ICK - Murphy's Law No QT got ICK

H

Hankzilla

My two day old Blue Tang in the display tank has what I believe is ICK. The only fish in the tank with tiny white air bubble like bumps. I have read quite a few threads on it so I am going the hypo route if I can get him in the fish trap and in my NEW QT TANK. I am going to try Garlic treated foods also don?t know if this can help but it was mentioned. I also might purchase a UV someone mentioned it don't know if it's a good choice either.

I am worried that if he doesn't go in the trap he'll die in hiding and the parasites will transfer to a new host in my tank.
My basic parms where good so I may have gotten a little overzealous with adding fish without QT time. Got one now! 10gl

I guess my questions are if I don't get the fish out and he dies strong possibility the parasites will transfer to another fish? Should I try to get all the fish out and put into the 10 gl doesn?t seem possible? Should I try to setup a UV quickly on the display tank?

Thanks for any suggestions so far info that I have read has really made my tank very enjoyable.

Parms
salinity 1.026
nitrites 0
PH 8.5
Nitrates 0 - 2
 
blues tend to get them easily, i wouldnt uv the main tank, it can kill beneficial stuff, and now that ick has been introduced its likely to stay, it takes about 6 weeks to get rid of it when treating. I had my blue get it when i got her and i left her in because she was eating. no other fish got it and she was rid of it in a couple weeks.

good luck with it btw...
 
Was just reading the thread on 'Open Discusion on Quarantine Tanks' intresting topic with small quick QT tanks could do more harm. If I don't get him out I'll just keep using garlic to treat the foods maybe.
 
He doesn't have to die to transfer parasites to the other inhabitants, unfortunately. Chances are, it's already in the tank (or was there before he went in) so it's a personal choice about how much effort you want to put into it. Doing it 'the right way' is a pain in the backside, and has it's own risks.
 
There where no sites of ICK until today on the tang. Just added him on Saturday all the other fish had been in 2 weeks plus.
 
Hank:

You need to work quickly here. Trap the tang while he is still eating. Once he loses his appetite you will not be able to trap him. I would get him started on hypo as soon as possible and if the others are not showing any symptoms leave them be for now. The ten gallon QT is not big enough anyway and would do more harm than good to try and cram all your fish into it. Just feed your display fish with heavy does of garlic and Vitamins (Zoe or Selcon) for now but watch them carefully, and be ready to act quickly if you see more fish get it.

Get a sponge in your sump now, I would put two or three in there, because you will eventually need a bigger QT. It will take a week or so before these sponges will be any use to you. However, on the small 10 gallon tank you have now you can manage pretty good water quality with just water changes alone until your sponge is ready. Meanwhile I'd be looking around for at least a 20 gallon tank or the biggest QT you can manage. If your sig is accurate you have 7 fish. You might be able to pull this off with two 20s and the 10. I successfully Hypoed 7 fish in a 50, but they were very small.

Also pick up a couple of small bottles of TurboStart 900 . Get two small bottles rather than the bigger one. Once you open this stuff it goes bad very fast, and it's not cheap, but it will really help you keep those sponges activaly cycled. Once you get down to 1.009 you can use the freshwater formula, it's a lot cheaper. While you?re at the LFS pick up a bottle of Amquel-Plus and fresh reagents for PH Nitrite and Ammonia. Personally, I wouldn't even wory about testing trates. Just keep changing the water. But watching the trites closely will tell all. PH is the biggest problem. Make sure you have plenty of buffer on hand. I trust you DO have a refract.

The thing is, the other fish may or may not show any symptoms at all, but they have been exposed, and unfortunately Crypt is NOW in your display. Perhaps it was already there unviable and un-seen, and the tang just rang the dinner bell, so to speak. Regardless, it is there. Don?t be fooled into complacency.

On the bigger picture, even if you successfully treat your tang in the 10 gallon, odds are once you put him back into the display he will be re-infected, even if the other fish are not. The other fish will be slowly building immunity to the parasite while the tang is in hypo, but the tang will not have this advantage, so he will be a sitting duck for re-infection. The only way to do this right is to hypo all the fish and leave the display fallow while you do it. But first things first. Trap that tang while he?s still eating, and get HIS treatment started while planning your next move.

Be glad to help in any way I can. Feel free to PM or call me:

Good luck
We're all in this together
 
Mikel & Pat
Thanks for the very detailed procedure that's what makes this club great.

First off, the Tang is still in the tank two days of sitting holding a string on the trap door for at least an hour and a half with agea on a clip in it and no one went in the trap besides the cleaner shrimp. No other food added for those two days. Second, I took the 10 gallon tank back and got a 20 to set up. I'll use some refug filter material to help cycle in the hang on filter (hopefully that?s the same as a sponge?). Third I treated the frozen food the second day with garlic and fed the fish. I was honestly tired of holding the string for almost two hours (waaah).

The Tang now looks better than Monday when he was covered with dozens of the white spots and his skin had bumps also but not discolored. Now I can count the white spots about two or three and maybe one or two bumps. I hoping that a regimen of garlic treated food helps there immune system (I?m assuming). I?m starting to hate using the traps I'm probably doing it wrong, but it seems extremely simple to use. I had a hard time getting the damsels out after the cycle took a week and I finally took all the rock out of the tank to get the last one.
 
