Diary of an ick attack

[basiab]

I decided to keep a diary of my current ick problem.
I have a 24 gallon Aquapod with LPS, LED ligting and the following fish.
Royal gramma (1 year), Green Clown Goby(2 years), Pajama Cardinal (8 years), baby Pajama Cardinal (2 months), Tailspot Blenny (6 months) and a Rusty Goby (3 years and hardly ever see him).

On November 30 I picked up a Blue eyed Cardinal (via MR add) and 3 days later he looked like he was full of ick. On December 4 after lights were out I took him out and put him in methylene blue(mixed as directed) that I happened to have. After a falf hour I put him back in the tank. I have not used methylene blue for years and the last time I battled ick it was with copper.
The next day he looked fine, eats well and has been clean since.

On December 11 I noticed my Gramma was missing at feeding time. Finally found him hiding but could not see anything on him. On December 12 he did come out to eat and I could not see any spots on him. But he was not his usual self. Then I saw the Green Clown Goby and he had at least 10 spots on him. After lights went out I dipped him in methylene blue. Decided I would use garlic flakes for the next few feedings.

Today is December 13 and the Green Clown Goby has a couple spots and is eating. But the baby Pajama Cardinal has cloudy fins. Did not see any spots and he is eating. Will continue to monitor at this point rather than take them out for copper treatements.

 

[Domboski]

Be careful with Methylene Blue. It has a shelf life and actually becomes toxic after expiration. Clearly yours is not expired but just keep watch just in case.

 

[rbtwo4]

wow one by one they getting sick good luck ill be keeping up with this to see progress

 

[dbriceno]

Before going "Reef" I used "Copper Power" whenever I had an ich problem. The stuff worked great and supposedly it's very difficult to overdose

 

[basiab]

Be careful with Methylene Blue. It has a shelf life and actually becomes toxic after expiration. Clearly yours is not expired but just keep watch just in case.

That is good to know. Thanks

 

[FlyTekk]

I dont think taking each fish out as ich attacks is gonna help. Ich is the water long before you see it show on the fish. So when you remove the fish and kill the ich on him. More ich from your tank will attack.

They say the only real way to get rid of ich is to remove fish for 6-8 weeks and keep the tank with fish at a very low salinity. I believe something like 1.009. But double check that.

I dont have room for another tank so i simply made sure all my parameters were perfect! And fed fish well! Soak frozen food in garlic, zoe, selcon. Feed mysis.

 

[Domboski]

I dont think taking each fish out as ich attacks is gonna help. Ich is the water long before you see it show on the fish. So when you remove the fish and kill the ich on him. More ich from your tank will attack.

They say the only real way to get rid of ich is to remove fish for 6-8 weeks and keep the tank with fish at a very low salinity. I believe something like 1.009. But double check that.

I dont have room for another tank so i simply made sure all my parameters were perfect! And fed fish well! Soak frozen food in garlic, zoe, selcon. Feed mysis.

You are right. You take the fish out and leave the display tank empty for 6-8 weeks. No need to drop salinity in those circumstances.

I dont have room for another tank so i simply made sure all my parameters were perfect! And fed fish well! Soak frozen food in garlic, zoe, selcon. Feed mysis.

This will work with hardy fish more often than not but when you start introducing more sensitive ich prone fish this method will quickly have more failure than it will have success. I always tell people if you can't QT all of your fish AND corals (corals spread ich too) stay sway from sensitive fish. there are plenty of beautiful hardy fish that can be bought that ich will likely not kill assuming the fish is healthy and so is the system. Also, introducing new fish slowly. When I say slow I mean one or two fish every 4 weeks (there are exceptions but this is the easiest way to generalize).

 

[basiab]

I dont think taking each fish out as ich attacks is gonna help. Ich is the water long before you see it show on the fish. .

I know and agree but I don't want to remove all the fish mainly because some I just can't catch without taking it all apart. So I am trying to give the sick ones a break so they can get enough immunity to fight it off. If I make no progress then maybe my next move will be to move the sick ones to copper. And if they all get it...well, one step at a time.

