Kick-Ich or Malachite Green - good for Crypt (w/corals)?

[BigShot]

I have 180 gallon tank... recently, my Blue Tang (Hippo/Regal) got Ich.
The other fish seem to be OK, but a yellow tang already has 2 dots...
I have no other tank to take the fish into... I have live rock, cleaner shrimp, few 'hardy corals, crabs and snails in the tank.
I've used the pepper based meds before (from Kent Marine and some other brand, I can't remember) but they never worked..
Putting copper in the tank is out of the question... cleaner shrimps just don't do it for the tang...
I looked at two products: Kick-Ich and Malachite Green by Aquarium pharmaceuticals.
Both of them say that they aare reef safe.
Two questions (for those who have used them):
- Are they REALLY reef (coral, shrimp, snail, crab, live rock) safe?
- Are they effective?

Huge thanks,
luke

[R33f3r]

I tried Kick-Ich with no sucess.

[krish]

I tried a herbal based product from petco. It looked like the
ick got better with me dosing the product and feeding garlic
soaked foods. But it came back even strong.
I was told that kick-ick is useless.
I am gonna tear down the rockwork and catch all the fish to be
move to a HT this weekend. Hypo is the way to go. I also have
cupramine, but may not use it.
Dont' use malachite green on scaleless fish. Tangs are scaleless.

-krish

[md fishes]

The best advice I can give for ich is cleaner wrasses. Cleaner shrimp will not do, like you said. I have had way to many bad expierences with ICH until one day my buddy told me about cleaner wrasses. I put one in my tank and within 3 days a full blown ICH situation was totally reversed. In fact my reef tank just came down with ich the other day and I added a cleaner wrasse and today it is fine.

GO GET A CLEANER WRASSE, the normal cheap kind that are blue, pink and black. It will be the best thing you could ever do for your fish.

[BigShot]

But don't the cleaner wrasses die very quickly? Which one you're talking about?

[md fishes]

The normal run of the mill cleaner wrasse. They are the blue ones with a black strip. Check this website to show the exact one of which I am speaking. http://www.petsolutions.com/cgi-bin/cgiitmls?m=ThisP&p=144300.000000&l=74.

They can be fragile but I have had two of them for months and they are doing well. Keep your water quality good and you shouldn't have a problem. Anyway, they are pretty cheap. Almost as cheap as the chemicals that you would buy to treat ICH. I personally haven't had any luck with anything else except cleaner wrasses with ICH in a reef.

Of course you could QT your fish in a smaller tank for a month and treat with copper for two weeks and you should be fine.

Again, get a cleaner wrasse. You won't be disapointed. Email me if you get one and keep me updated on the status.

Good luck,

[Dogbert]

I've got a ick break out going on now. I bought 3 wrasses in the past week and they all die and become expensive crab food. I'm trying kick-ick now and will advise what I find soon.

I'm not too crazy about having to turn off my skimmer for two weeks though.

[ATB USA]

I wouldn't use that malachite green in a reef tank I think its almost the same as green ex . It will kill star polyps, calms, and will burn the tips off the xenias.
Good luck I hate ich too.

[ReefGeekster]

Originally posted by Dogbert
I've got a ick break out going on now. I bought 3 wrasses in the past week and they all die and become expensive crab food. I'm trying kick-ick now and will advise what I find soon.

I'm not too crazy about having to turn off my skimmer for two weeks though.

I've used Kick-Ich and Rally both at the same time with success in my 150g reef, DO NOT use Greenex or malachite green in your reef!
I have had a blue streak cleaner wrasse for almost a year. They are very poor shippers, the key to get a good one is having it eat at the LFS and have been there for awhile. I got mine that was there for two weeks and eatting mysis and brine, he still picks the fish on a regular basis but also enjoys his other treats.

[Steven Pro]

Kick-Ich seems to work for some people, does nothing for others. It is hard to determine exactly if the medication is working or if natural acquired immunity cured the fish. Malachite Green can be absorbed by or dye some corals, so I would not trust it. All in all, your best solution is to remove all the fish to a separate quarantine tank and use a proven treatment.

Cleaner wrasses are a poor choice. They usually die in captivity of a slow death, http://www.wetwebmedia.com/labroide.htm They are popular and are sold because they are cheap and because people will buy them, not because they are helpful or live well. Also, they have been proven to feed almost exclusively on gnathid isopods, not Cryptocaryon, http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v197/p241-246.html There are the occassional exceptions, like there are some Mandarins that eat flake food, but the vast majority are doomed to die once removed from the reef.

