Help!!! Ick!!!

[bulletsworld]

About two years ago I was interested in a studies that was done on trying to control parasites (Ich & Velvet) that had devastated fish farms ending up losing tons of their livestock due to outbreaks. In their attempts to look for other methods to rid the parasite they tried to flush the parasites with fresh sea water, keeping in near darkness & the transfer method, in their open water containers (a short summary of the study). Although they weren’t completely successful they did find that near darkness had decreased there loses and continued to do this, reporting later that this one farm never had the parasite (velvet) outbreak again. I will post back tomorrow with some articles on this study if your interested?

After I read these articles it occurred to me that it totally made perfect sense. At that time I had a porcupine puffer in a QT that had a mild case of ich when I purchased. I couldn't understand at that time why when I left the puffer for the day it was fine (no lights) but when I came back later in the day (lights on for hours) the fish was completely covered to the point of no return!

Since then I have tested the theory, putting sick fish in large Rubbermaid containers (called the transfer method) with near darkness and found it to be true as a means of control until treatment. As the studies continue to argue if parasites (Ich & Velvet) are indeed a parasite or a form of algae. My thoughts are that the parasite goes towards the light to find a host. I found that you can control velvet & or ich outbreaks for months by ridding the parasite of light. Either way I would not use it for a long-term solution for control by any means, I question long term what state it puts the fish in, but it can help buy you some time while you set up a stable Qt tank.


:0)

[Ruth]

Lee I would love to read those studies and learn more about it. I have been fortunate to not have noticed any of my fishies with ich or velvet in the last couple of years but have had it in the past and have done quite a bit of casual reading just to educate myself.
It just seems that a LOT when someone asks for help with ich the advise they get is to feed garlic and get cleaner shrimp. I know that the jury is still out on whether garlic helps anything or if it is even good or healthy to feed to your creatures but I do use myself as they seem to like it. Hell the jury is still out on whether it does anything for humans.
I guess it is up to each of us to educate ourselves as much as we can on the care of our critters but it seems that the garlic/cleaner shrimp is repeated so often that people beleive that it is going to cure their fish of ich and rid it from their system.

[Myanth]

My theory is .... ich sucks.

Thanks for the info though. I have five cleaners in the tank and they are still working madly. The angel and the tang have very little on them at all. The dragon is never very far from a cleaner, and when one gets full he finds another. He is looking better. The four stripes are seeing the cleaners as well and have stopped scratching against the rocks.

I have read a fair amount on this ... stuff and it seems to me it is a parasite. It breeds in the substrate, hatches and moves to light as Lee said, finds a host fish, lives on the host for one to three days and drops off at night to continue the life cycle.

So here's my theory.

If one part of this life chain is broken completely, the species would cease to exist. In my 10 gallon I had two clowns with ich and got two cleaners. They were together daily for the first two months. No sign of ich after the first week. Then the cleaners stopped seeing the fish very much at all and became more interested in the food I was feeding. So much so that when I came by the tank they would walk on the surface (underneath) and stick their claws up out of the water. That was a year and a half ago. I lost those cleaners about eight months ago and did not have a problem with ich at all. All of the inhabitants moved over to my 90 in early January. I did not have any ich problems until Teusday of this week past, two days after adding about twenty pounds of well cured live rock, coral beauty, small clown, yellow goby, some crushed coral to my sump, and an anemone. (It was a good trip to Calgary) This past Thursday I introduced the cleaners.

Hopefully they will remove all of the parasite at it's adult stage when it requires a host fish, thereby preventing the breeding of the parasite. And I know what you're thinking. It only takes one adult to make it past the cleaners to breed a ton more. I have read many places that a single adult can only make 20-200 cysts that could become new parasites. Therefor... I know this will not be a quick fix. But over time, maintaining the population I have now, which was my goal all along, the cleaners must impact the population.

Of course, that being said, If I see a decline in the health of my fish, I would immediatly remove them for treatment and I will have that option available. As of right now, they are all looking much, much better, and I will keep you informed.

Mike

[Lorna]

My two cleaner shrimps and Coral Beauty had a love affair going on, the shrimp were on him constantly from the day I put him in. I even fed them garlic but I still got ich and I still lost my Coral Beauty.

[Myanth]

Update.

All fish doing well. By the end of the shortened day, the powder brown still gets some spots (20 or less) There are no fish scratching and the dragon goby's fins are growing back. In fact, I watched him bite a piece of antenea off of the CBS yesterday. The futile stabs that followed made me laugh.

Everything is going well. The garlic and cleaners seem to be working. I know that there are some who will not believe it, but it is. The breathing of all fish is normal and all are eating heartily. I picked up some Nori for the tang and it has figured out that it is food. The coral beauty is eating flake like crazy and I have not seen a spot on her for two days. She opens her gills for the cleaners once in a while now but is not constantly at their side.

Thanks for the concern, and I'm sorry to hear about the loss of the beauty.

Mike