Dang-it why me....

[Potsy]

Originally posted by new2u
Well, i looked today and he looks clean which means its entered into stage two right? where did you find the gut info on cleaner wrasse/shrimp? I used to work in a lfs and we used shrimp and wrasse to combat the parasite and about.com reccomends them.

I read it a while back on the web. I was doing a google search on monogenean flukes and just happened to come across an article published in a marine biology journal from the University of Hawaii. It was pretty heavy-duty academic research that was investigating the role of biological cleaners on reefs and fish aquaculture. Do a search on marine parasites, aquaculture, and bio-cleaners and that article and others like it will probably pop up.

Even if shrimp/wrasse had a taste for the protozoans, they're too imbedded in the fish's skin to be consumed. The one time my tang had cryptocaryon when I first started my tank it constantly sought my shrimp's services and while I'm sure the picking felt good, I never saw any parasites actually dug out of the skin and eaten. I think what most see is a coincidental presence of cleaners and a fish who fought off the infection on its own.

[new2u]

Well, i've started to feed garlic, i've got a great LFS and he says that if things get any worse he'll go ahead and qt all my fish, what a nice guy : )

[loyalty]

i've got a question sort of on topic;

lets say i have one fish, and it gets ich, but recovers on its own...does my tank now have the ich parasite? if it can't live without a fish host, how long would it take till i can add a second fish safely?

TIA

[new2u]

from what i've read 6 weeks with no ick, Oh, i fed my fish some garlic agian and he gobbled it all up i'm feeling hope full

[twkenny]

I went through the same thing after adding a QT'd fish. My purple tang (not the new fish) got a few spots and then one other fishe showed some spots. I fed my normal food, but every day instead of every other day and soaked it in Zoe. I also added garlic extract every now and then. It went away..appeared a week later and then went away again...that was 6 months ago.
I'd ride it out, healthy fish seem to get past it. Keep everything stable and water quility high.

[twkenny]

Loyalty...
It's in there. Just because you don't see white spots does not mean it's not there. Fish have it internally and in their gills...
All it takes is one to make it continue the cycle.

[loyalty]

thanks, so i should wait a few weeks?

[clsund]

Ok, there is a lot, and I mean a lot of just plain wrong information going around here.

1. Cleaner shrimp and wrasses will NOT take care of your ich problem. As others have already stated, they can only get at flukes and the like that are found on the surface of the fish. Ich burrows itself into the skin of the fish and is much deeper.

2. Once you have Ich in your main tank, they will always be there unless you take ALL your fish out for at least two months and treat them with hyposalinity or copper. Taking only one fish out will not be enough because the Ich is still in your tank and in the other fish. You just can't see it. You need to break the life cycle of the parasite in order to really properly take care of the problem in your main. That means leaving the main host free (meaning fish free) until the parasite dies.

3. Garlic does not kill the Ich. It only wards the parasite off. Using garlic to feed your fish only helps them fight them off. It does not help them develop immunity to it either. It just gives the fish a chance to get stronger to be able to fight the parasite off on its own.

4. QT much be bare bottom with a salinity of 1.09 for the Hypo treatment. Give your fish PVC tubing to hide in so they won't be as stressed out. You can keep feeding garlic to get them fat and strong. The low salinity precludes you putting the shrimp (which does no good anyways) into the QT as they will not be able to survive.

5. For the copper treatment, follow the manufacturers instructions.

Unless you do all of this, you will continue to battle Ich everytime your fish get stressed enough to succumb to the parasit.

Hope that is helpful.

[loyalty]

Originally posted by clsund


2. Once you have Ich in your main tank, they will always be there unless you take ALL your fish out for at least two months and treat them with hyposalinity or copper. Taking only one fish out will not be enough because the Ich is still in your tank and in the other fish. You just can't see it. You need to break the life cycle of the parasite in order to really properly take care of the problem in your main. That means leaving the main host free (meaning fish free) until the parasite dies.

shoot. this is bad


thanks for the info though

[twkenny]

One correction to the hypo number given above..should be 1.009, not 1.09 as indicated in the post.

[new2u]

Well, i'm gonna wait it out in the main tank as of now with the galic and possibly use some kick ick or other reef safe product to try to keep the ick at bay... i'm gonna ride it this way for a while. also, the hawk does have one larger spot spot on his tail not small though, my manderian and coral beaut have had them before and they go away, could it be lymphosist

[shelburn61]

clsund is right.

In most cases I think you just make things worse by trying to remove already infected fish from an established tank. You just end up stressing you're fish to death while you tear down your carefully placed rockwork.

I quarantine all the fisk in my tanks for 3 weeks with hyposalinity. 4-5 month ago my firefish and ocellaris clown both showed spots. The firefish disappeared a week later, but the clown held on for three weeks with periodic outbreaks. I fed a varied diet often including a pellet food with garlic and finally the spots disappeared. My watchman goby never got a spot. I have since added two new fish that have never showed a spot. There is probably still ich in my tank, but fish are pretty good at fighting it off themselves if they aren't stressed.

IMO the majority of tanks have had or will have ich spores at some point, but the best defense is to keep your fish healthy enough that they can fight off infections on their own.

I wish I had the time, money, and space to quarantine every frag I get. Odds are that if you trade frags with enough people who keep fish one of those frags will bring some ick with it.

I think manderins are pretty much immune because of their thicker than normal slime coat (I may have mad that up?).