Treating ich on a small scale/small fish

[cabbage0709]

Heres the scoop:

So ive been away from my tank for the past few weeks, but only a few days (2-3 tops) at a time. Yesterday when i checked on it i noticed that my 6 line wrasse had a few little white spots on him. First thing that came to mind was Ich.

Now ive done some reading on the disease treatment forums here on RC and saw that the most common treatment was soaking your food in garlic. But these all were for bigger fish. Mostly tangs.

Currently i am feeding just flake and pellet food, with the occasional krill left over from feeding my anemone and green fungia. The flake food that im feeding says that it has garlic in it, "As an added bonus!" (yeah...)

Anyways, what i was wondering was how i would go about treating smaller fish in a smaller system. Im thinking it would just be the same procedure, am i wrong about this? Also what kind of various foods would you suggest feeding my fish? I have two clowns and a wrasse and i though about varying their diet this next semester because i am getting into the hobby a lot more and becoming more knowledgable about the little world i have created. (Thanks to RC and all of its members of course! )

Thanks!

-Sven

[reefsr4me]

The garlic was what I used to kick the ich in my tank. Did you introduce new fish to the tank recently? This is the only way ich gets in the system.
What Size is your tank?
Can you catch him and treat him separatly from the rest of the tank? then you could use meds for it.
You could soak the peltets in etther Kent garlic drops, or cut organic cloves in half and put that with a little tank water to sstew for 5-10 minutes. I took me six weeks to get rid of it that way, but It was the ONLY truly safe reef method IMO.

[cabbage0709]

Its a 12g AP. I got the little guy about 2 weeks ago and hes been cruisin around all over the place enjoying himself. I have plenty of tiny-large bristle worms for him to feast on because i learned that they scavenge on them sometimes. That was the initial reason i got him, to take care of my b-worm population.

I doubt that i would be able to catch him but if i can i will definitely look into Quarantining him and trying a hypo treatment...if not, then i believe i will just get some Kent Garlic treatment and try that for a month. Thats the most common way that i have read, the month long treatment of garlic. If i get good results from it, i may just keep feeding a little garlic to them from now on because i have also read that it helps their appetite and immune system greatly. Does this sound agreeable?
-Sven

[scaast]

I got ich in my 10 gallon once and used Kordon Ich-Attack. It's 100% organic and reef safe. It worked well.

[cabbage0709]

Scaast - Where did you get this from? How long did it take?

[scaast]

if I remember correctly I got it at Petsmart or Petco...the treatment takes a week.

[nanO352]

Try Ocean Nutrition Formula two flake. Its got garlic in it and it worked for me. It's the one in the green container.

[johno4]

Once ick is in your system it will remain there unless you completely kill it. Adding garlic is going to help your fish's immune system to fight it off but it will remain in your system, even if symptoms are not visible. From my experience most of the "reef safe" medications are a waste of money. The only two cures to completely wipe out the ich is copper or hyposalinity, neither can be done in a reef environment and should be done in a quarentine tank.

My advise and the only thing that has worked for me in the past is to put the fish in a seperate qt tank and treat with either copper or hyposalinity for at least 4 weeks. This will not only wipe out the ich on the fish but also break the life cycle of the the ich in your display and wipe it out in there as well. FYI if you do do this you must remove all of your fish (even if they are not showing symptoms) and treat them or the ich will remain in your system.

Good luck!

[reefsr4me]

johno4 is also right, but if u get a uv sterilizer, this will help kill what is in the tank. I took 6 weeks of garlic, and have been ich free for 3 months now. Seems like if it was in the tank, it would have come back by now.