Kick-Ick product

[grouper25]

Despite having QT'd everything which went into my tank, I have noticed a small ick out-break in my 220. The tank has alot of aquacultured live rock, inverts, 9 fish and only 3 soft corals to date. The 40 watt Aqua UV has helped alot but has yet to eradicate the parasite completely.

My LFS swears by "Kick-Ick" as it is reef safe. Given very few other options(possibly Hypo) has anyone had any experience with this product or could you recomend an alternative. This is incredibly frustrating as I took great care in not introducing any fish without 5 weeks of QT first. They were even treated with Quick Cure while in QT. Trust it got into the tank through the inverts. Who know???? But its there!!!!!

Thanks Much


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[sage_commander]

I have only read responses on this forum about this product, and they can be summarized thus:

1) Kick-Ick is not effective;

2) If it kills ich, it will kill your inverts.

Good luck.

[Duddly01]

I tried it when I had an outbreak a while back. Didn't help at all and I lost all of my fish at that time.

I also have a UV sterilizer, that I now run in my quarantine. When I got my current Clarkiis they showed signs of ick within a few days. I used hyposalinity on them and several months later now and no outbreaks.

Afraid to say it but it may be time to put them in QT, run hypo and let the reef sit fishless for awhile.

[ahullsb]

I've heard nothing but bad things a tragedies by using this method. If you aren't planning on changing what you stock anytime soon, run hypo on all your fish and let the tank go fallow for six weeks. Then you won't have to worry about it anymore

[tktodd]

I used it a few times, and it did nothing for my tank. I lost two of my favorite fish to that ich outbreak. I have since bought a Coralife UV twist , which has cleared it up well. I run the flow through the UV at like 30-40 GPH. I still notice my hippo tang getting a few ich spots every now and then, but nothing bad like I once had.

[roader247]

I also tried it a few years ago IT DID NOT WORK at least for me try hypo salinity Good Luck

[Shagsbeard]

Could you describe your QT technique? I'd like to know so that perhaps we could learn how to keep ich from out tanks. It would help to know exactly, as best as you can rememeber, what you did.

[Duddly01]

Originally posted by Shagsbeard
Could you describe your QT technique? I'd like to know so that perhaps we could learn how to keep ich from out tanks. It would help to know exactly, as best as you can rememeber, what you did.

This link should help. You really do have to have a refractometer to get the salinity down accurately, an hydrometer is just not going to work.

Hyposalinity

[kfowler]

FWIW, I have a new firefish in QT right now. Been there one week. Here's my procedure.
1.) Add fish to 10 gal QT at normal salinity.
2.) Take out 1 gal every 6 hours and replace with RO. You can do 2 gal every 12 hours if needed.
3.) Should take 48 hours to reach 1.009.
4.) Maintain salinity.
5.) Five weeks into QT, starting using normal SW as top-off to start raising salinity. See how much your increase is over two days. It should take you one week to raise salinity. After six weeks of total time and no outbreaks, introduce fish to display.

[mg426]

Its JUNK. Does nothing.

[BadOleRoss]

I have used it in the past but I didnt follow the directions on the continer. I used 110% of the recommended dosage and dosed every other day instead of the oddball schedule that come on the continer. It did clear up my ich and did not hurt my reef. I also dosed for a longer period then on the container. I tried the QT but still managed to get ich.

[newreefbishop]

I used it and it killed all my inverts. I seriously doubt th einverts would have carried it into the tank. You have only a few options now. Pull all the fish and treat as suggested, and let tank sit for at lest six weeks. I didnt have that option, and began dosing with garlic, dropped salinity to 1.023 and kept fish fed well with garlic and vitamins for 4 weeks, that was 3 months ago....

[carlisimo1969]

I used it with success a two years ago. No ich since. (knocking on wood sfx)

[carlisimo1969]

also...I didn't lose any inverts when I used it, but it's not cheap.

[StephM33]

I guess the real question is (for those who claim Kick Ich worked for them) would your fish have survived the Ich outbreak anyway? We made the mistake of not QTing a pair of butterflies about a month ago. Yep, they came down with Ich 2 days later. We removed them to QT to treat with hyposalinity, but they were dead the next morning. There is no way the Ich killed them that quickly, but I do think that the stress of catching them (it took us over an hour to get one of them), the stress of the disease, and the stress of the change in salinity ALL contributed to their quick death.

Obviously we knew that they may have infected the rest of the tank, and sure enough 5 days later we saw the beginning sign of infection on 2 more fish (blue hippo and foxface). We really searched thoroughly here on RC and found that *a few* people felt that Ich was survivable if your tank was otherwise healthy, your fish well fed, your water conditions pristine, and that you had cleaner animals in the tank.

We added a 2nd cleaner shrimp as well as 2 cleaner wrasse, and started soaking all food with garlic and Selcon. It's now 3 weeks later, and while the Blue tang did get the 2nd flush of ich which was much worse (as expected with the Ich lifecycle) he continued to eat well, was very active and seemed to be having only slightly rapid gilling. He has now seemed to "kick" (pardon the pun) the rest of the noticeable spots. The Foxface (the only other fish that saw the initial spots) never got any other signs of the disease.

Now?? We are CAUTIOUSLY optimistic about the display tank, and we have now set up a new 20g QT tank so we don't run into this problem again with any new additions. So, for those of you that used Kick Ich effectively, *perhaps* you would have been just as effective using nothing at all? Perhaps your fish were otherwise healthy and were able to fight off the disease themselves.

Some of you will wonder why we didn't remove all the fish to QT and let the display remain fallow for 6 weeks, and the answer is quite simply that I could not imagine doing that without totally stressing the fish that were going to be crowded into a 20g QT (which is the largest we can house and afford) How would we fit all those fish (including 2 tangs and 2 very bossy damsels) without just making the situation worse? We decided that we took everyone's advice and knowing that there would be no guarantees, we decided to give the "natural" way a shot.

So far, it seems to be working though we don't consider ourselves out of the woods yet.

I also found this thread very helpful http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...y&pagenumber=1

Just my 2 cents after hours of reading on here (and btw...if I had any other advice to offer you I would suggest purchasing a premium membership so you can use the search engine when you need to). It really is invaluable and saves tons of time!

Good luck to you!
Steph :-)

[Freed]

You MUST QT EVERYTHING NEW THAT YOU PLAN ON PUTTING IN YOUR TANK. ANYTHING can bring ich in that is wet. Ich can live in the tiniest amount of water or can come in on coral, inverts or live rock that is damp or moist.

[ahullsb]

Steph I'm sure you thought of this, but since I had the same problem, (5 fish and a 10 gallon qt tank) I used a 50 gallon rubbermaid garbage can and it's been a cheap alternative to a tank. (My roommate gets all tied up in knots when he sees it though)

[BadOleRoss]

The instances that I used ich in my tank with success the ich outreak was what I would call minor. Just a few spots on 1-2 fish. I did have a pretty serous outbreak in my 220 FOWLR tank and I ended up doing hypo on that tank. In that case i had a powder blue that was covered.

[StephM33]

No, *of course* we didn't think of that, LOL. Thanks for the suggestion, should the current course of action not work long term, we may have to look at that.

I appreciate the suggestion!
Steph

[PhilOlsen]

If this and products like it actually worked, it would be huge news and everyone would use it. There are only 3 PROVEN methods to kill ICH, Copper, Hyposalinity and transfer.

[Freed]

TRANSFER?