Having had to deal with an ich outbreak myself recently, I will agree that garlic will not cure ich. I tried the easy "safe" methods for a couple of weeks with no success. I lost one fish and nearly another before I went the hyposalinity route. Fortunately for me the infection was in my FO tank, so I was able to do the treatment in it rather than having to move all the fish out. The only invertabrate that I had in there was a large common hermit crab which is currently living in the sump of my reef tank. The hyposalinity appears to be working, there have been no ich for the last five weeks. Friday will be the six week mark for the treatment, after which I will be raising the salinity back to normal. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that it has been erradicated.
The thing that I found hard to understand was the fact that the last fish I had added to the tank was over nine months prior to the first signs of the outbreak. I now have a quarantine tank and will be using it for EVERY fish that goes into any of my tanks, and hyposalinity will be the order of the day in it. I plan to continue using garlic as well as an ongoing preventitive measure.
Lesson learned the hard way.
__________________
I retired and got a fixed income but it's broke.
Ed
_______________________________________
50 gallon FOWLR, 10 gallon sump.
130 gallon reef, 20 gallon sump, 10 gallon refugium.
10 gallon quarantine.
60 gallon winter tank for pond fish.
300 gallon pond with waterfall.
|