Cleaning your tank during a showing of ICH

[JenniferL]

Personally I would leave things alone. Your tank has ich in it now, just make sure everyone continues to eat well and try not to stress the fish out more by fiddling with the tank every day, unless necessary. Try soaking the food in garlic and if you have a cleaner shrimp/wrasse they can add some relief to the fish by cleaning some of the parasites off although they are not a cure.

[Trabby]

At the end of September after a regular tank clean , I forgot to plug the heater back in. That was a Friday, I did not realize this until the Sunday morning when I turned lights on to see two fish completely covered in ich
without a qt tank handy I immediately bought some garlic. I soaked the food and fed 2-3 times a day. The good news was that both fish were eating.... After aproximately 2 weeks all signs of the major infestation were gone and I have not had a recurrance. Good luck..

[Aquattro]

Agree on the garlic. Without trying to start that whole debate again, my hippo got a ich a couple of weeks ago, I fed her with nori soaked in fresh squeezed garlic, ich was gone in three days. It's my treatment of choice.

We have been soaking all the food in Garlic and selcon. The biggest concern we had was not cleaning the tank was the increase in algae. We have a bare bottom tank so siphoning the bottom of the rock debris and wiping the glass down and doing a 10% change every week is our normal routine. Should I pick up the frequency of the changes?

We also have Two Cleaner Wrasse and two fire shrimp for cleaning the fish. The funny part is the fish that had the show of ich is the only fish that doesnt go to our cleaning station where the shrip and cleaner wrasse are. All the other fish let the shrimp and wrasse pick at them.

the Hippo is not scratching or twitching and is eating like a pig still.

[Zoaelite]

Ready for a shocker? I never quarantine new fish purchases and have never had any serious problems with disease (Tanks been running for over a year now). Perhaps it's just luck *Knock on wood* but the 3 things I do to keep my fish healthy and happy include:

-Feeding an extremely varied diet soaked in a garlic supplement.
-Regular water changes and nitrate sinks to reduce water containment.
-I also employ a pair of cleaner shrimp and fire shrimp that have set up cleaning stations on either side of the tank.

Seems you are doing everything just fine, I would keep your cleaning routine the exact same and you should see the spots disappear nice and fast.

[Hawkaholic]

If your tang is eating like a champ and not scratching or rubbing then I would just leave it alone. Chances are the tang is being picked on after lights out or is a bit stressed about something. I have a PB Tang that got ich all the time. I tried pretty much everything to cure it but the few spots never went away. It turned out that after lights out my sailfin tang attacked the PB. I got rid of the sailfin and the PB has never looked better.

Another possibility may be your cleaner wrasses. If your cleaner wrasses eat prepared food chances are they are not "true" cleaner wrasses. The false cleaners have been known to bite chunks out of fish.

Now for the ich in the tank business. Some may disagree...well...probably most will but this is my opinion. It won't mean much cause I'm not as cool as the other canreefers hehe. The ich parasite is always present in a tank...I don't care who you are...its there. No amount of water changes or lowering salinity or temp. will get rid of it. It doesn't matter what a reefer does, the parasite will always be there. It may die off but it will always come back.

Placing the fish in quarantine will cause stress. Cleaning the tank and/or rocks will cause stress. Your best bet right now is to just leave it alone and keep an eye on it. Good luck

[daniella3d]

Unfortunatly these tree things would not work against marine velvet. lets just hope you don't have to deal with that. More than one person here on this forum were doing the same thing for years without problem, until one day.... then you read threads here mentioning 30 dead fishes.

This is silly and does not have to be just because someone is careless and think that these things will never happen to them. It's not being responsible, it's playing russian roulette with your livestock.

Originally Posted by zoaElite

Ready for a shocker? I never quarantine new fish purchases and have never had any serious problems with disease (Tanks been running for over a year now). Perhaps it's just luck *Knock on wood* but the 3 things I do to keep my fish healthy and happy include:

-Feeding an extremely varied diet soaked in a garlic supplement.
-Regular water changes and nitrate sinks to reduce water containment.
-I also employ a pair of cleaner shrimp and fire shrimp that have set up cleaning stations on either side of the tank.

Seems you are doing everything just fine, I would keep your cleaning routine the exact same and you should see the spots disappear nice and fast.

Originally Posted by pyke

We have been soaking all the food in Garlic and selcon. The biggest concern we had was not cleaning the tank was the increase in algae. We have a bare bottom tank so siphoning the bottom of the rock debris and wiping the glass down and doing a 10% change every week is our normal routine. Should I pick up the frequency of the changes?

+1 on the soak in garlic and selcon, the amino acids help boost the amun system and give the fish extra strength to help fight the Ick attack off.

Good luck,
Bill