tang / ick / cleaner shrimp

[MarkO1]

ok, I'll do a 50% wc tonight and another tomorrow.
I'll also start dropping my salinity too (gradually). I'll hold off feeding until the weekend. I'll let you know how I make out.

[ October 31, 2001: Message edited by: MarkO ]</p>

 

[ToddinAtl]

Thanks for the info,
This thread has been very informative. I got home yesterday and the regal tang is fine, no white spots and swimming around as he was 3 days ago. Is it possible he just had a bad moment? I fed brine with garlic last night and will continue this for 3 weeks. I will assume I caught this very early. I don't see how anyone could let ick turn into something big as I observe all my fish every evening for 2-4 hours. I believe I caught it early enough, actually I believe if I wasn't so vigilant it would have come and gone just as quickly without me having a worry. BUT, is this possible...that it was just a small infection and the immune system of the fish fought it off? Also, if garlic is good for this parasite, why not lightly dose all feedings all the time?
Thanks
Todd

 

[Terry B]

Marko,
Please remove the medication immediately. You are using embalming fluid on your fish. Formalin should NEVER be used in a tank. Use formalin in a dip ONLY. You are damaging their delicate gill tissues as we speak. Hyposalinity cures ich without stressing the fish with medication. You can drop the salinity much faster. Make 2 water changes a day to get it to 1.009. You should be concerned about ammonia, which is just one reason to always keep a Qtank up and running. Flake foods tend to produce more waste than other foods, but they are good for soaking up vitamins. Hypo does not kill the biofilter. If you use hypo ONLY then you can put some Poly Filter by Poly Bio Marine in an outside filter or power filter. It is a chemical filtration pad and it will remove a lot of the ammonia and other toxins.
Terry B

 

[Anonymous]

The thing about garlic is that it works best not only when the infection is caught early, but with fish that are very hardy and have a chance of fighting it off by themselves anyway. So it's utiltiy is rather limited in my opinion. A fragile fish with an advanced case of ich - forget it!
There are indeed people who dose garlic all the time. This is a rather pointless excercise however once the pathogen is gone from the system.
Jim