Thinking of kicking the bucket!
 

Ok everyone, I think I am game over with Marine fish! All due to maring ich. I can not get rid of it. I have tried QT with copper, garlic, invert freindly Myxazin, Oodinex, MASSIVE water changes, UV installed, an army of cleaner shrimp added, lowering salt levels, and now I am onto raising the heat to 80 degrees F in the tank.
I have just taken out all foam pads and anything else (phosban and carbon etc etc) from my external canister, flushed out all pipes and cleaned all equipment.

My fish are feeding fine but can not stop flicking. Here is a list of symptoms:-

Powder Blue Tang - Flicking and covered in white spots
Yellow Tang - Occasional flicking
Coral Beauty - Flicking and covered in white spots
True Perc - Flicking
False Perc - Nothing, looks fine
Cleaner Wrasse - Flicking
Yellow Watchman Goby - Nothing, looks fine
Blue Cheek Gobys - Flicking
Cleaner Shrimps - To busy mating to clean any fish what so ever!

I remember when I was proud to show people my tank but now questions like "why is that fish flicking" and "errrr that fish is covered in salt" keep coming up now.

The ich arrived about 3 months ago and I am giving up!

Can anyone give me a massive lifeline? I need time and help from someone! I will do exactly what you tell me to do. I am up for anything! Please help me and my fish get back to normal!

put your head down and keep diggin

Certainly the Powder Blue and Yellow tangs can be notorious for contracting ich. Have you made any recent fish additions? If you failed to quarantine any new additions that failure can bring ich into the tank. Additionally, temperature instability or other stressing events can cause essentially dormant or low level ich to become active. It's almost impossible to have an ich free tank unless all fish are treated with copper or hyposalinity prior to introducing them into the display tank. In a tank with inverts, hyposalinity is your best bet, although I was not successful when I tried it because my salinity fluctuated too much. Others on this Board have had success with hyposalinity. I have tried the reef safe ich remedies and they don't work IME so don't waste valuable time/money on these. Your best bet would be to remove the fish, if at all possible, and treat the fish with copper in a separate tank and let the display tank remain fallow without fish for at least 60 days so that the ich parasite can die out. I had an ich problem in a F/O system years ago and I found that the only long term solution was quarantining all new fish additions with no exceptions. Good luck and don't give up. Ich can be beaten but it takes patience and some serious effort.

When did you introduce your tangs? 3 months ago?

have you tried a fresh water bath as long as the temp is the same what do you have to loose just a suggestion

Thanks very much for your invaluable advice.

The tangs went in last November and were absolutely fine until 3 months ago.

They are all eating really well and, touch wood, i have had no fatalities!

The tang goes for a week covered in a really fine white spot all over - more like an icing sugar covering really, then he is fine for a week or so then it is back again and that has gone on for nearly 3 months now and it is so demoralising after thinking that i have finally sorted it for good and then it comes back again!!

The powder was treated with copper about 6 weeks ago but again, unfortunatley, that only solved for the problem for a temporary basis.

I have corals and inverts and live rock. Can hyposalinity be used with those.

I have been advised to try fresh water dip but because they are all eating so well and seem to be living with it i am reluctant to try anything which may put them at any great risk until there seems like no other option.

I really am at my wits end - everything was going really well but this problem now seems to have gone on forever!!

Powder Blue Tangs are ich magnets... You weren't very clear if you quarantined all your fish before adding them. Unless you have a large pristine system and quarantine them for a while it's best just to avoid them. Should you end up losing all your fish from this just avoid fish like this in the future, quarantine everything, and you should have better luck.

Life ain't fair---I haven't lost a fish to ich in 20 years, and it's not because of my clean habits: I think it's because I mostly keep blennies and gobies and dragonets, which rarely get it. I did have a tang for a while, but had no outbreak. The only thing I could suggest is lower the bioload, feed very little, and figure that any fish that survives this tank right now is going to have some ich immunity---I'm fairly convinced that some fish do fend off the parasite, and once they have it and recover, they're less likely to get it again unless they're still carrying it from the last go-round. Stock only the little fish for a while, then work back up to a tang or two.

