Fighting Ich Sucks If You Can't Catch Fish
 

As it sez I'm in a losing battle with Ich in my tank and I can't seem to beat it down......
All Suggestions Welcomed!


Sent Via The Pirate Ship...

Herbtana really worked for me in the past. After that I hooked up a UV light and it was gone in the next couple of months or so. What are you doing so far to beat it down?

Garlic extreme, I drop per gallon a day and in there food has always worked for me.

What have you tried? I soak any food in Selecon & garlic but for medications I would try Polyp Lab Medic, it's worked for me.

I'm one of those that prefers to use Hypo salinity in a QT environment

Yes, catching fish sucks, but there are many methods that work;
You can try trapping, netting at night while they are sleeping, and lowering your water level, to name a few

You asked for suggestions;

1 - remove all fish from tank and QT in Hypo, all the while your DT is kept fish-less for 9 weeks to starve the MI

2 - DT is fish-less as in suggestion 1, but treat your fish in QT with a more drastic approach, using copper-based medications in the QT, but there are long-tem effects on fish health associated with copper, and it's hard to monitor the correct levels

3 - use garlic, herbtana, or other stuff in your DT and see what happens

Many peeps have had success with with option 3
I haven't had to deal with it yet in my DT, so I can't give you personal experience, but I don't believe in it either ...
Fish health and immunity in dealing with MI, and concentrations in your DT, has some part in dealing with MI, so again, I won't rule out option 3, but it's not my choice
Concentrations of subsequent generations of MI can become very large in a glass box very fast ...

Eg: - in my 20g QT, a Royal Gramma had a couple spots on day 2, many spots on day 3, no spots on day 4, and then was totally covered on day 7 !!!

I QT all my new fishies, and have had MI in my QT ( the Gramma ), so I always keep them in QT for observation for at least 6 weeks
OK, ya, I only held my Foxface for 3 weeks in the QT, but knock-on-wood all was good with him :wink:

My tank appears to be MI free, so I am loving my QT ...


Good luck with whatever you try :wink:

I could not agree more, been very successful for me

Can't QT- no chance besides tearing the tank down, and that won't happen either.
How low can you go with corals present?


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Pretty sure you can't...

Is the fish eating when you feed it?

If it is, don't worry about it, it'll overcome it on it's own.

My achilllies had ich for like 4 months. Never did anything but feed it. It's all good now

Yeah I'm in the same boat, my tall tank makes it impossible to net fish. Trap has only worked once for me, and I will not sacrifice my corals.

I found that as long as they are eating (I soak everything in Garlic & have strong UV filter) then they will come around.

I personally think that the stress of hunting down and netting one particular fish to put him in QT gives the fish worse chances of survival then just feeding garlic. 2 out of 2 times when I cought fish with Ich and moved them to QT and started copper treatment the fish died in QT (and yes my QT setup was good and I dosed copper very carefully).

I would not say for sure that if the fish is eating that Ich won't kill it.
I don't believe that to be true at all.
it also depends on the parameters on your tank and if anything is stressing the fish.
In a stress free environment with good water quality, fish will typically overcome ich.
and corals will not survive hyposalinity nor will any inverts
best bet is try to ride it out, feed garlic and try to give a stress free environment and good water parameters as much as possible.
good luck
Nesl

I killed more fish in qt than I've lost to ich so I don't qt my fish. It is playing with fire as there are more serious diseases that will wipe out your tank by introducing a sick fish to your dt. Some will tell you it's a matter of time and it will happen.

I chose the garlic and selcon combo myself and have not lost anyone yet. I used herbtana once, didn't seem to do anything.

Chasing a sick fish will stress it and it's tank mates and make its recovery that much tougher. if you are going to put in a hospital tank to treat, you'll need to put all fish in as well and leave the dt fallow for a min 6-8 weeks to rid the ich from the tank. Treating one fish then returning is pointless as ich will still be in your tank.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do

Until one day you will get marine velvet and wipe all your fish gone bye bye.

I cannot understand how someone can manage to kill a fish in quarantine...The QT must be setup so that it is comfortable for the fish and water quality must remain good. Not hard at all to do with a tank and some liverock.

