Alright guys i need some help

[Mac Inger]

here is the story.

After having tried all possible "remedies" to the ich in my tank (lfs sold me cleaner goby,wrasse and shrimp in the beginning when i didn't know better, garlic and selcon, good diet, melafix and pimafix, uv, water changes and aggressive skimming, praying and screaming). I still can not get it under control.
Tonight i am breaking down and setting up a hospital tank. I have a 20 gallon glass previously freshwater or 29 gallon rubbermaid container.

Fish load :
1 4 inch Koran Angel
1 2.5 inch yellow tang
1 1.5 inch blue tang
2 1.25 inch chromis
1 2 inch Heniochus diphreutes
1 firefish


first question : Hyposalinity or copper ? I have Cupramine and some Copper test kit already but will go get a Salifert copper test just in case. Hyposalinity will probably be easier, but im afraid of the hypo resistant ich strains...?
second question : will the 20 gall be ok ? or should i just use the rubbermaid ?
third : I need to leave town saturday and sunday,...will that be too risky ?

and last if anybody has nothing to do and feels like helping, advice, come hang out and point me to some mistakes i will be sure to stock up on beer and whiskey : )

My ears are all open...be a mentor, help the noob out.

[rykwong]

I honestly think that the best way of getting rid of ick is to create a stress-free environment for the fish. All those things you have tired would be the other things that everyone here would recommend. Keep in mind it's always a hit or miss with those things. My buddy Yinger has a cleaner wrasse that continuously cleans his PBT which always has little spots of ick. Others have a couple cleaner shrimips which does all the work. As long as you have a big enough tank for those type of fish and good water quality then that's the best you can do. If you have two huge tangs in a 20gallon and they're fighting, no matter what you do they're going to either kill each other or die from ick.

Rich

[Mac Inger]

Rich,..i have been reading every single paper on ich and parasites on the web.
From everything i have read, a stress free environment is great but it only helps to help the fish get immunity or partial immunity. This might or might not happen. And still leave you with ich in the tank. Or inside the fish where you cant see it.

Cleaner wrasses do not apparently feed on crypto. I have cleaner shrimp too and crypto is not in their diet. They do however pick at the fish. I think the only thing theyre doing there is scratching the fish and eating dead tissue,..nothing more.

This all happened because i didnt quarantine as the noob i was. It is not scientifically proven that anything but hyposalinity or copper will cure ich. I have tried all other methods and nothing. Sad but true.

My tangs are still small...i know 20 gall would be really crammed though......open to ideas

[Mac Inger]

btw i am also adding beta glucan to the food to help the immune system...not helping so far

[Jar*Head]

I feel your pain buddy. Sound like a new tank syndrome. YGPM

[Yinger]

Originally posted by Mac Inger

Cleaner wrasses do not apparently feed on crypto. I have cleaner shrimp too and crypto is not in their diet. They do however pick at the fish. I think the only thing theyre doing there is scratching the fish and eating dead tissue,..nothing more.

Hmm... that's interesting because my cleaner wrasse loves my pbt. He doesn't touch the purple or any other fish since they are ick free. I've had my powder blue for close to a year now and if it weren't for my cleaner wrasse, he would have been dead 2 weeks after introducing him to my tank. Once in a while, the pbt will be completely ick free and after a few weeks a few spots show up again. Also, my cleaner shrimps are all over the fish. If cleaner wrasses or shrimps don't eat anything but dead tissue, why do fish swim up to them and allow themselves to be cleaned? Rich is right, he's seen my tank plenty of times and watched the fish swim up to either the wrasse or cleaner shrimps and just lift a fin and let the wrasse or shrimp go to work. But also, like he said, its hit or miss... but for me, if a fish gets ick, i just leave it alone and let it fight it off on its own.

[Mac Inger]

Yinger,...thats exactly what my fish are doing,..they do go to the cleaning stations of the wrasse and the shrimp. They have been doing it for more then a month now. The shrimp and the wrasse do their jobs,...but it hasnt stopped the ich.

All i am saying is that from the "scientific" papers i read online, crypto is not a part of a cleaner shrimp diet. Ich is external and internal. Cleaner shrimp cant clean the internal.

It looks like you pbt has partial immunity. A mature tank like yours im sure helps. My infestion is pretty extreme though. I have a couple of fish with upwards of 50 spots on them.

