots? Those are the little guys that cause Ich. They appear and disappear as they live, die, and reproduce. On the fish you only see part of the life cycle. They are doing other fun things in your substrate and water too.

To get rid of ick:

Take every fish out of your display tank. I would have to look up how long to leave it empty, but without fish, the parasite will eventually die out. We are talking weeks here. It's a hassle, but it's not like you can treat a whole reef system with hypo or copper, so there are really not other options to CURE - most people decide just to manage and hope they don't have outbreaks in the future.

If you run all fish through QT it will never be in your tanks at all. Can a coral that's in a tank with ICK introduce it to your system? YEP! Look at where you are buying from and if you have a doubt, run those through QT too. ( Side note, never had a problem with ANYTHING from Rob's store =). The parasite can't host/reproduce in the coral, but it can catch a ride from one tank to the next.

I like treating with hypo. I run about 1.009 specific gravity for a week plus. Take a few hours to drop to this level. Be sure to syphon out the bottom of your tank while doing this to help speed along the process. Don't use substate/live rock. It's a good place for parasites to live. This is fish only - it will kill inverts. Hypo messes with the reproductive cycle of the parasites. Some people specualte that hypo may actually make it easier for the fish to osmoregulate. My fish have spent longer than a week in hypo just because I get busy and don't want to adjust the s.g. back up until I have time to observe the fish. They manage.

Copper works. Follow instructions on bottle. Use a test kit to accurately measure copper levels. Use only in a QT tank (Bare bottom, no live rock, etc.. ) Any substrate will absorb the copper, as J-Hook pointed out, and can leach it back out into the system later ( bye bye inverts). Don't run carbon in your filters with copper. It removes the copper. Copper is harsher beacuse it supresses the immune system of the fish. You are killing the parasite, but leave the fish with almost no ability to fight it off itself.

When I'm about to go out of town and need the problem cleared up quickly, I've used copper. When I'm going to be around for a bit and can watch I use hypo. When I've gotten confused during a water change I've used both (at the same time).

For Ick I wouldn't bother with taking out and dipping in little buckets. There are also treamets with moving fish between tanks etc, but I really don't like to stress sick fish any more than necessary.

If you don't want to buy one, please borrow a QT tank from someone - it can save you a lot of time, money, and heatache later on.

If you see dots in the morning and fewer in the evening, it probably is Ich. If your fish just have a white spot now and then it could just be crud from the water, and spot of sand, whatever. I hope Bottles just likes to play in the dirt!

I lost a total of six fish last time I moved. I was in a hurry and added a tang to my tank that had not gone though QT. She/he/it was fine until the move and then the stress caused everything to explode. I ended up with crazy water chemistry (doubly so with the skimmerless, and no mechanical filter), ich, brook, and just stress from being moved. Everything tank related was still packed with the exception of the main tank, but I think two of the fish would have pulled through it they hadn't decided to try to fly... Live and learn right? With the excepetion of the great move die-off I've never lost a fish. Quarantining and treating new fish before they go into the display tank really works.

Again this is just what has worked for me. There are other effective treatments, and a whole lot of ones that aren't.

Regards

[tigersax7]

leena...I guess you and I just have slightly different ways of doing the same thing...(LOL) thanks for the corect on the Specific gravity/ ich life cycle.

Jason

[leena]

Hey tiger,
(thats sounds a little odd)

The ick life cycle, s.g. was really just an add on, not a correction.

The correction was just the reference to me.

There are so many ways to do most of this stuff that giving a set in stone reply is just not my style. Even the s.g. is just what I use. I've read that people use from 1.008 up to 1.012.

Where did you find the 20 minute copper treatment info? I don't think I've seen that one before.

Thank you for being a good sport and sharing what you know.
Colleen

Oh - added Ick note. Increasing the temperature increases the life cycle speed of the parasite. If treatment is going well, a temp. increase can speed things up. If things are not going well keeping the temp stable can buy you a little more time. In theory dropping the temp. should slow down the life cycle and give you even more time to work, but I couldn't point to a source that says, "yes, this works well for treatment in fish".

[Mrs_Witchdoctor]

:) ha ha ha you guys are the bomb; can I filter through this and add it to an "opinions on ich" page for the help section for the club site? I won't take out anything important and would send you a proof if you like before I make it official! :)

[leena]

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=595224

Better ick info from Richard (usemore). He pointed out my fish could survive a nuclear war. Some (yours) could need days to adjust to lower s.g.

Thanks Richard!

btw - Jen - Richard would be a better source to PM for the article you are thinking about.

[J-Hook]

good stuff...... I read somewhere that the ich lifecycle is 2 weeks or so.