I never lost a single fish in quarantine and I quarantine all my fish no exception.

I had a cleaner wrasse for 2 months in QT, as well as a copperband butterfly and a leopard wrasse...(on different occasions) those are not easy fish yet they went through quarantine easily. Some needed treatment for parasites, others were just on observation and preventive treatment with Paraguard and prazipro.

I took this time to make sure they were healthy and eating well.

How can a fish die in quarantine and would not die in the main tank? that either mean that the QT is not setup properly or the fish would have died anyway because it is too sick.

Is this a typo? Dont you have a 150G tank?

This is how I killed my fish

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...t=78733&page=6

I continued until there were 2 left, 1 chromis and 1 cardinal. By this time I was a mess, stressed my family and ready to quit the hobby. I'm sure I didn't have the qt set up properly and had nothing to do with the condition of the fish, excepting the coral beauty. The fish were all fine until they went in. After 6 1/2 weeks the 2 went back in the dt, the chromis ended up with lympho and died a few weeks later. I still have the cardinal. Due to this experience, I dismantled the tank and said never again. My earlier post clearly acknowledged the risks involved with not qting. I still have the tank and equipment but do not plan to set it up....ever

Ok that's probably because you had ammonia in there and you also used copper. Copper is really toxic, so that is probably what killed your fish, not the quarantine itself.

And they must have been pretty sick if you went on with a copper treatment (very harsh). I would never use copper unless there is a positive ID for marine velvet. Other parasites are easy enough to treat without chimical for ich or with mild chimical for brook (Paraguard).

You should probably learn from your mistake and next time do it the right way. Do not use any medication unless it is necessary and use a good quantity of liverock in your quarantine tank and you won't have problem. Surely beat killing of the fish from a nasty introduction or parasites.

Yes nice catch, it's actually 1 drop per 10 gals total water volume & my tank is closer to 225 gals with sump.

I understand what you are saying and agree the copper and my inexperience at the time was not a good combo. I did have someone help with the set up and treatment who was doing the same thing. He was documenting his qt methods at the time which I followed, plus we chatted at least once a day. I was not successful, he was, at the time he had 2 moorish idols in his qt, dosing with copper and they both live happily in his tanks.

I learned that everyone has opinions on how to do things and even in this thread, theres those that qt and those that dont. The biggest thing I learned is I need to do what I am comfortable with and decide what works best for my fish, family and my sanity. Both my tanks are stocked with fish so it is not reasonable for me put 20 fish in a 10 gl qt.

The op needs to decide what is best for him.

I've never told anyone not to qt, I've only said what I do to keep my fish healthy, everyone has their own decisions to make.

With a huge mix bag of reviews and opinions, all of which are great, I think I'm going to ride out the storm as it be.

The loss of fish has be severe and at this point I don't believe there is anything short or total tear down that would help. Not to say that many fish didn't survive but it killed many too fast to control it.......

Big water changes, syphon sand (as I only has 1-2" in display), make sure rock work stay clean as well. Frequent equipment cleaning, raise the temp, and pray to the fish Gods that all will get better


Sent Via The Pirate Ship...

if Ich is killing fish that fast, i would say there maybe something wrong within your tank.. either stress or water parameters.
or it is another disease - brook or velvet can look similar
velvet can wipe your tank out very fast
if it is velvet, waiting it out will not work..every fish in your tank will pretty much be dead.
but if they are already showing excessive signs it is too late to treat anyways.
sucks ass when you start having such losses
if you do lose all your fish, make sure you don't put any fish in there for at least 2 months or you could very well go through the exact same thing.
good luck

That sounds pretty horrible!!! Agree it sounds like something other than ich. Are you able to take pictures of the affected fish so that someone can offer a solid diagnosis? Or describe what you are seeing on the fish?

+1. Velvet can look very similar to ich and a lot if people do mistake it for ich. As said, velvet can kill fish very rapidly. Do a forum search for velvet and you'll find lots of experiences on the matter.


______
Sent from the future on my iPhone 10 using Tapatalk

5 chromis fine and alive, leopard wrasse fine and alive, Mandarin Goby still great, Majestic Fox Face few spots but swimming and eating great, pink anthis doing well.....

Half my fish doing good....?