[Jar*Head]

Originally posted by Mac Inger
Yinger,...thats exactly what my fish are doing,..they do go to the cleaning stations of the wrasse and the shrimp. They have been doing it for more then a month now. The shrimp and the wrasse do their jobs,...but it hasnt stopped the ich.

All i am saying is that from the "scientific" papers i read online, crypto is not a part of a cleaner shrimp diet. Ich is external and internal. Cleaner shrimp cant clean the internal.

It looks like you pbt has partial immunity. A mature tank like yours im sure helps. My infestion is pretty extreme though. I have a couple of fish with upwards of 50 spots on them.

Talking about 50 spots of ich . You should see my purple tang and Chevron tang when i first add them into the tank. The purple turn light blue with TONS of ich. BTW, both of my fish got scars from that incident...... But they all healthy and fat now. (No meds for my fish ).

[mope54]

As far as I know, unless salt is different than FW in this regard, ich is *always* in your tank. There are no cures that can eradicate ich permanently from your tank. At best, you may of had the rare case of it never being introduced to your environment but that is long past now.

The only way to "control" ich is a stress free environment, good immune systems, and cleaners.

I was curious about the tank load, too. But if I read your sig correctly these fish are actually in a 140gal right? I'm not sure what a qt tank would do for you given that all of your fish need treatment at this point.

Originally posted by Mac Inger
Rich,..i have been reading every single paper on ich and parasites on the web.
From everything i have read, a stress free environment is great but it only helps to help the fish get immunity or partial immunity. This might or might not happen. And still leave you with ich in the tank. Or inside the fish where you cant see it.

Cleaner wrasses do not apparently feed on crypto. I have cleaner shrimp too and crypto is not in their diet. They do however pick at the fish. I think the only thing theyre doing there is scratching the fish and eating dead tissue,..nothing more.

This all happened because i didnt quarantine as the noob i was. It is not scientifically proven that anything but hyposalinity or copper will cure ich. I have tried all other methods and nothing. Sad but true.

My tangs are still small...i know 20 gall would be really crammed though......open to ideas

[Jimbo327]

How long you planning to keep the fish in QT? The ich is still in your main tank, so you probably have to keep the tank fishless for awhile.

[Mac Inger]

Hey guys thank you for all the ideas. Please keep em coming

Reefer expect a pm any second : )

mope : Ich is not always present in the tank. It is a parasite. It comes in with the infected fish. If you leave your tank fishles for 8 weeks you will have an ich free tank (ich needs host to survive).

Basically its life cycle is : Get on to fish, drop on the sandbed to reproduce then reinfect the fish. If it doesnt have any fish to go back to it will just die off after a certain time. Increasing the temperature to about 81 will speed up the cycle.

I bought a UV with this in mind. When the parasite falls off the fish it can be swept through the UV and killed. The only problem is the time it stays waterborne is very short so its almost impossible to kill all the floating parasites in the tank. This i learned after shelling 400 dollars for the UV sterilizer.

Garlic and beta glucan will help with the fishes immune system. So will good water quality.

Now the question here is : Is the hospital tank really worth the stress to the fish ? Moving them and treating ? They might die from that, but they might also die from the ich (i have killed 5 so far)? Also difficult to keep ph etc stable in qt.

Just like reefer and Yinger,..its absolutely possible to have ich under control and have a successful tank. The fish basically deal with it. But that doesnt mean there is no ich in the tank. Now the question is to eradicate ich with hospital treatement or leave it and hope for the best ? I have been doing the later for 1 month and a half now and nothing has gotten better....

[Onesaltydawg]

I have read these posts time after time and finally I think I would like to add my two cents... What happens when we get sick or ick for fish... Our natural immune systems starts kicking in like our antibodies...while this sometimes works we then go to the doctor for antiboitics...Yet these do not cure us but kick start our antibodies to work harder to make us well...I have had outbreaks of ick on a couple of fish in the past and rather than stress them out by trying to catch them for a hospital tank, I let nature takes it's course...It may take a little longer but in my honest opinion it works out best for the fish. I further believe that when these fish get ick in the wild there is not a copper, hyposalinity or medicine fairy that sprinkles the sick fish with fairy dust. Let nature take it's course and make sure water params., stress free environment and flow are present.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor nor claim to be one. I am merely giving my two cents on how I have taken care of this type of situation in the past and my fish are fat and healthy.

