Between a Rock and a Hard Place

[FishHoarder]

I have a 60 gallon cube that's been up and running for about 2 years. I have never really had any issues until 4 days ago and figured it was time I reach out for help as I'm jammed in a spot right now. My tank is a mixed reef. Inhabitants are BSJ, Cherub Angel, Red Firefish, Yasha Goby/Pitol Shrimp Bi Color Blenny, Maroon Clown and Longnose Hawkfish. I have a bunch of lps frogspawn, hammer, torch, elegance and brain coral. I also have an RBTA. My parameters have been consistant for quite some time. PH 8.2 Salinity 1.026 Temp 78 Phosphates/Nitrates/Nitrites/Ammonia - Undetectable Magnesium 1410 Calcium 456 dkh 11. I have always quarantined my fish for 5 weeks to avoid any issues and haven't added any new inhabitants in like 3 months. Last week I acquired some xenia from a friends reef tank as it was growing like a weed it was on some small liverock rubble. I went about my normal process dipped the coral and acclimated it via drip. The corals doing fine but out of no where I have what I believe is a marine ich outbreak. The only infected so far are my cherub angel and bi color blenny. I understand the process for treating ich is remove all fish and treat in my QT and leave tank empty except corals and inverts for 6 weeks. The problem I have is that I have about 95 lbs of live rock in my tank that I epoxied together when I first set up my tank and it is impossible to move except in one mass which cant even get out of the top of the tank. I'm pretty sure if I'm sneaky I can catch the free swimmers but the blenny, goby and jawfish are going to be impossible. The other problem is I know I'm going to stress my fish so much chasing them around I'm worried I wont even be able to treat and keep them alive in my QT. I am open to any and all suggestions I just don't know what to do and I know reef safe treatments are garbage. I feed my tank a varied diet and everything is soaked in selcon and vitamin enrichment.

[NaH2Ofreak]

My vote is...do nothing. Not sure where the stress came from to incite the ick outbreak but, chasing the fish around and disrupting the tank and corals would do more harm than good in my opinion. Just keep on keepin' on and hopefully it will pass w/o taking out the fish.

Dennis

[cjk76]

Sounds like you can't do much. I guess you could always watch for dead fish and hope for the best.

[FishHoarder]

Yeh I was hoping someone had an idea rather and than watch and see its torture not being able to do anything. Is it possible the ich came in on the coral and liverock piece I added from my buddies tank? Its a 350g reef and he's not the best about QTing things when they come in but he's never really lost fish to ich or had any visible out breaks.

[csmfish]

Hypo is the next best thing that comes to mind and pray to the hypo gods!

[Curious George]

I think it is possible that ich could have been introduced. If you can't get them out, I think I would just try to keep the water parameters perfect/stable and hope for the best. I would feed a nice varied diet and maybe soak some food in selcon. Unfortunately, if you don't get them all and go fallow, I think that the ich still has a chance once the fish come back.

[cjk76]

You could try a trap! Put in a trap and only feed inside the trap. The fish will come out eventually with little stress. Could take weeks though

[lighthouze08]

happened to me a 3 times, leave everything the way it is and don't chase the fish around, you'll stress them out even more. Feed them and make sure they're eating and mix their food with garlic juice...i did that and my fish were fine after a week or so

[Steve175]

I agree. You drink beer to relax and don't stress out the fish any more than they are. Will more than likely be fine. Some have advocated running the Mg level higher - like to 1400 (which is not a bad thing regardless for calcium balance)

[FishHoarder]

Thanks guys I'm letting it ride out as stated. Luckily the BSJ isn't showing any signs of ich but I know it takes a while once the first cysts fall off for the life cycle to show itself again on the next fish. The cherub has had all its cysts drop off but the bi-color has even more dots than yesterday. Everyone's still eating like there are no problems so I'm hoping it passes. I'll keep everyone posted.

[FishHoarder]

Figured it was time for an update. I have not lost any fish to the ich outbreak but continue to see signs of it on the same two fish both the cherub and bi-color have a couple of days where they have spots and then maybe 4-5 days without. Neither is showing signs of stress just the spots. I'm going to keep riding the storm out with my fingers crossed.

