General Ich Question

V

v320

I know this is a complicated subject, and there are many ?supposed cures? and cures that some feel are most effective, but I just want to see how many of you are currently battling this problem, or have battled it in the past.

How many if you have effectively delt with this problem successfully (have not had any reoccurrences), and what techniques you have applied?

Note: I have read the sticky above, and it makes a lot of sense, but I just wanted to get other opinions on this topic ? from different perspectives.
 
We had pretty good luck with the hypo/fallow treatment, last year. I had two infected tanks. After losing countless fish I decided to bite the bullet and do the treatment. Eight fish in all had survived the last outbreak, and seemed to have acquired complete immunity, but I couldn?t add any new fish without triggering an outbreak. I finally did trap and hypo the eight small fish in a 50 gallon tank. It was a grueling task, harder on the keeper than the fish I assure you. 1.009 SG temp at 85 degrees for seven loooong weeks. During that time I left the two reef tanks fallow, and then went for a full 8 weeks just to be safe. All went perfectly well. Well, almost. All of the fish survived the treatment and have shown no reoccurrence of the parasite now for over 4 months after the competition of the treatment

However, I did make a stupid mistake after it was all over. I bought two nems from a member who had crypt in his tank. I only QTed the nems for three days, because it was to my understanding that BTAs could not take a long qt period and also that they were not likely to harbor the parasite very long, if at all. I introduced the nems to one of the fallow tanks and began adding new fish to the other tank only after a careful QT period at 1.009. The tank with the carefully QTed fish has done extremely well, no reoccurrence whatsoever. That tank is even slightly overstocked now but all the fish are healthy and happy, as well as those that went through the hypo treatment.

On the other hand the tank that I put the improperly QTed nems into became re-infected. The infection was very light, but it IS THERE! I only have three fish in that tank now, and they are completely immune to crypt. But when I try to add anything new to that tank I get a small outbreak. I am now faced with going through the whole thing again, or just keep the three fish in that tank. The jury is still out on that decision.
 
I feel that I should add that I in no way blame the member that I bought those nems from. He gave me fair warning that the tank they came out of had been exposed to crypt. It was my decision to take a chance on the BTAs.

Which are, by the way, looking terrific.

8)
 
We've used hypo and the 3 day transfer method with good results. Everything gets qt'd now- coral in a fish fallow tank, and fish get hypo.
 
Thanks for the replies...


Interesting, so both the copper and the hypo have been effective for you?

Matt: How work intensive was the copper treatment?!

Everyone who has used the hypo : did any of you use Methylene Blue as a supplement?! How effective was that?! (I spoke to one individual that uses this and does a fresh water dip for every new fish addition to his tank (no QT ? just acclimation, a dip and in the tank), and has not had an outbreak. It may be luck, but I am not certain how effective Methylene is?). I think it may have a very small amount of copper in it?!

In all of your QT tanks, when doing the hypo, what is in the tanks? Do you run a skimmer? Do you just dip the fish daily in a bucket, or is the tank kept in hypo the entire time. Any live rock? and how often did you do water changes?
The reason I ask is ? I wonder how comfortable the fish are with just, say, PVC piping? And depending on the fish, I would make an assumption that there must have been some aggression from having to reestablish boundaries in the QT tank?

Sorry for all the questions ? just want to get the details of what has works ? but thanks!
 
What do you guys keep in the tank during hypo?!
Is it furnished at all?! I'm almost certain all of you keep them bare bottom, right?!
 
The one time I had what I would refer to as a serious outbreak was in Ohio and I had success with Kick-Ick. You'll hear all sorts of opinions and beliefs about using chemicals for it, how effective it really is etc, but going on my own experience either it went away by itself or Kick-Ick did the trick and had no ill effects on my system.

That said.. unless you can QT your fish, hypo and copper are not viable solutions as each will potentially wreck havoc on your tank. A QT is typically barebottom with a LR or two.. or large PVC for fish to hide and sleep in.
 
