Help needed! Whats this?

[pangking]

Hippo Tang, got some white spots on his body 2 days ago. Is this Ich? What do I need to do? Will it heal on his own? The fish looks doing ok.

[Flash]

looks like ich.. do ou have a cleaner shrimp in your tank? are thereother fish in your tank? I believe there are treatments you can get at most LFS

[pangking]

Originally Posted by bean

looks like ich.. do ou have a cleaner shrimp in your tank? are thereother fish in your tank? I believe there are treatments you can get at most LFS

Thanks for your quick reply. There are 2 cleaner shrimps and some fish. Tank only 5 weeks old.

[fkshiu]

Yes, it does look like ich. Before somebody tells you to feed him garlic or dose Medication X please understand that the only two methods proven to actually KILL the ich parasite: hyposalinity and copper - both of which are very reef UNsafe.

So you have two choices:

A) Remove ALL your fish (because if it's on one, the parasite is most likely on the others) and place them in a QT and treat with either copper or hyposalinity. Then leave your display tank fallow (ie. fishless) for at least 4 weeks for the parasite to die because it lacks any fish hosts.

B) Learn to live with it in the tank. Feed well, keep up with water changes etc. etc so the fish are happy and unstressed.

Most people end up doing option B which leave the parasite in a chronic low level state of infection. Just because you can't see the spots does not mean it's gone. The spots are only one part of the life cycle just like you'll have the flu virus for several days before symptoms appear.

Everything usually goes OK until there's a major stressor in the tank and then the parasite will reappear with a vengeance.

Adding garlic to the diet does no harm and will stimulate appepite (which is good for any sick creature), but there's no scientific evidence that it actually kills ich.

[pangking]

Originally Posted by fkshiu

Yes, it does look like ich. Before somebody tells you to feed him garlic or dose Medication X please understand that the only two methods proven to actually KILL the ich parasite: hyposalinity and copper - both of which are very reef UNsafe.

So you have two choices:

A) Remove ALL your fish (because if it's on one, the parasite is most likely on the others) and place them in a QT and treat with either copper or hyposalinity. Then leave your display tank fallow (ie. fishless) for at least 4 weeks for the parasite to die because it lacks any fish hosts.

B) Learn to live with it in the tank. Feed well, keep up with water changes etc. etc so the fish are happy and unstressed.

Most people end up doing option B which leave the parasite in a chronic low level state of infection. Just because you can't see the spots does not mean it's gone. The spots are only one part of the life cycle just like you'll have the flu virus for several days before symptoms appear.

Everything usually goes OK until there's a major stressor in the tank and then the parasite will reappear with a vengeance.

Adding garlic to the diet does no harm and will stimulate appepite (which is good for any sick creature), but there's no scientific evidence that it actually kills ich.

Thanks for your words, learn a lot from you.
I don't really want to get another 30-40 Gal tank just for QT. Neither let the fish die, or let my wife kills me.
Does Ich will hurt my corals? Thats what most I care about.

[untamed]

No. "ich" won't affect your coral in any way. In fact, the only risk to your coral comes when you attempt to "cure" the "ich" with some miracle cure that you put in the tank.

[i have crabs]

Originally Posted by fkshiu

Yes, it does look like ich. Before somebody tells you to feed him garlic or dose Medication X please understand that the only two methods proven to actually KILL the ich parasite: hyposalinity and copper - both of which are very reef UNsafe.

So you have two choices:

A) Remove ALL your fish (because if it's on one, the parasite is most likely on the others) and place them in a QT and treat with either copper or hyposalinity. Then leave your display tank fallow (ie. fishless) for at least 4 weeks for the parasite to die because it lacks any fish hosts.

B) Learn to live with it in the tank. Feed well, keep up with water changes etc. etc so the fish are happy and unstressed.

Most people end up doing option B which leave the parasite in a chronic low level state of infection. Just because you can't see the spots does not mean it's gone. The spots are only one part of the life cycle just like you'll have the flu virus for several days before symptoms appear.

Everything usually goes OK until there's a major stressor in the tank and then the parasite will reappear with a vengeance.

Adding garlic to the diet does no harm and will stimulate appepite (which is good for any sick creature), but there's no scientific evidence that it actually kills ich.

+1
thank god someone else is sick of hearing the old feed garlic get a cleaner shrimp post,years of hearing those usally makes me skip over threads about ich,
ive done hypo and found it to work but annoying and more difficult, i say buy a decient sized qt and use seachem cuprarmine for 2 weeks to get rid of it.
http://www.seachem.com/Products/prod...Cupramine.html

[pangking]

Thanks for all you guys!!! I'm getting little bit more understand and confused now.
If I'm set up a QT, do I need catch all the fishies out, or just one fish that shows infection(only hippo tang shows the sopts on his body)? Catch all the fishies seems too hard for me.
As "fkshiu" said,the parasite will die if it lacks any fish hosts..., So if some fishies still in the tank, the parasite will not going to die anyway, when I put QT fish beck to the display tank, it will get the ICH again?
crying......

[marie]

Originally Posted by pangking

Thanks for all you guys!!! I'm getting little bit more understand and confused now.
If I'm set up a QT, do I need catch all the fishies out, or just one fish that shows infection(only hippo tang shows the sopts on his body)? Catch all the fishies seems too hard for me.
As "fkshiu" said,the parasite will die if it lacks any fish hosts..., So if some fishies still in the tank, the parasite will not going to die anyway, when I put QT fish beck to the display tank, it will get the ICH again?
crying......

Removing all the fish and leaving the tank fallow for 6 weeks is the only way to remove ich completely. Unfortunately if you go through all the work of having an ich free tank and want to keep it that way it means quarantining everything "wet" that you add to the tank (fish, rock, snails, corals, macroalgae ect.) in the future.

[zazzoo]

uv sterilizer helps alot..... believe it or not ... i also use red slime remover and that killed off all the ich