 

[basiab]

December 14:
First a correction. The product I was using for the dip was Greenex which has malachite green not methalyn blue. The fish were kept in the dip for about 30 minutes. Only 2 fish were give dips so far.
This morning things are much improved. All fish are moving about and eating including the Gramma. The clown goby is clean of spots. The baby Pajama cardinal had cloudy fins yesterday but looks much better today. My guess is that the parasite is in another phase and that is why the fish look ok. Will have to wait to see if there is another bout.

Thanks to all who have responded.

 

[rbtwo4]

i wonder if a uv would help?

 

[Custom05Taco]

I had an ick problem with one of my clown fish.
What I did which i don't recommend but it worked for me. I bought a UV light and did fresh water dip everyday for 5 days. I feed all the fish garlic extreme everyday for a month. I still feed them garlic once a week.

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

 

[basiab]

December 15:
All seems to be clear. No spots on anyone, all moving about and eating. I am not sure how long I have too wait to know if the fish are safe (immune) or if the parasite is not yet in a stage to bore into a fish.
By the way, my tank is at 80 degrees so the parasite cycle should be fast.

 

[FlyTekk]

Some say that even if you dont see ich it is still attacking in the gills. So does this mean that my fish that havnt shown a sign of ich in over a year are still dying? Or are atleast annoyed by ich?

They seem happy and normal to me.

 

[basiab]

Some say that even if you dont see ich it is still attacking in the gills. QUOTE]
Yes, I saw that in the other thread about using garlic juice. I do think that the parasite is there but I don't think it is in the gills since that is one of the worst places for it to be. Anyway it matters not what we think but what really is and unless someone makes a scientific study of it, it is just conjecture.

 

[FlyTekk]

Yea im in 2 simultaneous ich threads. But it seems ich discussion is always gray. Up in the air. Some say u must qt fish for 6-8 weeks and leave tank fishless. Others say nah, as long as fish are healthy ich stand no chance. Want to get a definitive answer.

 

[marrone]

Here's the question, can health fish die from Ich? The answer is yes, and it happens all the time. Ich can be in a number of place on and in a fish, the gills, mouth, eyes and inside the body. Some of the variation are very deadly, even copper or Hypos don't work against it, while others are treatable and even some fish seem to develop an immunity to the ich.

Does garlic, ginger, or a number of other newer miracle products out there kill ich? No, they don't. What they all seem to do is keep the fish eating, which helps build up its strength and immune system, which lets the fish fight off the ich. In the end people swear that the product was the reason that the fish survived, though most likely it was probably something else, though these products may have help some but weren't the main reason. You'll also find that for every person who said that these products work, a lot more will have lost fish from using them. You tend not to hear from those people as much.

6-8 weeks of leaving a tank empty of fish seems to be the right amount of time to rid a tank of ich, though it could possible take longer. The thing is you then need to QT all your fish otherwise there is a chance you're just going to introduce ich back into you main system. You also need to watch out what you place in your tank, as even LR or corals can be carrying ich. Ich has been around a long time, there aren't any miracle cures, and more often than not results in plenty of dead fish. A bigger problem is most of the time it mayn't even be ich to begin with, which can be a problem in determine what to treat with.

 

[gully95]

this helped me when i had an ich outbreak
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/fish-diseases-treatments/23132-marine-ich-myths-facts.html

 

[basiab]

Thanks marrone for nice summary of this issue.
My situation was resolved so quickly that some may say that it was not ick. But I am sure it was. I was able to inspect my clown goby up close and he really had it. Anyway, I am posting my assessment of this topic in regards to what happened in my tank.

My conclusions. Not real facts but my own speculations.