@v320 wrote:
What do you guys keep in the tank during hypo?! Is it furnished at all?! I'm almost certain all of you keep them bare bottom said:
We currently bring an animal home and introduce them to hypo immediately as the acclimation process and we keep our hypo-QT tank fully set up with extra rock, bed, and some extra PVC pieces to add 'interest'. We switch back/forth from normal salinity to hypo as needed. It's very easy to switch back/forth immediately now, but the first time you do it, you will have a large die-off/ammonia spike if you have much live worms/pods/etc in the rockwork and you drop the salinity to hypo level. If I started copper treatment again on the tank, I'd likely rethink some of the setup again,...but maybe not too. The Cupramine (copper) treatment is harder to stabilize/keep effective if you have rock,bed in addition to it leaching into the rock somewhat., but it sure makes the daily maintenance a no brainer if you already have a full bio-system available when you decide to QT/hypo.
As a side note, it's also been stated (by the Cupramine folks among others) that you can do hypo and copper simultaneously, and I've tried that with pretty disasterous results and I have serious doubts about an animal's ability to survive it based on the copper levels recommended and the hypo salinity. I lost an otherwise healthly (no spots on it, but other fish were in the same tank) powder blue tang within hours of attempting it at even 1/2 strength. I'd try to diagnose the ailment first and *if* it's something other than ich or in combination with it, copper may be you only choice. I'd personally try hypo first and *if* I had to use copper, bring them back to normal salinity. The problem with that approach is the time/stress to return to normal salinity is longer and can lead to death if the ich isn't knocked out/greatly retarded by the hypo itself. JMO

Doug
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The wise man always saves his decorations.... lol
Plus the tank probably looked more hospitable.

So when the fish are in hypo, how often do you change the water?

And Doug, did you adjust the salinity during QT, or did you get it to where you wanted it and kept in there until the remainder of quarantine (what about the water for changes, did you pre adjust that)? What about the rest of you?


On another note, I wanted to see how many of you believe that coral, and possibly live rock, should always be QT?d as well? A theory is, if you can contaminate a system by introducing a fish with ich (thus multiplying in the tank and possibly effecting all the fish), then why wouldn?t it be possible for the tomont (the ich that has left the fish to multiply on the substrate or possible a rock or coral), then ?hatch? and look for a host once its in your display? There could have been an infected fish in the coral tank where ever it came from.
 
I by far am no expert but my personal opinion and experience is just make sure the fish is eating.....
If he/she is eating normally, you've got nothing to worry about - it'll eventually shake it's parasites. one of my many blue tangs had a bad outbreak. All I did was feed the fish several times a day adding garlic to the food.... Ich is always going to be present in a tank, no matter what you do. Especially tangs- some days they'll be spotted, some days they wont.. Just a part of marine life.. I actually had damsels picking ich off of other fish Like I said, I'm no expert so take my opinion and advice just for that....


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Sorry, Marcus. I strongly disagree. It is very possible to have an ich free tank, but it is also very difficult to clear a tank completely of it once the tank has been badly infected. IMO I feel that it is pretty safe to say most people just live with it, replacing fish when they die. But you CAN cure a fish if you catch it in time, and you most certainly can clear it out of a tank. The sticky threads at the top of this forum tell you how, step by step. I have also given step by step treads on this as has Matt and Scott, and many others. It's really very simple.

You catch the fish, (all the fish)
You treat the fish with hypo salinity for 6 weeks.
You starve the ich out of your display during the same six week period. Eight weeks is better, but six at the very least.

I'm also reasonably sure the other two popular methods work, Transfer and/or Copper.

I've never tried these two methods myself, but a lot of well respected hobbyist say they work, so I'm sure they do. But for me the Three Day Transfer method seems to be a lot of trouble, and stressful on the fish, because you have to catch, and move them so many times. My gut feeling on copper is that is will probably kill the ich, but I think it is hard on the fish also.

I don't feel that any of the so called Miracle Treatments work or they would be better endorsed by the giants in the hobby. However, I have been reading about some reportedly good results from some of the Pepper based ich meds. This sounds almost plausible to me. We used to mix Cayenne pepper into bottom paint to pain the hull of out boats. This stuff irritates the snot out of the mucus membranes of most all of the critters that love to make a reef on the bottom of your boat, so I can see how it might do the same to the crypt parasite. I think this approach is kind of new, but it wouldn't surprise me if we have a breakthrough in this direction. I also believe this is one reason why the garlic helps. I think the parasite is actually repelled either by the scent, or by something in the chemical makeup of this herb.