Sent Via The Pirate Ship...

this is just my opinion but i dont think your tank was mature enough to make the fish feel comfortable is my theory, from what i read you started with all dry rock(100%) only 1 month ago ??


in order for fish to feel comfortable and not stressed their surroundings have to be what they usually are use to.

so with dry rock not even one month old chances are you dont have a large supply of vegetation and natural food?? theres pprob not an abundance of clean up crews like stars or pods.

nitrifying bacteria is one thing but in order to complete the loop and make it workable there needs to be some life present.



i had this talk a while ago with someone about a 6line wrasse, for example your usual wrasse hunts all day , while it may take prepared foods it still hunts.

when it cant find food or even see food available it creates a panic(fish dont know what we know) as they freak out and look harder for food and none is there they start to stress.


i dont believe in that if you feed a fish lots he will fight ick i believe that food heps but doesnt guarantee it , the more a fish stresses the worse it gets.



i would do the same as you now and wait it out , i wouldnt even necessarily wait for a fallow period i would look more into adding things to make it more of a full enviroment.



i took some fish the other night off a friend there were 4 of them , they were covered in ick , the next day after being in my growtank not a spot on any of them i didnt even have a chance to feed them , in fact my tank is now over populated as i added 14 fish last week from someone elses set up so were talking almost 20 fish in a 50g tank in a span of one-two weeks while some were badly sick.

all the fish are fine now with no ich visible , the only thing i figure like i have for years is besides food you need to give them the full enviromnt they are used to in nature.

im not saying its not possible that you could have introduced marine velvet only you would know that but im saying that maybe theres a small underlying issue that is working against you.

good luck buddy im sure youll pull through this it happens to us all and once your over this small hump things have to get better right?:)



cheers

Maybe...
Dry rock and sand yup in the display.
2x sumps, one refuge for Algae and plenty of cocopods, second sump is both Algae and live rock from my original set up (3years old n super clean and purple)
I'm vigilant on water perimeters and changes and spot tons of good ole buggies on the rock n glass.

(One odd thing was the explosion of bristle star fish in the refug, thousands of babies on the glass. Must have spawned)

All my corals are doing Amazing so perhaps it's Velvet.... Hope the @$*> not !

But still many fish alive......

Thanx Deny


Sent Via The Pirate Ship...

glad to hear some are going to make it,besides the spots on the fish how are their colors?? faded like velvet??

i hope its not velvet if it is then you need to get the fish out but if its just ick you have a much better chance on beating it.

if it comes down to it and only you will know if it needs to happen ....you can drain the display to catch the fish, or use a hook and go fishing.


good luck buddy:)

Colors are good- my fox face is shy but otherwise things look ok....

Few more days if anyone dies I'll catch em all!


Sent Via The Pirate Ship...

ich can kill that fast and that bad as well. People always think that ich is something mild but it can burst into plague proportion if the conditions are right and kill everything as well as any other parasites.

Of course the only way to be sure is to do a scrape and ID the culprit under a microscope.

This should always be done before any treatment is started as the treatment is very different for ich, velvet or brook. Copper won't kill brook efficiently but formaline will.

Formaline won't kill velvet fast enough.

Chloroquinine will kill pretty much everything safely, if you can find it and treat in QT.

One thing is for sure, if one does a proper quarantine on all fish, then never ever will that person have to deal with any parasite. Peace of mind.

You can also go to the grocery store and purchase garlic puree. I used that and just mixed a bit in with their food. As long as they are eating, they will be fine. Most smaller fish are fairly immune to ich all ready so that explains why they are all alive. Foxface are also very tough fish and will survive no problem. It is really tangs, angels, etc. that have a harder time fighting it off. Just keep them eating. If they are not, then it is time to move them as soon as possible, if you can....

A bottle trap tends to work if you need to catch a fish. Cut the back end off a gallon jug, poke a couple holes through the end piece and the jug and put a rod through it. I use acrylic rod. That allows the cut off piece to swivel open and closed. Leave the trap in there for a day without touching it. Next day put some mysis in there and eventually fish will swim in there and that's when you swivel the trap shut. It took me 5 minutes to build one and I caught the fish I wanted out in about a day.