[Ninong]

It's very possible that the ich came in on the live rock.

If you don't want to remove all of the fish to a QT for hypo treatment, then I would suggest the following which worked very well for me.

Feed the fish freshly minced garlic at least twice a day (3 times/day would be better). Use only fresh garlic cloves. Do not chop the garlic cloves until you are ready to feed the fish. This is very important because the enzyme that converts alliin to allicin has a very short life. This is a defensive mechanism garlic evolved over a very, very long time to fight off enemies that may try to attack it. It's also what releases the characteristic aroma that is very noticeable as soon as you chop garlic. Just smell your finger tips to see what I mean.

Anyway, the medicinal properties of garlic (and it's defensive mechanism) are only activated when the defensive enzyme converts alliin to allicin. It's a long story. A very long story.

I used about 1/4 tsp of freshly minced garlic mixed in with the regular food (various frozen foods) to feed the six fish in my 120-gal tank three times daily. Just add it to the frozen foods (or whatever) in about 1/2 cup of tankwater and allow it to sit for about 5-10 minutes before feeding to the tank.

You must continue doing that for a full six weeks! I made the mistake of stopping after only three weeks and the ich returned! I then repeated it for six weeks, followed by garlic once a day for another two or three months, followed by garlic maybe once a week. The ich never returned.

Good luck!



Disclaimer: I don't recommend garlic as the best treatment for ich in all circumstances. I'm just saying that I used it and that's what happened. I began treatment the day after I first saw ich trophonts. I did not wait for the situation to get out of hand. I would recommend hyposalinity of ALL of the fish in a quarantine tank for a minimum of six weeks, while allowing the display tank to remain fallow, as the best and most reliable way to rid the tank of ich.

[FishHoarder]

Thanks I will definitely give the garlic a shot removing the fish is impossible as the rocks are glued in place.

[Floowid]

I also agree with what has been said. Be vigilant with your water quality, change out more water more often if necessary. Also, feed garlic. I usually just use a product called Garlic Xtreme, I think Kent makes it. There may be better products out there, and the the fresh garlic suggested by Ninong may be better still, I have never tried that method. I CAN state from experience that good water quality and Garlic Xtreme have seen me through minor ick outbreaks in the past.

[dorkymk3]

I would just feed heavily with garlic added. Make sure your water parameters stay the same. Or you can try borrowing a fish trap and catch the fishes for QT.

[tunafishe]

I think at this point trying to QT all the fish is going to stress them out more. +1 on the garlic and good stable condition.

[Ninong]

The proven antibacterial and antibiotic effects of garlic are the result of the allicin, which is only produced when the fresh garlic cloves are crushed or minced (or attacked, so to speak). There is a particular defensive enzyme that resides in garlic that is only activated when a particular garlic clove is attacked (in this case crushed or minced). That enzyme converts the alliin to allicin. The allicin is destroyed if the garlic is cooked and it has a short lifespan -- a matter of hours.

The allicin is produced only in the particular clove that is being attacked (in nature). Stored fresh garlic cloves are fine as long as you don't mince them in advance. Buy fresh garlic, not those peeled cloves in a jar.

This property of garlic was studied and reported on by Louis Pasteur more than 100 years ago. There are other beneficial properties of garlic but we're only interested in it's antibacterial and antibiotic properties and those are produced by allicin. If you google this, you can find any number of scientific studies on this topic. The most extensive one that I read about ten years ago was in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

Garlic is thought to be effective against anthrax but I don't know if there are any scientic studies to back that up. It was used to ward off the plague six or seven hundred years ago. I'm sure there are no studies on that one. Maybe this falls into the same category as all the native peoples of South America using certain plants that grow wild in their habitat to treat various illnesses? Funny how virtually all of those plants turn out to actually have medicinal properties. I wonder how they discovered that over the centuries? I mean what made them try it in the first place? Interesting.

The medicinal properties of garlic have been exaggerated; however, it does have medicinal properties that are beneficial in certain circumstances. For one thing, bacteria do not seem to build up a resistance to it like they do to many modern antibiotics. Maybe that's because its antibiotic properties are much, much weaker than those of modern antibiotics? Garlic is a weak broad-spectrum antibiotic. Much, much weaker than penicillin.

