Ick Issue..Is there a natural cure?

[RonE]

I have a reef tank w/ an Ick outbreak on 3 fish
I do not want to treat the tank w/ chemicals to rid the Ick..but if I have to..I will
Will a cleaner shrimp or a cleaner wrasse eat the Ick parasite off of the fish? Will anything naturally rid this?
Are there any other natural alternatives to rid this disease?..
So far I have just raised the temp..but I'm not sure at this point what else I can do
Please help....Thanks everyone

[brianlena2000]

Cleaner shrimp are definitely not a cure. They will only remove some of the parasites from the body of the fish (and that is only if the fish allows the shrimp to clean it).

You can try soaking their food in garlic to help them fight off the ich (this is not a proven method but many have had luck with it).

Your best bet would be using a hospital tank and either hyposalinity or copper (these are the only proven cures for ich).

For more info:

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/tr...marineich.html

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/tr...osalinity.html

[InsaneClownFish]

I am new here, so by no means an expert. Try doin a 30- 40% water change with real sea water. I was just reading a thread about how those who use natural sea water- dont have as many ich problems - and people who have had a syntetic salt water tank transferrin their fish to a natural sea water tank in order to rid the fish of ich. From what I understand it works fast. Just make sure the salinity is nearly identical if your transfer.

[brianlena2000]

I was just reading a thread about how those who use natural sea water- dont have as many ich problems - and people who have had a syntetic salt water tank transferrin their fish to a natural sea water tank in order to rid the fish of ich

Do you have a link to the thread?

To be honest it sound very far fetched (based on what is known about ich I can see no reason why natural sea water woud cure it).

[Steve_B]

That's one of the reasons I have fish only tanks. Copper is the only real treatment and you can't use it.

[InsaneClownFish]

brian let me look...

[Medaka]

Only thing to do really is hyposalinity (best way to get rid of it). I wouldn't bother using any chemicals or copper.

Doing waterchanges won't do much of anything, except get rid of a few of the ich.

You need to kill every single one of them, so the fish can never get ich again.

[pr4mncplus]

I totally agree with Medaka above. I have a QT and use hyposalinity for both new arrivals and sick marine life. If I can avoid using chemicals including copper in my QT, I do so. RonE, you need to get a QT up and running and isolate your fish as soon as you can. Depending on how many fish you have in your tank, it may have spread already.

[wooglin]

I have not dealt with ich with Saltwater fish, but on my freshwater setup it has always been cured with heavy and frequent water changes. Ich is naturally fought off by a fishes immune system. Frequent and heavy water changes remove the majority of toxins that can weaken a fishes immune system, this in turn allows the fishes immune system to strengthen.

PS- This is just what has worked for me in freshwater

[pr4mncplus]

Wooglin, good point about the water changes but they will normally only work when the parasites are in the free-floating stages. Once they are on the substrate floor it's a different story. Water changes in saltwater tanks would help (but not cure) but that can be a lot of work depending on the size of the tank. Isolating the fish in a QT is more direct treatment IMHO.

[RonE]

I'm going to set up a QT tank and move the fish..
a few more questions:
What exactly is hyposalinity? (reducing sg to 1.020?or less)
Should I treat the QT w/ cooper and garlic?..anything else?
What temp? 82 or higher?
If I take out the infected fish....will there still be Ick in the main tank and attach to the other fish?

[pr4mncplus]

This is from a reference on petsforum.com:

For the treatment to be effective the salinity needs to be lowered to 12-14ppt which is equivalent to a specific gravity of 1.009 (d20/20) at normal tank temperatures (26-28°C - 79-82°F). Normal sea water has a salinity of 35ppt (Gross, 1977).

For the treatment of "Ich", hyposalinity works in two ways:

Prevents the C. irritans from reproducing
Reduces affects of stress on the fish.
C. irritans is a ciliate protozoan found in sea water and it has a number of stages in its life cycle. Infective stages burrow into the skin and gills of the fish and form a protective outer covering of skin. Here they feed on tissue fluids and skin and grow. When mature, the parasite breaks out of the cyst and after some time as a free-swimming form encysts on any suitable substrate such as the sand or rocks and divides many times to produce the infective forms (Colorni, 1987). The infective forms must find a suitable host or they will die.

The total time from the mature parasite breaking out of its cyst and reinfection on the fish is about 3 weeks at normal tank temperatures. This is why "Ich" may appear to clear up but then comes back a few weeks later but a lot worse.

The low salinity prevents the parasites from breaking out of their cysts and thus breaks the life cycle and prevents reinfection. If the salinity is not low enough, the Cryptocaryon can still break out and can divide and reinfect.

I think this should answer your questions about the rest of your tank. Good luck!

[dandan]

even your seemingly uninfected fish should be removed from the main tank for a period of four to six weeks for all the "ich" to die off.

[MiddletonMark]

Originally posted by dandan
even your seemingly uninfected fish should be removed from the main tank for a period of four to six weeks for all the "ich" to die off.

Yep, Ich can be living in minor amounts even if not visible.

QT on all new fish is the lesson you should learn from this. 4 weeks in QT should show Ich or anything else.