[Dogbert]

I just bought three wrasses at once. All three have setup a cleaning station in the corner of the tank and everybody is over there waiting to be serviced. Looks kind of like the line at DMV:)

It's been two hours since introduction and about half of the spots on my blue tang are gone. Hopefully between the kick-ick treatment and the cleaners this thing will go away. I'm also feeding formula-2 with garlic now. I've turned off my skimmer and UV for now since that was recommended by the kick-ick bottle.


This all happened because I brought home a brown powder tang that was clean. My wife was in a hurry to go shopping after I got home so I acclimated the temperature and put him in the tank. Two days later the ick started attacking like storm troopers on a rebel base. Just goes to prove that dips in Methylene Blue work because I haven't had a problem since I started dipping all new entrants. I don't have a QT tank yet but i'm in process of designing one out of a rubbermaid container and using a small fluval and UV to filter it.

I'll report later what happens.

[krish]

You should have atleast left the UV sterilizer running after
adding the brown tang.
-krish

[md fishes]

I'm glad to hear the wrasses are doing well for you.

[Dogbert]

Originally posted by krish
You should have atleast left the UV sterilizer running after
adding the brown tang.
-krish

Everything was running up to adding the kick-ick.

The wrasses have found crevices and holes in the rocks. Hopefully they are out tomorrow after the lights come on:confused:

[chrisp074]

I don't mean to jump on anyone for their fish selection but cleaner wrasses are really not a good aquarium fish. Please read this article before buying any more.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/labroide.htm

By the way, the common neon goby is a good cleaner and does well in tanks.

[Dogbert]

Originally posted by chrisp074
I don't mean to jump on anyone for their fish selection but cleaner wrasses are really not a good aquarium fish. Please read this article before buying any more.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/labroide.htm

By the way, the common neon goby is a good cleaner and does well in tanks.


The wrasses have disappeared into the rocks for now, hopefully they will come back out tomorrow.

Very good advise and link. I wasn't aware that the neon goby is a good cleaner. I'm going to the LFS to pick two up tomorrow and maybe a cleaner shrimp.

[eclipse29]

I had success with kick ich in my reef tank. without any noticable effects on corals and other inverts. I've also tried the kent RxP and that did not work it did however cause all my LPS to close up for a couple of days.

[chrisp074]

Originally posted by Dogbert


Very good advise and link. I wasn't aware that the neon goby is a good cleaner. I'm going to the LFS to pick two up tomorrow and maybe a cleaner shrimp.

Good idea, neon gobies are great little fish anyways. I would go with the shrimp initially, the problem with using any cleaner fish is that they are suseptable to ick also, so you are adding more "fuel" for the parasites if you add more fish. Shrimp, on the other hand, are not hosts for ick so they can't get sick and add to your problem. By the way, don't let the store try to sell you a pepermint shrimp as a cleaner like mine did. While they are cleaners in nature, they rarely if ever do it in aqauriums. Plus stores often mislabel camelback shrimp as pepermints, and you don't want one of those, they turn into terrors.

If the shrimp don't help think about setting up a hospital/QT tank, adding anything to your tank that is going to be effective against ick is going to effect similar beneficial critters in your tank like ampipods and copepods. If you need help with that let me know, or better yet ask StevenPro, the man knows his fish. He helps my girlfriend on WetWebMedia all the time.

[Chicago]

so far i have not heard of one person being successfull with kent rx-p. kick ick is 50 % success. i went through hell with a fight with ick and now even after doing Q on my fish it is back. i am think8ing of doing kick ick.

for the past four weeks i have done nothing but feed and they are holding their own. but dont know if they can continue to do so. what id did notice is that the fish that went through a boot with ick and then into copper Q tank and recovered all seem to have an immunity to the the ick as they have not been reinfected.

[MiddletonMark]

Originally posted by md fishes
The normal run of the mill cleaner wrasse. They are the blue ones with a black strip.

They can be fragile but I have had two of them for months and they are doing well. Keep your water quality good and you shouldn't have a problem. Anyway, they are pretty cheap. Almost as cheap as the chemicals that you would buy to treat ICH. I personally haven't had any luck with anything else except cleaner wrasses with ICH in a reef.


Please, leave the cleaner wrasses in the ocean. Their absence does terrible things to the reef, where fishes depend on them. They are a core species - whose presence benefits all species in the area they inhabit.

Never mind that they don't do well in captivity, eat parasites other than Ich [yep ... Ich in bad cases is in the gills, where neither cleaner shrimp or wrasses can get ... useless for Ich].

Please, QT all your new fish, remove these guys to a hospital tank and treat with hyposalinity or meds. Anything else, just leads to recurring bouts.

I had Ich, once. Removed all fish to QT with hyposalinity for 6 weeks. Reef tank fishless for 6 weeks. QT'ed every new fish. Haven't seen Ich since. Easy, cheap procedure [no meds, nothing more than a bare 10g tank and sponge filter]. Zero fish losses.