erk! disease of some kind..id help? Please?

[Vilas]

Whelp. Here it is. My lovely 4 month old tank is hit with its first outbreak of - something - ich, no doubt - and I'm doing the classic newbie freakout dance.
No, I'm not dumping copper in there, I'm making up water for a big change and trying to figure out what's wrong. No chance of catching everything without breaking down the tank, they all act like nothing's wrong, but white spots are bad things!
OK, so my chromis and copperband have TEENY LITTLE white dots. Maybe 6-7 per fish. They're really really small, as if you hardly brushed one with the tip of a pin. They're all ignoring the cleaner shrimp and swimming around begging for food, as always, which I guess is a good sign. I did a search, but didn't find anything that looks like this..
Water change, perhaps lower my salinity, garlic? Do something with temp? Dr. Ron seems to think garlic is useless, but I'm willing to try something that a lot of people have reported success on.
Tank params:
55g, 60 lbs (well cured) fiji LR, running since jan, SG 1.026, ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrates about 10, all have been steady for a few weeks now.
Recently had VERY low alk, I brought it up a bit quickly (from 0-0.7 to 2.2 in ~4 days. oops) ca at 400 and steady, temp now at 81-82, but I hit 87 for 3 days last week when we had a mini heat wave. Strike two, I guess?
Strike three, overstocked. 2 1" percs, (added 2 mos ago, no ich) a cleaner shrimp, 4 1" chromis (added 3 weeks ago, all have ich) and a 2" copperband (added 1.5 weeks ago, a little bit of it) . No agression or anything, but I guess this is what I get instead!

Suggestions? Does this look like the Really Bad Evil kind of ich, where I need to tear down the tank to catch them, or should I relax a bit?
Anyone, please? :)
I'll be your best friend? :)

[billsreef]

Some people have reported sucess with garlic. I have had some luck with it myself in cases of [i]light[i] infections, however I find heavy infections are not affected by it. The only 100% cures are not reef safe and therefore need to be carried out in a quarantine tank. The two best methods are copper and hyposalinity (1.009-1.010) for 4 week.

[Vilas]

Well, I'm more interested in knowing exactly what kind of ich this is. I've been reading every post that came up under "garlic" "hyposalinity" and "treatment," thinking I'd get a variety of opinions. (well, but ended up becoming engrossed in a flame war from 2 years ago or so. :) )
The teeeeny white dots aren't something I see mentioned a great deal, any clue as to what these are? Brooklynella/that other evil kind of ich seem to leap to mind, ugh.

Anyways. I have a 5.5 gal, and a 5 gal rubbermaid. I can probably get away with treatment for a few days, but they'd die of stress before ich. My fiance and I are both losing our jobs, so a bigger Q - even a rubbermaid - is out of the question. I'll have to fight for garlic cloves, if it comes to that. I might be able to catch them, and work out a deal with the LFS to borrow extra tanks for quarantine space..but the hell of catching them, driving them back, reacclimating them, etc, seems like it'll just be ten times worse insofar as stress goes.

I'll do a series of water changes, my gut reaction to anything amiss, and watch this spot for advice...
sighhhhhhhh. :P

[Doug]

Hi Char,

I have had some success using Selcon to treat mild cases of ich in my tanks before. I would soak the food in it each night until the ich was gone. It did help more than once in more than one of my tanks. I might have been lucky using it but it is one of the only safe ways to treat fish without removing them from the tank that I have found. It will not work as with advanced cases but I always caught it early.

Best wishes.

Doug

[Vilas]

Doug, THANKS! I actually just bought some, so that's great news.
Would you dose it in combo with garlic? Would you ignore the garlic altogether, and put it on your bread instead?

Anyone have any ideas for homemade garlic supplements?

Charlotte

[Doug]

Hi Charlotte,

I have never used garlic myself so I really cannot comment. I know that others have had some success with it from what I have read here.

I don't really think that using both Selcon and Garlic would cause any issues but I cannot answer from experience.

Sorry that I cannot be of more help.

Doug

[Vilas]

Anyone else? Esp. experience with the teeeny itsy bitsy spots?

[slimytadpole]

What are you doing for temperature control? I forget if you said you had a fan in that hood or not. It's my understanding that the higher the heat, the faster the ich will run it's course. However, since you aren't using a Q-tank, you can't lower your SG, so the ich can come right back, perhaps even worse. I suggest just trying Selcon and garlic, since without a Q-tank, diet is your only option, anyway. With less than 10 spots per fish, it's still fairly mild.

[lalmatia]

I know most people won't agree w/ me using an ozonizer. But it helped me a lot. I read a few books and they stated the benefits of using an ozonizer in a minute quantity(Sea World, Aquarium of Tenessee other big aquarium using it w/ their saltwater system). I thought if they can use it why can't I. Then I bought this RedSea Deluxe Ozonizer, and believe it or not within 2 days everybody was normal. Since then (it's been 5 months) I am using a little dose of 10 mg/hr 24/7, and no itch outbreak and adverse effects on corals whatsoever. I use it w/ my Berlin HO, and I put GAC on top of the skimmer and in the water outlet. Forgot to menion I am using it in my 60 G and plan to use it on my new 180 after stocking.