As for curing it ... read these two good articles detailing it:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.htm
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-1...ture/index.htm

[llpoolej]

If you can move the fish, move them and treat them with hyposalinity. By far the best way.

If you cannot catch them and can't break down your tank, corals and all the rocks in it, a stong UV filter *helps* It won't cure it, but it will help reduce the parasites during the free swimming stage.

the fish can aquire natural immunity, but you may have losses on the way.

I will never NOT quarantine again. The ich fiasco has been costly and stressful(for me AND the fish)

[AEALOVESHERGIRLS]

I used kick ich in my tank a couple weeks ago. All of my fish have been cured, it had no affect on any of my inverts, pods, live rock, plants or anything except ich. I'm also feeding fish twice daily with garlic extreme. After the treatment I did a 20% water change, put my carbon and protein skimmer back on and all is well. I know you don't want to use chemicals, but if your tank is like mine(lots of live rock) your fish are going to be nearly impossible to get out without disturbing everything. Good luck!!!

Amanda

[mmgm]

I would not recomend using Kick Ich or any of the products out there claiming to be a reef safe cure for ich. Reported results of people using these products just vary too much to be able to say these products work. In my opinion using these products in an established reef tank puts more risk to your corals/inverts than it is worth to cure your sick fish. Especially since preventing ich from entering your tank can be easily accomplished (at no risk to your tank) by QT methods.

The disease forum on this site has some excellent threads about methods on ich prevention and cure.

Good Luck.........

[Geepers Creepers]

RonE
why did your fish get ich?

Wow much are you feeding them?
What types of fish are they?
What was your water parameters when you first noticed the out brake?
Did you recently add a new fish?
Are your fish fighting?
Were the three fish in question sick or new to the tank?
Your other fish may never even get ich, don’t panic.

I know a lot of people are going to jump all over me so I’m leaving the post. I feel that a hospital tank is a waste of time, it isn’t as stable as your reef tank.
I’ve seen people set up a hospital tank and lose their fish because of the tank and not because of the ich.

I never had a hospital tank or treated my fish for ich and they all had ich when I got them. I never lost a fish from ich after finding out that if your fish are healthy they can fight off the ich on their own. The only thing I do is feed them a lot and keep them fat. When I get a new fish they are stressed and not as healthy as the fish in my tank so they get ich when introduced. I use to feed foods with vitamin supplements when I got new fish, and the ich would go away an not come back. Now I tried to use Garlic Xtreem from Kent and it always works to. If I have a very sick fish that won’t eat when I put it in my tank it will die for being sick and not eating not from the ich. None of my fish will get ich from the new fish because the ich was in the tank to start with. I have had some of my fish for over five years. The rest of the fish are new around 1 to 4 years because I upgraded my tank.
Please don’t say im stupid and this is crazy, this is just what I do. It is easy to make a carbon copy of what every one else says is correct and the only way. Im not saying that the other methods don’t work they do but I don't use them.

[R33f3r]

I tried kick-ich with NO success. You have to use a hospital tank and leave the display tank fish free for a month. That's the only way unless you have some serious good luck.

[eums]

my clown fish came down with ich 2 weeks ago and is in the QT tank right now, i did a freshwater dip and most if not all of the ich fell off in the fresh water(about 1 min in FW) then the clown went into hypo salinity and copper QT. the clown fish is allmost 100 % now, no ich on the fish and she eats a ton and is swimming a ton.

[eums]

2x post sorry

[mmgm]

By the way, a friend of mine tried to use Kick Ich to get rid of an ich problem. Within a week of treatment his perfectly healthy Leather coral died.......

I checked with my LFS about this. My LFS told me he has heard many complaints about kick ich killing Leathers......

Hmmm.... Is it worth the risk?

How much do you have tied up in your tank?

[flyingfish85]

I am currently using kick-ich and will report back with the results. My clown sweetlips has it pretty bad and a few spots just showed up this morning on the tomato clown. The sweetlips is rubbing himself on everything in the tank; I feel so bad for him.. I am scared to freshwater dip him since he is so stressed already. Any thoughts?

[llpoolej]

Terry B and the guy with blinking eyes on the fish disease treatment forum have great advice.

Basically, either they will fight it off themselves, or you can you copper or hyposalinity.

I have 4 fish who fought it off with the help of the neon gobies and cleaner shrimp. The carrier of the ich died a nasty sad death. I never could catch them to treat them.

[MiddletonMark]

Originally posted by llpoolej
Terry B and the guy with blinking eyes on the fish disease treatment forum have great advice.

Yep, that avatar is VERY hard to forget , a great one.

That would be ATJ ... and yes, they are a great benefit to the RC community [and thousands of fish]. Steven Pro is also on RC [author of Reefkeeping articles on Ich from Oct and August ... a must read].

I accidentally stumbled on a very high level discussion they were having on RC about Ich ... could hardly understand parts of it ... but it was great to realize we have these guys around, and they are so willing to jump into things and help. Was nice to realize they each disagree slightly with each other in a few things ... but as for treatment, natural `cures', and seriousness of dealing with Ich - they all agree.