[rykwong]

This thread needs to stay at top since the ICK topic continuously comes up.

[skairik]

I have found, through personal experience, that the proper use of ozone is a proven method to control/eradicate ich and other pathogenic parasites sometimes found in an aquarium's water column. Ozone does not effect ich on the fish itself.

When dealing specifically with ich, however, the thing to remember is that what must first be identified and corrected is the underlying root cause of the ich. More often than not ich manifests itself due to fluctuations in water chemistry, up to and including temp swings that are in excess of 3 degrees or more and which continue for more than a week.

It can also be introduced via a new fish already infected, which is what I dealt with when I replaced my Powder Blue tang after it died from the Medussa worm getting shredded in my overflow box (yeah, those worms are very toxic) With that said, ozone is not a cure-all and unless the root cause(s) is/are remedied then there is a strong likelihood that ich will continue to plague the aquarium.

[sandman450f]

I have to agree with Onesaltydawg on this one. You however must note that ich is prevalent in the wild, and to a small degree in our tanks. Every new rock coral or livestock has the possibilty of bringing in a encysted tomonts which will release the infection.
Fish do not develop an immunity to Ich, however their natural defenses protect them from small amounts so long as they arent stressed. Other items such as a UV sterilizer or even the use of garlic, and cleaner shimps++ can and do help. Now that being said if you introduce a fish that is heavily infected there is a good chance that others will develop the infection as well. However if all your fish of a variety of species are infected you have something creating a less than ideal enviroment and that needs to be corrected. I am sure you have heard it before, but will say again, any amount of ammonia or nitrite will severely affect the ability to fight off infection. High / Low temperature, rapid swings, Ph problems and high Nitrates will also do this, among a host of other things. There could be contaminates you dont test for. Household cleaners, air fresheners( Glade plug in is the same room as ur tank?), whpo knows, could be anything, but its buggin the fish.

You consider moving these to Q, however all fish are infected. It doesnt appear you keep corals, So I either would just make sure water quality is the best possible (lots of w/c) and let it be, or would remove all inverts or all I could find and treat the entire tank, still with lots of w/c.

[mope54]

Originally posted by Mac Inger
mope : Ich is not always present in the tank. It is a parasite. It comes in with the infected fish. If you leave your tank fishles for 8 weeks you will have an ich free tank (ich needs host to survive).

Basically its life cycle is : Get on to fish, drop on the sandbed to reproduce then reinfect the fish. If it doesnt have any fish to go back to it will just die off after a certain time. Increasing the temperature to about 81 will speed up the cycle.

I'm well aware of what ich is.
I don't know why you felt the need to dispute what I claimed based on a semantic point...unless you're going to run a fishless tank, it's not particularly relevant to the discussion that fishless tanks may be ich free.

What if I stated we always have staph on our skin so keep your wounds clean and you replied that in a sterile environment, staph will not be present? Now unless you intend to swab yourself with alcohol every minute or live in a bubble, that reply doesn't have any practical application. It merely misses the point I and a number of other people are saying to you that:

Ich is not a problem, it's a symptom. Figure out why your fish have become vulnuerable to this parasite that has been in the tank far longer than you noticed.

What do you hope to gain by qt'ing your fish?
Yes, you will be able to wait until the ich dies in your main tank, but you can't eradicate it from your fish in qt. When you bring them back to the main tank, you will reintroduce ich to the tank.

A QT tank will do two things: 1) stress your fish even more thereby endangering them further and 2) not address the underlying problem in your main tank

The reason why you are losing fish is not because of ich, it's because you have an underlying problem that is suppressing your fishes' natural immune systems.

BTW, I didn't see it, so have you tested your water parameters?
And if so, what are the numbers?

[Mac Inger]

I agree with you guys that anything that will stress the fish, will not help, but having perfect parameters in a wel established aquarium still doesnt get rid of the parasite right ?

Another issue that i have with working towards letting the fish themselves deal with the crypto is : what about new livestock ? For example i always wanted an Achilles Tang. My fish are dealing with ich (assuming they will), what about the new guy ? The Achilles ?

[sandman450f]

Mope's point is pretty clear, however, even simpler: Dont' just target the ich for treatment, target the underlying problem that is allowing the ich to become a problem.