Yes everything is QT before getting into the display.

Have you tried treating the main tank with copper? Remove all of your invertebrates and pick up some copper treatment. It will be a huge setback but it sounds like too many fish have the disease to treat individually.

Also, how long did you treat with copper in the QT?

If you treat the main tank with copper, it will get into the cement and ruin the tank for any live sand or live rock, kill any future inverts, plus not be too good for the fish longterm. If you really want to break the tank down, do it with clorox and follow that with a strong dose of Prime or other chlorine neutralizer. That would sterilize the tank. Cooking the rock and getting new sand would start you up within 6 weeks with ich-free rock and sand.

I have corals (pulsing Xenia), inverts and live rock. Can hyposalinity be used with those.

no, I would not suggest hyposalinity. this is a tough one but my experiences with ich have been on and off an dI ve never done anything about it. It just goes away after the a while then comes back a year or two later. I suppose the common mentality on this is to make sure your fish are as healthy as possible and wait it out? It's what ive always done, and usually you wont lose fish from ich unless they are stressed. Well, thats been my experience, I dont want to start a debate about it.

Good luck!

Luis

I had an ich problem in my nano a little while ago. When I broke it down and put everything into my 90 gallon I didn't see it for a while. Then it came back. I finally tried "KICK-ICH". It is "reef-safe" or so the bottle says. At least I know there is no metals in it. I know that many are against treating your Display Tank with anything. But I decided that a few soft corals wouldn't kill me if I lost those. But losing the fish would. I treated as the instructions told me and the ich was gone in two weeks.

It was a last resort for me. And the stuff is about 25 bucks to treat 100 gallons each week.

I have not lost anything to the treatment and all fish are health again. I have also religiously been soaking my fish food in garlic too. I also feed my tangs "formula 2"

Hope it helps.

I got rid of ich in my tank by taking ALL fish out at once and treating them with copper in a quarentine tank. I left them in the quarentine tank for 6 weeks after the copper treatment to make sure the ich did not reappear. I think I read the life cycle of ich is 5 or 6 weeks. There has to be nothing in the display tank for the ich to feed off of for an entire life cycle. Any fish in the display=ich food, even if you don't see the ich.

The fish have been back in the tank for almost a year and ther have been no outbreaks since they were reintroduced. My fish purchases since then have been put in quarentine for about 6 weeks.

I had to battle ich a few times before I started to do it this way. I know it's very disheartening because it made me want to quit, too.

It is kind of a bummer to keep things in the quarentine soooo long, but I made the quarentine tank into a nice and simple little display tank. It's got a stand and light, HOB filter, a little sand, a few rocks and a pair of mollies (They like salt water too, just acclimate very slowly!) to keep it cycled all of the time.

Well, I know this was kind of wordy, but I'm just tryin' to help. Good luck with your fish!:)

How big is your disply compared to the size of your QT? You see I am a bit nervy about adding 2 tangs to a small tank with everything else for 6 weeks!

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9705376#post9705376 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Rijinals [/i]
[B]How big is your disply compared to the size of your QT? You see I am a bit nervy about adding 2 tangs to a small tank with everything else for 6 weeks! [/B][/QUOTE]

What's the worse that can happen?

Just buy a 33g tank, an aquaclear filter or take filter from your display if you got one.

Once the Qt has a bio filter put all fish in it for 6 weeks, doing hyposalinity.

Unless you do that and qt all fish with hypo/copper you'll always have ich.

get them all out...even the ones that don't have it. ALL of them. put them in two QT if you need to due to the size of the tangs. I had the same problem and it was actually really EASY to fix...you just have to be ready to WAIT. And when it's all over WAIT some more just for good measure...and them you can wait again one last time if you like.