All of the scientific studies that you will find online have to do with garlic's medicinal effects on humans. You're not going to find anything about it's possible benefits in treating ich except for an article Jorge wrote more than ten years ago. It's in the e-magazine on either Reef Central or Reefs.org but you may have a very hard time finding it because it's probably in some long-lost archive by now.

So most of what you will find on the boards will be anecdotal experience of individual hobbyists. Probably 97% of it will not explain why they believe garlic benefited their situation and more than 80% of them probably didn't do it right, so they just got lucky if they were successful; and if they weren't successful, that just added to all the anecdotal reports that garlic didn't do anything to help their situation.

Garlic has other medicinal benefits but the only one we're interested in for fighting ich is its proven antibacterial and antibiotic properties and those are the direct result of allicin, which is only produced when that enzyme converts alliin to allicin when fresh garlic is crushed or minced. It has proven to be effective against many bacteria, fungi and viruses. However, it's a weak broad spectrum antibiotic. Maybe that's why I had to continue using it three times a day for six weeks?

In any case, it worked for me and it may work for you provided your ich situation is not out of hand before you begin the treatment. Good luck!



P.S. -- Here's some food for thought. Is it possible that the garlic that the fish ingest (and all of my fish gobbled it up) makes them less attractive to the ich? Maybe it makes them "smell funny," so to speak? Maybe the garlic in the tankwater caused the ich to become disoriented so that they can't locate a suitable fish host? Maybe they don't like the "taste" of the fish after the fish ate the garlic? All of those thoughts are laughable, so don't take me seriously but what if one of them is true? I mean, what makes the allicin ward off the fungi and other pests that may try to attack the garlic in nature? Is it just because they don't like the "taste"? After all, just smell your finger tips after you mince garlic and see how hard it is to wash that smell off.

[nanokeeper]

Cleaner shrimp. I've always had them in various tanks for 10 years and never had an ich problem. I've bought fish with ich and the cleaner shrimp took care of it.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by nanokeeper

Cleaner shrimp. I've always had them in various tanks for 10 years and never had an ich problem. I've bought fish with ich and the cleaner shrimp took care of it.

This is something that has actually been studied in nature, for both cleaner shrimp and cleaner fish (e.g., Labroides dimidiatus). If cleaner shrimp and cleaner fish are removed from a section of the reef, the fish will have more parasites. No, I have no idea how they managed to set this up, or contain the fish in that particular section of the reef.

Cleaner fish (L. dimidiatus and others) consume dead skin and external parasites in nature. I think it's mostly dead skin but I haven't googled it in a long time. And, of course, there are many anecdotal reports on the boards of guys with large reef tanks who keep L. dimidiatus as sort of an insurance policy. Cleaner shrimp help, too. I'm not sure how much good they would do if your tank already has an ich outbreak.

[a.browning]

It sounds like your buddy has ich in his tank and you unknowingly introduced it with the Xenia addition. If you didn't ever have ich, this is really the only explanation. Ich cannot magically pop up from stress, it has to be there in the first place. It sounds like the fish are holding up okay, I had a mild ich outbreak like this about a year ago and all my fish pulled through just fine. I did feed some fresh crushed garlic, not sure if it did anything. As said a couple posts above, ONLY fresh garlic has the "medical" properties, and it only is good for a few hours after crushing it up. From my experience, as long as your fish is eating normally then it will pull through. When it gets to the point where they won't eat, then I'd worry more. It's unfortunate you cannot QT, but you're doing the best you can for your situation, and there really isn't much else to do than observe, and feed well. Good luck!

[FishHoarder]

I will be picking up fresh garlic after work and begin the treatment process as described above. I have been feeding rods food and soaking it in additional selcon. I should have mentioned I am also doing a weekly 10% water change to help maintain stability with the increased feedings. I probably will not be able to perform 3 daily feedings but can definitely get at least 2 done. Also prior to the ich out break I did have a neon cleaner goby that everyone in the tank used to visit along with my cleaner shrimp but he jumped ship about 6 weeks prior to my ich outbreak so maybe I had ich before but it was never noticeable due to the cleaners efforts.