Another way of saying it is just because ich is in or introduced into your tank doesnt mean your fish WILL become infected, and if all parameters are ideal, they won't become infected.

To put it into a practical example, Hippo Tangs AKA ich magnets, will develop ich if water parameters are not correct, if they do not have a proper diet or if they are stressed. This CAN occur on a Tang that you may have had for months, with no sign of illness, and without the introduction of any new livestock. While theroetically it is possible to have a tank with none of the ich protozoa's within it, don't count on it. We likely all have Cryptocaryon to some degree present in our systems.

[TrojanScott]

In my experience, I've either lost a fish to ich, or it's fought it off. I've tried copper, but sometimes, the stress of catching the fish, putting it in a smaller tank, stressing it out more, etc, I wonder if it does more harm than good.

There will be people that say there is no evidence, but there have been threads about using crushed ginger, (like for cooking) in the fish food. I've done this when my blue tang gets a couple spots, (nobody else does) along with Selcon, and he's just fine.

Ich's a tricky subject. I know the only "proven" method is copper, yet to me, by the time I catch the fish, put it in a smaller tank, etc, it's just worse for the health of it. Now, if you have a rather large second tank you can do that with, and can catch the fish relatively easy, that's a different story. For most of us though, that's not the case.

Try ginger, can't hurt.

[sandman450f]

Originally posted by Mac Inger
I agree with you guys that anything that will stress the fish, will not help, but having perfect parameters in a wel established aquarium still doesnt get rid of the parasite right ?

Another issue that i have with working towards letting the fish themselves deal with the crypto is : what about new livestock ? For example i always wanted an Achilles Tang. My fish are dealing with ich (assuming they will), what about the new guy ? The Achilles ?

Definatley do not introduce any new L/S into that environment until you SEE no trace of the disease present. No doubt your system is heavily infested.

[Mac Inger]

Mops, I am at work right now and will test parameters again when i get home. I am not trying to be stuborn, just trying to have a conversation. I appreciate all of your comments and am trying to make the best decision listening to you all.

But from all the research i have made i dont think i agree with you. Ich is not a symptom, its a problem. The parasite DID NOT exist in my tank. It was brought in via an infected fish then spread to the others. It was a maroon clown. Before him everything was fine.

By qting the fish i am hoping to kill he parasite on the fish. Then leave the tank fishless for 8 weeks until the parasite dies in the tank. Then reintroduce my fish back. Thats it,.. no more ich.

I agree with you that the qt process will stress the fish and might kill them. BUT i would be effectively dealing with the underlying problem. The ich itself. If my parameters had been out of whack (i dont think so) but i didnt have ich in the tank,..that would have stressed my fish, but it wouldnt make them get ich out of nowhere.

[sandman450f]

Your fish may be too far infested to be able to fight it off, that being said, no, perfect water paremeters NOW may not be enough.

If you observe it getting worse, I would copper the whole tank. If you Q them, you increase the risk of killing them. You have to weight the tradeoff yourself. there is no quick fix, risk Q'ing and leave display fishless for whatever the specfied life cycle is, or Copper the whole tank and hope you can clean it out enough to keep hermits and what not.

If you can go a couple months after it clears up without any signs of new infection Then you can add that Achilles

[Mac Inger]

Scott,...i did actually read about the ginger. I have the article saved somewhere. That is one of the things i havent tried yet. Good call.

Sandman,...i definitely wont be introducing anything new. Although the ich can still stay in the fish /system even if you dont see it,...right ?

Cant risk copper in the tank. I want corals eventually. I have my lighting on order. If it comes to that i would prefer to risk the fish then the tank.

[sandman450f]

Originally posted by Mac Inger
Scott,...i did actually read about the ginger. I have the article saved somewhere. That is one of the things i havent tried yet. Good call.

Sandman,...i definitely wont be introducing anything new. Although the ich can still stay in the fish /system even if you dont see it,...right ?

Cant risk copper in the tank. I want corals eventually. I have my lighting on order. If it comes to that i would prefer to risk the fish then the tank.

I could be wrong, but from what Iv'e seen, and from what I've been told by people much more knowledgeable than me, Yes count on it, it's there even if you dont see it.

[Mac Inger]

Thats what every paper and topic on the subject says at least.....btw Sandman YGMP but your mailbox is full