Plans to rid ich, need advice

[asylumdown]

Alright, so all fish, including the leopard wrasse are in QT and the salinity is 1.010 (I'll drop it to 1.008 in the last week). pH is just over 8

The purple tang has more spots than ever, hopefully they'll fall off in the next 24 hours. The powder blue is back to only eating brine shrimp, so I've stocked up on both vitamin encapsulated brine and brine/spirulina. I'll keep a constant supply of all the different colours of algae sheets in there too. I've set up a filter sock so I can suck up any uneaten food and hopefully keep the water quality high. None of the other fish seem to care at all that they've been moved, everyone else is eating aggressively.

The internet gives conflicting reports on how long I need to leave the DT fallow, some say 8 weeks, some say 6 weeks. I'm leaving town on the 8 week mark for a week so I don't want to put my fish back in the tank that day, only to leave town if there are problems. Will it still be effective if I put them back in at 7 weeks? That will give me a full week of observation with them in the DT.

Also, how long should I leave them in hypo? I theoretically could leave the salinity at 1.010 for 5 weeks, drop to 1.008 for the last week and a half, then slowly start increasing to match the tank, but I don't know if keeping them at that level for that long is safe?

[gregzz4]

The plan is to keep them @ 1.009 for the period. Not 1.008, or 1.010
Read the link I posted as I feel it is the best way to go ....
The timeline is also in the linked thread ...
The DT MUST be fallow for at least 8 weeks, but 9 is preferred
You MUST allow time for the MI to die out. Why would you rush one extra week, when you know it will die in a fallow tank ... ???

The biggest thing you need to do, to follow the hypo treatment, is to take another 4 weeks bringing your fish back to 1.025
You need to keep an eye on them and ensure there are no signs of MI ......
This is the hardest thing for all of us to do as we think it's gone .....

Why would you rush it now, when your DT is MI clean ???

Don't rush this last phase ....

I know it's hard to do, but you NEED to wait just a bit longer ....

[Madreefer]

Call me ignorant, cocky or just plain crazy. I'm speaking from actual experience here and not something I think is true because I read it online. Garlic is IMO the best thing for ick. I lost a whole tank full of fish to ick around 8 years ago.At the time of the outbreak I tried the hyposalinity and fresh water dips blah blah blah, it just stressed the fish out and the ick got worse. So start restocking my tank right away and back comes the ick. Somebody suggested using garlic and so I thought i'd give it a try.I make my own food so of course I put alot of garlic in it. I also add a couple of drops when the food is defrosting. Anyways, to this day and up to a few months ago I add fish to my tank that are totally covered in ick. I usually get good deals on them if they're infecte with ick. The fish in my tank will start to get a few spots on them but it eventually goes away after a week or two. The said fish that I put in fully recovers. Now I dont recommend people put ick coated fish in their tanks i'm just trying to get the message out that in my experience garlic works great for ick. I've had most of my fish now since the big die off 8 years ago and they are all healthy and in my mind there is no ick in my tank due to the garlic overdosing. There's the debate that garlic is hard on the fishes liver but I see no problems. Sorry for the long post and I hope everything works out ok for your fish. Not trying to create a debate just letting you know of my experiences with ick and garlic use.

[Cal_stir]

I've used hyposalinity several times on QT'ed fish and it works great, however, your display tank must remain fish free for @ 8 weeks to ensure the ich has cycled out. I had a bout in my display tank that I successfully erradicated with garlic, I didn't think it would work but there was no way I was tearing the tank apart to catch all the fish, I now add garlic to the food everyday.

[daniella3d]

Garlic is useless most of the time. You will always see ick come and go in your tank if you only control it with garlic...it will always be there, especially if you keep reintroducing it with new fish. The only way to get rid of ich for good is to treat. What work for you have failed many times for others.

Hyposalinity work very well but it must be done properly with a good refractometer and constantly be under 1.010.

oh and the skimmer does not work in hyposalinity. It does oxygenate the water though, keeping the PH high enough. Best is good cured liverock and there is no ammonia problem usually.

Originally Posted by Madreefer

Call me ignorant, cocky or just plain crazy. I'm speaking from actual experience here and not something I think is true because I read it online. Garlic is IMO the best thing for ick. I lost a whole tank full of fish to ick around 8 years ago.At the time of the outbreak I tried the hyposalinity and fresh water dips blah blah blah, it just stressed the fish out and the ick got worse. So start restocking my tank right away and back comes the ick. Somebody suggested using garlic and so I thought i'd give it a try.I make my own food so of course I put alot of garlic in it. I also add a couple of drops when the food is defrosting. Anyways, to this day and up to a few months ago I add fish to my tank that are totally covered in ick. I usually get good deals on them if they're infecte with ick. The fish in my tank will start to get a few spots on them but it eventually goes away after a week or two. The said fish that I put in fully recovers. Now I dont recommend people put ick coated fish in their tanks i'm just trying to get the message out that in my experience garlic works great for ick. I've had most of my fish now since the big die off 8 years ago and they are all healthy and in my mind there is no ick in my tank due to the garlic overdosing. There's the debate that garlic is hard on the fishes liver but I see no problems. Sorry for the long post and I hope everything works out ok for your fish. Not trying to create a debate just letting you know of my experiences with ick and garlic use.