[Vilas]

thanks for all the answers. As long as no one thinks this is brooklynella or whatever the really really evil kind of ich is, I'm a bit relieved. :)
tadpole, I don't have a fan. I traded my icecap fan for a xenia frag - I couldn't fit it in my hood, anyways. I need to figure something out there - room fan for now when it gets hot! We have no a/c.

I'll pick up some salcon and garlic today, and hit them with whatever I can, as well as a big water change. Here's hoping.....

[hartman]

Vilas,

I also had luck soaking my flake food in Selcon. I would suggest a few water changes to get your Nitrates lower, While 10mg/l is OK 0 is better.

I have heard people give the fish a 5 min fresh water dip. I would just leave them alone and use Selcon.

Hartman

[Vilas]

little update: I was being paranoid. I can only find spots now on one fish, and it's 2-3 of them.
I'll soak with selcon anyways, and do the water change, but here's a big PHEW.

[hartman]

Vilas,

That is good. I have found in my limited experince that going slowly is better in the long run. Make lots of changes to "stop" something usally does not work and only makes thing worse.

Hartman

[horge]

Uhmm...not so fast with the relief :(

The appearance/disappearance of visible ich 'cysts' is often a cyclic thing, remember?

Proper nutrition is always a good thing. Fishes after all have their own defenses and should be encouraged to deploy them, whether or not you medicate.

UV or ozone treats the water, and thus mostly attacks the free swimming stage of the parasite (C. irritans). And there is some evidence of the parasite'scapability to complete its life-cycle ON THE FISH! In the case of ozone, it may occasionally inspire accelerated mucus production/shedding by the fish, allowing it to literally shed lightly-anchored parasites.

Isolation coupled with hyposalinity / freshwater dips is the proven protocol. The real object though is to starve the display tank of ALL fish hosts: the parasite will die without one. However, the time required to starve the parasites out is a matter of dispute, ranging from the classic 7 days to the extreme of 72. If after that period of time the isolated fish have been kept symptom-free, then they can be returned to the presumably parasite-freed tank.

Garlic is a strange beast :)
There's an article on Garlic vs. Ich in the reefs.org Library (the article is in the --where else--Articles Section, heheh), written by some know-it-all poseur, but it somehow manages to contain a reasonable amount of truth.

The blunt skippy is that garlic helps fend off secondary infections while encouraging the neutralization/ejection of the parasites.

However, a tank is full of friendly or benign bacteria, fungi, and protozoa that we have to be careful around. Luckily, there have been no reports of tank crashes or deaths due to garlic, but in all caution, we don't really know what kind of a hit (if any) they might take from in-display garlic treatment.

Wouldn't it be great if all hobbyists who decided to try garlic would be more observant of the consequences, and record/report them (and the conditions attending the attempt to treat) properly?

Good luck
:)

horge

[Vilas]

hee hee, that article's been printed out and read over a few times. Not everyone agrees with garlic, but I figured it cannot hurt..
The thing I did notice about doging garlic is that it seemed to p!ss off everything in the tank, the first time. I tried telling them it was italian night, no dice. The fish kind of picked at the food, the green frilly shrooms closed up for about an hour, and the cleaner shrimp looked at me like I was smoking something funny. On top of it all, my fiance, who's been eyeing the shrimp for a while, seemed to be eyeing the butter and pepper now. :)
On the other hand, for whatever the reason, the next morning, the ich was gone.
I never noticed any itching, no heavy covering, the teeny white dots were there for maybe 24 hours. Should I still be trying to quarantine? I really have no quarantine space that wouldn't stress them out badly.

[horge]

There ya go.
Your dosage impacted on other creatures in the tank, though apparently not fatally, heheh

Now about the ich...
The visible symptoms may have disappeared, but that is no guarantee the parasites have been destroyed. All it suggests is that the visible manifestations have been shed by the fish.

The ejected 'cysts' could be lying in the substrate, waiting to hatch, and the free swimming forms could be in the water, waiting for the fish to stop stinking before they attach and dig in.

So yeah, you still have to starve out the parasites.
Either by removing all fish (and treating them with hypo/FW baths), or by continuing garlic to effect a virtual removal of fish from the display. Your call on HOW LONG to divorce the tank from all fish, but I personally shoot for at least 14 days.

horge

PS:
Can you give me details on the form of garlic used, dosage, general tank setup and inhabitants, and time involved in the adverse reaction of the shrooms, etc? If veering from the topic is bad form here, maybe you can e-mail me those details.

Just to confirm: you mean the shrooms etc. reacted the first time only, and then seemed to adjust to additional doses?

:)