1. The fish fought it off on their own. What little intervention I did probably had no bearing on the outcome. But dipping those most sick gave them a little more breathing room to survive and alos reduced the ick population so that a second round never came.
2. Had I used some product I would be telling everyone how good it is. And that is why people claim some product worked for them when in fact they could have done nothing. Why-see below.
3. Most products don?t do the job because if they did then everyone would use it and ick would not be a real problem. Using copper, other meds or low salinity have been the only consistently successful ways to beat it.
4. My situation is probably the kind where regardless of what you do or don?t do the results are success. I think the reason is that either the fish have immunity to that particular strain of ick or it is just a week strain that the fish can handle.
5. Why did ick flair up in my tank. My guess is as follows. The fish I got from a fellow hobbyist was probably ok in his tank. My tank did have ick a couple years ago and probably my fish are able to handle it. My new fish was stressed from the move from his nice big old tank to my little one with a new set of neighbors. And he was not immune to the ick in my tank so, bingo, he comes down with it. Now the population of ick in my tank rises since they had a host to help them reproduce. The new volume of the parasite now enabled it to attack my other fish that until then were able to handle the small population, but were now overwhelmed by a much larger population, so they got sick. But being a weak strain eventually they all fought it off and now all is well.
This explanattion may also explain why at times people QT new fish and they still come down with ick.

 

[marrone]

this helped me when i had an ich outbreak
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/fish-diseases-treatments/23132-marine-ich-myths-facts.html

Some good stuff here, though a lot of it is old, it still holds up.

The one method of ridding ich that isn't talked about much, or at all, is the transfer method. An older member here was big into using this way of getting rid of ich in infected fish. The big problem is you need a large amount of water, especially if you're trying to treat a large fish or a bunch of fish, add on to the fact that you need to do it for 2+ weeks that can be a big problem.

 

[marrone]

Thanks marrone for nice summary of this issue.
My situation was resolved so quickly that some may say that it was not ick. But I am sure it was. I was able to inspect my clown goby up close and he really had it. Anyway, I am posting my assessment of this topic in regards to what happened in my tank.

My conclusions. Not real facts but my own speculations.

1. The fish fought it off on their own. What little intervention I did probably had no bearing on the outcome. But dipping those most sick gave them a little more breathing room to survive and alos reduced the ick population so that a second round never came.
2. Had I used some product I would be telling everyone how good it is. And that is why people claim some product worked for them when in fact they could have done nothing. Why-see below.
3. Most products don?t do the job because if they did then everyone would use it and ick would not be a real problem. Using copper, other meds or low salinity have been the only consistently successful ways to beat it.
4. My situation is probably the kind where regardless of what you do or don?t do the results are success. I think the reason is that either the fish have immunity to that particular strain of ick or it is just a week strain that the fish can handle.
5. Why did ick flair up in my tank. My guess is as follows. The fish I got from a fellow hobbyist was probably ok in his tank. My tank did have ick a couple years ago and probably my fish are able to handle it. My new fish was stressed from the move from his nice big old tank to my little one with a new set of neighbors. And he was not immune to the ick in my tank so, bingo, he comes down with it. Now the population of ick in my tank rises since they had a host to help them reproduce. The new volume of the parasite now enabled it to attack my other fish that until then were able to handle the small population, but were now overwhelmed by a much larger population, so they got sick. But being a weak strain eventually they all fought it off and now all is well.
This explanattion may also explain why at times people QT new fish and they still come down with ick.

Some very good conclusion here. I think the one big thing in fighting Ich is QT all of your fish, for as a long as you can. Also, even though some fish can and do fight off the lch, and live with it, most don't and unless some action is taken a lot of fish do die from it. And I think you need to remember, you usually only hear about the people that do nothing, and their fish making, and not as much from those that also do nothing, and lose their fish from it.

You also need to hold back on the urge of placing a fish, that is in QT, into your MT to and save it as it's not doing well. In the long run it's better to let a fish die in Qt that take a chance and place it in our main tank and possibly kill your fish. I had a similar problem with this, though it was Gill Flukes and not Ich. It ran havoc through 2 of my tanks and it too 3 weeks of treatments to finally kill it, though I lost a couple of fish from it.