Treating ICH in a Reef with Proto Marin
 

Some of my fish are showing signs of ICH.
I have been cleaning my tanks and have stressed the fish.

Has anyone used and had success with Hikari ICH-X. The writeup on the J&L web site stated that it is considered reef safe.

Tom R

I have read it is not working for many many people, working for some others. I suspect that with out without it the outcome would have been the same for all these people so not worth it.

You didn't introduce anything...so the ich must have always been present. Left alone and unstressed, I assume your fish will settle back to the way things were before.

On Thursday Nov 11 I took my Atlantic Blue out of my Frag Tank and put him in with my other Tangs in my display tank. The addition of the Atlantic Blue did not cause any trouble at the time. My Majestic Angels are showing the greatest amount of ICH.

Tom R

If the fish are eating and swimming well don't worry, they will eventually kick it. My fish went through ick a year ago when I foolishly put my White Cheek in without quarantine. They went through a few cycles, about a week apart, then that was it.

I add some ground garlic to my food. Seemed to help.

Nothing that is reef-safe (including garlic, etc) will give you reliable, predictable results.

My cleaner shrimp take care of any ick I have incountered.

i had sucess with medic polyp lab in my reef system- also at J&L its a bit more, required two treatments of the recommended time, no losses, just my experience.

Well I can not just wait for all my fish to die. I have had many of them for from 5 to 10 years

I decided to give PROTO MARIN a try. I started the first dosage yesterday followed up with the second dose today. So far there is no detrimental effect on my reef corals however I have now lost 3 fish. Many of the remaining fish are already showing a lot more activity. I still have sign-es of ICH on some fish so I will continue with the treatments.

Lost so far

1 x Flame Angel
1 x Chevron Tang
1 x Eibli Angel

Tom R

If you're fish are dieing you need to get them into hypo salinity. Sh*tty job, but there's no other way.

Sorry to hear of your problems Tom. I hope you're able to save the rest.

sorry to here about your fishues Tom:sad:




+1....there is no such thing as a reef safe ick cure.....the the very principle is an oxymoron....the only way to rid the tank of ick is to quarantine and treat all fish and let the display tank go fallow for 8ish weeks

I agree.
I tried to ride out a bad Ich infestation and it cost me one of my favourite fish. I'm also convinced that if I hadn't removed all the fish and treated them I would have lost more. It seemed to me to be Ich as well as Marine Velvet as it killed very quickly. Quarantined them all for 8 weeks, treated with Cupramine for the 2 weeks and then hypo. Never lost any fish during treatment. It sucks, but so does losing fish.
Good luck Tom. I hope all goes well for you.

Well it has been a sad day.

To recap it was last Friday that my fish started to show the symptoms of ICH.
On Saturday Ich spots showed on half of my fish. As I did not have an extra tank I was unable to quarantine the fish. On Sunday I decided to use Proto Marin to treat my tanks and dosed the first dosage 2 ml per 100 Lt. On Monday I dosed the second dosage of Proto Marin of 1 ml per 100 Lt. On Monday I lost my first fish. Since then it has been a steady loss of fish. I have now lost 1/2 of my fish some of which I have had for over 6 years. The Proto Marin has caused some of the LAPS to close however the corals seem to show little effect of the treatments to date. I have some fish that are not showing any symptoms of the ICH and a couple that are still very active however they do show signs of ICH. At this point I would not say that the use of Proto Marin has shown any success. At least the corals are looking good.

Tom R

Since I read that ich will rid itself off of a tank in about 11 months or so, after about 10 generation, I am guessing you introduced something recently and that caused the illness.

I had a new blue tang in hyposalinity for 5 weeks because he had ich when I bought it and treated one week with paraguard while rising the salinity and no sign of ich even though the fish was very much stressed when first introduced in the DT. It's been 2 weeks and I am doing the maintenance in the tank and all and that stress the blue tang pretty much and no sign of ich. Ich does not appear out of nowhere and has to be brought in somehow.

Did you get new coral or introduced inything new recently?

Also seing how fast your fish die, I am not sure it's ich. Maybe velvet? Does ich kill that much and that fast?

You should get a quarantine tank set up at this point and use Seachem Cupramine. Not sure you will save the remaining fish if you don,t take the proper action. don't use cupramine with prime or any dechlorinator though, as this render the copper toxic.