Get the QT ready and make it all from new water and new seeding. It's a FOWOLR tank...so all it really needs is a bio-wheel filter that can handle the fishload. Once the QT (QT's) are ready, follow the list.
1. I mixed up a container (large enough to hold the biggest fish, one at a time here) of RO/DI water and added methyline blue till the water was tinted blue.
2. Net the fish...this can be impossible...but if you have to move coral and rock so be it...you'll have plenty of time to rescape, trust me.
3. After you catch one...put it in the fresh water dip. (again do this one at a time) Watch the fish the whole time and try to leave it in there for 3 min minimum and 5 min max. Strive for five but if the fish is distressed take it out after three. Watch the breathing.
4. once the dip is over put them immediately in the QT. all this is going to be a shock to them but times can be dire if the ich is bad. (you may notice that the ich is already lessened after the dip...many of the ich spores will burst due to the salinaty difference...remember the fish can handle it much longer than the ich)
5. WAIT. After all the fish are out. Wait...a long time...as long as you can, but AT LEAST 45 DAYS. a month and a half, and preferrably 2 months. durring this time the corals and everything in the tank should be kept as if nothing has changed. Keep up the water changes and do regualr routine maintenance to the main tank. Meanwhile keep a daily watch on the fish too...just check them and make sure they are feed and happy. You can treat in the QT tank too kick ich is good at this from what I hear. Bt water changes in the QT are important...you need to keep removing the spores from the water collum.
6. The ich will dissappear in teh main tank if left to run fallow for that long without fish. They simply have NO HOST...and will be gone. The life cycle will have been broken and they can be considdered removed from the main tank (for all intents and purposes, though there are always exception in reef tanks).
7. After the alloted time is up...the fish too should be ich free...if you keep up with vaccuming the QT tank bottom (bare bottom). If they are still showing...then keep waiting nad treating...the main tank will only benefit from the longer time frame. once the fish look clean...then do almost 100% WC in the QT tanks and wait a couple of more days and make sure that you don't see ANY MORE SPOTS a rise.
8. Once you are sure it's over...one last check on them should do the trick. Before you add them back to the main tank...mix up the RO/DI water and add some more blue if you like...and do one last FW dip. Move them from the FW dip to the main tank once again...and wallah. You shold be Ich free...

By the way this is also a great way to curb aggression. since the tank mates are all added back at the same time.

If this doesn't work then I don't know what to tell you. But waiting is the key. Casue it breaks the life cycle in the main tank and all the bad ich should die in there, allowing you to add the fish back to a ich free environment.

Good luck and PM me if you have any further questions. Ich is no reason to leave the hobby.

by the way do NOT FW Dip your inverts. remember I sid only move the fish...apparently hte ich can not use inverts as a host...so leave all those in the main tank. Besides most meds will kill them anyways.

What are your water parameters, that is my first question.

You can quarantine fish and try every trick, but if your tank isn't in the right place they are likley just going to get another outbreak of ich.

I agree with Loosebrew. If you keep your fish healthy it will reduce the chance that your fish will get ich in the first place and help them survive ich.

daveonbass, thank you for that! May be PMing you soon!

Everyone else, thank you to and see you in 2 months! Fingers crossed!

If the itch comes and goes then maybe you can try a vitamin supliment added to the fish diet. Like you said the fish are eating properly, maybe their immune system just needs a boost to help them beat off the itch and hopefully build up an immunity.
I have used pentavite [childrens vitamin drops] to help clear up itch on a blue tang I had, no scientific evidence it worked but the itch went away.

don't freshwater dip anything , it won't bother ich

i know i just posted this on the help my gf link but ill send it here to and maybe it will help...

i used kick ich (reef safe) and it worked fine for me.. i followed the instructions on the back and then after the bottle was gone i purchased more and add it in weekly.. after i get done qt'ing my fish before i put them in the main display i use fermaldahyde (not reef safe) so do it in a 5 gallon pale.. add in a couple of drops (directions on the bottle) leave the fish in for a couple of hours... takes the ich right away... p.s. make sure there is an air pump in the 5 gallon pale and sometimes you see lfs use it when they give you a fish its the blue stuff they put in the water.... the fermaldahyde works great... one fish looked like it had salt on it all over the place, never got ich again...

by the way... milan is going to win champions league against man u next round :-P