ICH??

[fishaddict]

I have a flame angel who looks to have a couple white spots on his sides. However no other fish appear to have them. He also appear to have area on top of his head he either has been rubbing or scratched???

6ln wrasse
royal gramma
2 hydrid clowns

I had 2 cleaners in the tank but they've since disappeared?? Maybe the fire shrimp got them?

What should I do???

 

[Anonymous]

Do you have a quarantine tank? If so, take the flame out and treat. Hyposalinity (I'm told) is the best way to treat.

 

[Meloco14]

Well you need to first determine whether or not it is in fact ich. If it is, you need to do a hypo treatment like Crissy said. But to be successful you need to remove every single fish from the display to do the treatment on, and leave the display fishless for a good 6-8 weeks. If you search these boards you will find plenty of threads about ich and hyposalinity treatments. Good luck

 

[Anonymous]

At this point, with that many fish in the tank, I would wait and see what happens.

It may just be some spots from rubbing on the rocks. Not all spots are ich. It might heal up and you never see them again.

Or it might be ich and that too might go away and not be seen again.

Or it might get worse....be prepared for this last possibility by having a quarrantine tank ready to treat the fish in.

 

[fishaddict]

The gramma is chilling in a new tank he doesnt seem phrased.

MY 2 hybrid clowns could care less as well.

Both the wrasse and angel are both eating like pigs and swimming quite well. I've had both almost a year, so where would ich come from?

 

[Anonymous]

The gramma is chilling in a new tank he doesnt seem phrased.

MY 2 hybrid clowns could care less as well.

Both the wrasse and angel are both eating like pigs and swimming quite well. I've had both almost a year, so where would ich come from?

Ich could have come in on any of those fish. It can be carried in the gills where you can't see the spots, or it can be on the fish in a spot you can't see, or it can even be in plain sight but the spot doesn't show enough for you to notice.

It can survive in a tank for years without being noticed. It infects and reinfects the fish in small numbers until some stress factor weakens a fish's immune system and it gets infected by several parasites...then when they multiply there are several times as many in the water as there were when the parasites where infecting in small numbers and just "surviving."

In a tank that has ich, but where the fish have developed resistance enough to fight off a full outbreak, it is common for one or more fish to show spots once in a while. The spots come and go, without a major outbreak.

This might be because the strain of ich in that tank is not particularly strong or virulent. Or it could be because the fish in the tank are particularly resistant to ich in general, or to the specific strain in that tank.


But again, you just saw a few spots on some otherwise healthy fish in an otherwise healthy tank. And spots do not always come from ich. They can come from a number of other less problematic causes.

 

[SnowManSnow]

isn't MARINE ICH pretty rare?

b

 

[Anonymous]

isn't MARINE ICH pretty rare?

b

It is pretty rare in the ocean. But in aquariums it seems to be pretty common.

I've had many fish with clear cases of ich. Some treatments have even failed to cure them and the ich ended up killing them. Hyposalinity has been the best bet with a 100% success rate for me.