[Madreefer]

Yea ok Daniella i'm a liar. I said I was speaking from experience. Thats the only thing that has worked in my case and i'm pretty confident that it works. I never quoted anyones post and said that they are wrong and their methods do not work so I really dont appreciate you doing it to me. On another note in my predator tank I used tonnes of copper in that tank. And guess what. The 100lb plus of liverock that was in there is now in my reef tank and has been for a number of years. So there goes that theory of using copper "will make those rocks useless forever." There is'nt one rock in my tank that does'nt have a coral growing on it. But thats another topic. But hey what do I know? I'm just a newbie with 12 years of reefing experience with oh lets see, hmm zero crashes. But just the one tank full of fish that died from ick. But no I dont know what i'm talking about so maybe i'll keep my useless experiences to myself. Cheers chicky

[Madreefer]

Wow I'm starting to Hijack. I'm very sorry. Just back to clear something up. I know your OP doesn't need to be told but don't want any newbies to get the wrong impression on copper use. DO NOT USE COPPER IN A REEF TANK. I was just using an example and that's whole different topic and discussion. Once again I'm sorry for the hijack and back on topic.

[naesco]

And I speak from experience too.
Properly administered, Garlic Extreme or any other non diluted garlic extract works for me.

You do not stress your fish in removing them from your tank and stress them further by reducing normal salinity levels.

[daniella3d]

yoe joe...where exactly did I said your method does not work? I said it is useless most of the time, and it is useless most of the time.

I know so many people who have tried this and lost most of their fish trying to avoid the big job of using a QT and treating...

Garlic never worked for me, not even once. Hyposalinity did work well every time. so you may be talking from experience, your own experience. Just read about how many people tried it and failed. It very rarely work, especially in the case of an outburst with weakened fish.

And sure, lets all put tons of copper in our QT with liverock and put that liverock back into the main tank after that...anyone wants to try it?

I know what copper can do because I lost tons of coral from Kent contaminated carbon...and no way I would be trying this. Yes eventually it might go away as it will eventually be broken down and bind to organic material and be removed by the skimmer...but how long will that take??? And it also depends very much how porous your liverock was. If it is not porous at all, then the copper will not get inside of it and leach out after that.

There are a lot of factors to keep in mind but I would never suggest anyone to put copper contaminated liverock in their tank with coral....IN fact, I would avoid copper at all cost except in the case of marine velvet.

Originally Posted by Madreefer

Yea ok Daniella i'm a liar. I said I was speaking from experience. Thats the only thing that has worked in my case and i'm pretty confident that it works. I never quoted anyones post and said that they are wrong and their methods do not work so I really dont appreciate you doing it to me. On another note in my predator tank I used tonnes of copper in that tank. And guess what. The 100lb plus of liverock that was in there is now in my reef tank and has been for a number of years. So there goes that theory of using copper "will make those rocks useless forever." There is'nt one rock in my tank that does'nt have a coral growing on it. But thats another topic. But hey what do I know? I'm just a newbie with 12 years of reefing experience with oh lets see, hmm zero crashes. But just the one tank full of fish that died from ick. But no I dont know what i'm talking about so maybe i'll keep my useless experiences to myself. Cheers chicky

[asylumdown]

Well, Hypo is finally working, but my lost fish list from the first couple of days is depressing:

Powder blue tang
Cleaner wrasse
labouti wrasse
1 Bengali cardinal (the odd one out, the breeding pair made it)

and both of my firefish, though not from ich, one jumped over the dividing baffle between the low salinity chamber and the normal salinity display when I was doing a water change, I assume his kidneys exploded. The other one vanished yesterday for unknown reasons.

Everyone else is now spot free, eating and behaving normally. It's entirely possible that moving them to the QT system and lowering the salinity pushed already stressed fish over the edge, but by the looks of how bad it got in the first 48 hours after they went in to hypo, I would say I was probably on track to lose everything if I hadn't gotten them out when I did. I read an article that said C. Irritans can increase it's population by 10 times in a week in a closed system, so if there's a stressed fish spouting off tomites by the dozen, the population of theronts can quickly increase to levels that will overwhelm even resistant and healthy fish. I bet it really comes down to a numbers game.

FW dips rid my fish of the majority of their spots at the beginning, but it was too late for the powder blue. I've never seen anything like that before, it was really awful. The cruel irony is that I think the FW dip (which he seemed to tolerate perfectly well in the hours after he received it) actually killed all the parasites on his body, as the next morning he was spot free, but he was also barely breathing and getting blown about by the current either upside down or sideways. I can only imagine what that many tissue ruptures at the same time must have done to his body's internal chemistry.

My biggest problem now is controlling the cycle that's resulted from putting them all in there. I'm doing 30% daily water changes and dosing copious amounts of aqua vitro Alpha, along with a boat load of Stability every day. No one has shown any signs of ammonia poisoning, but yesterday I started detecting nitrites so I'm a little worried.

Once I'm done with the hypo cycle (28 more days to go!), I'm going to spend 3 or 4 days bringing it back up to normal sea water, then initiate a 3 week daily dosing of Seachem paraguard. Seachem assured me in their forum that all of the ingredients break down after about 24 hours in salt water so I don't have to worry about anything leaching back in to my system from the rocks. Once that's done, there will be a two week 'cool down' period of heavy carbon filtering before I return them to the main display.

I know there are ways to control ich in a system through good nutrition and appropriate husbandry, but if you ask me it's a ticking time bomb. After this, there won't be a single fish added to my system who doesn't first get a fresh water dip, then a 3 week treatment of either paraguard or cupramine, then another 2 weeks for observation.