But if there is ever a breakthrough in the hobby regarding this insidious parasite, it will be because of threads like this.

So, please keep us posted on anything you learn. Especially anything that seems to help, or more importantly, anything that harms livestock
 
@v320 wrote:
And Doug said:
We have added fish first and then over several days lowered the salinity, but it's such a pain trying to get the right amount of water out and replaced with an (everchanging) amount of RO each day to lower it 'X' amount (and oh btw...don't forget the pH changes that occur) that we've gone to just emptying a little more than 1/2 of the water from the normal saline water, refill it with RO, adjust the pH, and then start acclimating the fish to it in a bucket over the next 8-16 hrs. We've lowered some in about 6 hours once too and they seem to adjust to the 'lowered' salinity change fairly well. We bring them back up by simply adding salt to the water slowly over about 1 week. Since we leave the live rock/bed in the hypo, the bio bed does not seem to be disturbed by the massive change in salinity in such a short time (and we've even accidentally overbuffered/driven pH to 9.7 :shock: during the process without apparent ill affects altho we did correct it within a few hours). I'm quite amazed with the amount of variability the bio bed/wet-dry has tolerated without any apparent effect actually. After the fish are in and the salinity at 1.09, we just maintain the 1.09 with RO topoff over the course of the hypo/QT and make up new fresh 1.09 water as needed/wanted to replace for water changes. As long as you are not having to medicate anything except treat for the ich, it's then no different than your normal tank maintenance....just at a lower salinity. :)
On your second thought above, I feel you are *exactly* right on track; however, having said that, I do believe it's a gamble that *probably* doesn't hurt very often. First the ich would have to be attached to 'that piece itself'; Second, it would have to have not been 'knocked/brushed' off in the transfer process; Third, it would probably need to be highly/densely populated with the ich which isn't really likely from someone's otherwise 'healthly' tank; Fourth, as with ich in general, the density/size of the fish in the tank will also affect the likelihood/degree of infection depending on many variables. Having said that, I still *try* a short QT of a few days for most non-fish items that we add now, but *not* always. :?
HTH
Doug
Click to expand...
 
Great advice. Steven Pro in Reef Central forums does qt everything, including corals, inverts, live rock, in case of ich. I don't do that, however, as I am a little too lazy and don't have the lighting to qt corals.
I do, however, always have a tank set up and running with Bio filter working that I can quickly convert to qt if necessary. When I had my outbreak early on, I put all fish in a bare bottom 40 gal tank and checked levels of ph, salinity, amonia, nitrite, twice a day. The fish stayed there and the tank stayed fallow for 8 weeks. It is very hard. Make sure you're not going out of town when you do it and you have time to do extra water changes. I ended up doing a 1/3 water change twice a week to keep nitrates down. There was nothing in that tank but pvc pipe for the fish to hide in. They weren't very happy, but I didn't lose but maybe one or so. The hypo works and is the best but get mentally prepared for the work it will be.

By the way, the fish can drop from 1.025 ti 1.009 very quickly, just a few hours. The way up, though, must be much slower. An ich free tank is possible and worth it. Who likes to wake up and see those white spots on your blue tang? Not me.

Kay
 
After reviewing this post a few times, I think we have covered quite a bit, but what is the best method of keeping the pH up during QT, if hypo is used?.

I have "pH up," but I am not certain if that is the most accurate or safest way to stabilize pH during QT.

What are the methods most of you that have used during hypo in the past?

What about Seachem's Reef Buffer?
 
Scott - is there a ratio you use for the amount of water vs the amount of baking soda.

I've noticed with the pH up - when you use a test strip it reads a certain number (usually lower) and then if you test again a bit later, it reads higher. I assume it most probably depends on the amount of flow and how quickly the solution disperses in the entire body of water.
 
Yeah, I dose in 1/8-1/16tsp measures and come back an hour or so later and re-test. That's in my 20g, so I'd use a small amount and keep rechecking.
 
I used the baking soda part of the two-part recipe, which is basically baking soda baked for an hour at 300 and dissolved in water. I checked the ph with Aquarium Pharmeceuticals test every day, sometimes twice a day, and got a feel for how much was needed to keep the ph level constant. After some practice it becomes a lot easier. I think any buffer would work.

Kay
 
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