@Hankzilla wrote:
Do I assume correctly that there is no safe and successful way to treat the reaf for Ick? said:
That would be a generally correct statement. The only *proven* methods are hypo and copper...neither of which you could use in a normal reef setup. Many have had some success at feeding garlic foods and other helpful remedies, but the healing that occurs seems to be due to the fish's ability to fight off the parasite due to improved health,water,less stress,etc than any product's ability to stop/cure ich. That's why there is such a debate about ever having an truly 'ich free' tank.
Be careful and watch the tank *very closely* now as ich has a 'wax-and-wan' appearance to if often and makes us erroneously believe it's on the mend. After the parasites fall off to enter the next stage of reproduction, it *appears* the fish is better. If it's not a truly continuing decrease, it's just reproducing more and will likely get worse shortly. Good luck with them though.
Doug
Click to expand...
 
I concur with the above, No Reef safe Treatment. Also, beware this little ?He?s looking better period.? This is where the pathogen has become insidious in it evolution. The apparent state of remission after the first bout is often merely the proverbial calm before the storm. The parasite that recently covered your fish is now in the substrate making little progeny for future attacks. Don?t give up the trap. It?s not that hard. You just have to think like a fish.

Some fish are really smart, and they see exceptionally well. They can see you across the room with no problem. I had a Bursa trigger that was very hard to trap. Being the last fish, he was hip to the whole trapping scenario, seeing all his mates captured before him one at a time. Puffers and triggers are very bright. I think they can actually remember things, figure things out. But being a tad bit smarter than a fish, I finally out smarted him. After a couple of days without food he was hungry and would inch halfway inside the trap, only to dash out if he saw me approach the tank. I too got tired of holding the string. So I got a spool of sewing thread and tied it to the door of the trap and run it to a nearby bookcase and tied it off, then went into my office out of site. I watched the tank in a mirror. Once the trigger went for the bait I cut the thread, Got him! I was laughing my a$$ off as I carefully lifted the trap from the display and forgot about the tread on the door which pulled the door up an inch and the trigger swam right back into the tank laughing HIS A$$ off. I finally got him a few days later with this:

Fishing

With this method there is no need to sit there holding a string. This thread was written for the trapping of a Coral Beauty, but just cut the hole a little bigger and it will apply to catching a Tang as well.
 
Interesting...he read the thread but seems to be being PUSHED into it anyway....wonder how this will go for the tang....hes getting better....but i bet his stress level multiplies in the 10 gallon with a hunk of sponge...
and Ich IS in your aquarium now...but its in 95% of the people on this sites tanks too - it RARELY rears its head in a stable invironment...in the new POLL youll see MOST people battle it well naturally...
do what you think is BEST for the fishes chances for survival....
 
Yup, the tang will probably get the same "ich" signs when it is moved from the qtank back to the main tank. Our purple tang shows "signs" of ich everytime it gets stressed but garlic/selcon always seems to clear things up. Don't know how big the blue tang is but an empty 20Gal tank is not much swimming room for him. He will probably be pretty stressed and keep showing more signs. Since none of other fish are showing signs, I would stick with the Garlic / Selcon and what other vitamins you add to the food, and not move it to the hospital tank.
 
We'll I wasn't as smart as a Blue Tang, couldn?t catch him with out starving all the fish into feeding only from the tube fish trap. I tried three days and stopped when my fire fish disappeared (ick or stress from having the trap in the display tank?) I'll chuck that one up to the new tank, but the fire fish schooled with all of the small fish for a week until I used the trap, probably incorrectly. Well the tang is clean as of today. I'm using a couple of drops of Kent Zoe and garlic extreme on frozen mysis every other day seems to help. My tang and the fox face are best buds they swim in tandem constantly. I'll not thinking that I'm in the clear I'll just keep them as healthy as I can.

Thx for tips guys
 
I have dealt with it a few times and it always went away with proper feeding and water conditions.

I think trying to remove all of your fish in your main display is only going to make things worse. Chasing fish down or using fish traps is only going to weaken the immune systems of these fish from stress.

Putting one fish or all fish into a QT or Hypo situation is as likely to cause the situation to reoccur once reintroduced than leaving them all together.

I think there are two schools of thought on this matter and neither or bad I just don't feel that removing all of the inhabitants of an aquarium to quarantice is counter productive. Your going to deal with the same stressors once you place all of those fish or the sick fish back into the main display. Ich is everywhere whether it shows itself or not. I believe most fish naturally host it and stress and/or sick fish fall victim to it. Regal Tangs being one of the worst. They are one of the most nervous skiddish fish you will ever see in the hobby. I believe that makes the most vulnerable to the parasite. Catching and moving and then rereleasing the fish isn't going to help the situation.

I am not saying that anyones methods are bad ones I just don't believe that putting fish through the stress of QT and then putting them back into the system rids them or the system of the parasite. Once you've seen it in your main system it's there. Removing one or all fish isn't going to get rid of it. I've seen ich pop up in systems that haven't had a fish introduced for 2,3 and even 4 years. Obviously it had to be there the whole time.

Again I think there are many solutions to this common problem and no one person can really be right or wrong when it comes to dealing with it. I think we have all faced it numerous times and found different things to work.

I hope everyones Ich adventures end up well in the end.
 
Im SO glad the Tang is OK... I was hoping he would correct even though you were "after" him in his mind......BEST o' LUCK!!! now wait atleast 14 days before adding fish, and the next fish shouldnt be an ICH PRONE species and your on your way!!! congrats on a SAVED regal blue tang!!
(not easy to say the least!!)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top