ICH: how to cure it, id it, understand it.

[tmz]

No, I don't recall the specific temperature range in that study ;somewhere in the high 50F to low 60F range if I recall correctly. I haven't looked at that in a while .

I suspect it varies for different strains of cryptocaryon irritans.

Looking around:

This older study suggests an optimal range for excystment at 30 degrees F,ie 86 degrees C.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...146.x/abstract

This is from it:

The optimum temperature for excystment was 30°C; 50% excysted in 5 days and 100% in 7 days. At 25°C, 60% of the tomites started to excyst on the eighth day, and 70% on the ninth day. At 20°C, 10% started to excyst on the ninth day, reaching 40% on the tenth day. No excystment occurred at 37 and 7°C.

This one suggests excystment("hatching") and theront development are significantly slower at 20C(68F) vs 25C(77C):

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.230...21104554996797

[salty joe]

Thanks, when I finally do get some rock, I'll shoot for the eighties for the fallow period. Getting there, it won't be long now.

[tmz]

You are welcome and good luck.

[mikeoif08]

I saw that New Life Spectrum came out with a new treatment for Ich. It's called Ick-Shield (1 to 3mm pellets). I've used the Thera-A pellet food before to treat tangs with ich and it had worked for me before (also added a UV sterilizer as well). They also have a powder version to add to a hospital tank for fish that aren't eating. Also the Ick-Shield is suppose to be reef safe when used as directed....time will tell with ppl writing their experience..

[tmz]

A quick review from my perspective and experience:

Cryptocaryon irritans is carried into the tank with fish. It causes many fish deaths in closed systems. The odds of getting it from rock or other sites are very very unlikely unless you pop in a piece of rock in from an infected tank,n which case you may introduce a cyst.

Crytocaryon can be kept out with quarantine and preventative treatment. It is very very highly likely you can have a tank free of ich with the reasonable precautions of preventative treatment and quarantine.
Some , will say they have tanks without those measures but it is much less likely. One might cross a busy avenue blindfolded and not be struck by a vehicle but it's much safer to cross at an intersection and be guided by the traffic signal. Better yet is to close the road you choose to walk on to traffic.

Once ich is in a tank it will be there for years even if no new strain is introduced or fish are void of symptoms or present only minor symptoms from time to time. Garlic and other homeopathic remedies or the "reef safe" potions and foods in bottles sold in the hobby won't get rid of it or control it.

Once a tank has ich,the tank needs to be fishless for 72 days for the cysts to expire and fish treated in qt with copper, hyposalinity or my preferred method which is tank transfer.

There is plenty of good information in this thread ; some not so good once you get into personal theories and panaceas.. If you have a problem with ich, I suggest you go to the fish disease forum. The folks there know how to help.

In the meantime this thread may be of interest:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...and+quarantine

[Osteoicthyes]

Originally Posted by Blinkgyrl2987

I agree 100% and it seems others agree as well. Ultimately everyone makes a different choice, but I've vowed to never use chemical treatment for Ich again. The damage that it causes to the fish is just not worth it. I commend you on your new outlook!

Interesting. In my experience, an ich free tank is possible, without harming the fish.

My experience is that copper, used correctly, is VERY effective. I've got fish over 10 years old that were treated with Cupramine.....tangs, clowns, foxface, Christmas wrasse, six line wrasse, bennies, gobies,

I've helped friends set up quite a few tanks. They ALL utilized copper to completely kill all the parasites before placing them in the main tank. Each one of them had gone through the devastation of losing a tank full of fish to ich and were ready to give up SW, altogether.

[tmz]

Cooper works for most. If you don't like meds tank transfer is an equally if not even more effective treatment.

[greech]

I recently completed a tank transfer treatment and an overall 10 week QT while my tank remained fallow. I cannot believe how smoothly everything went. Thought the process would be very stressful on the fish but I didn't lose a single fish. The process was probably more stressful on me than the fish .

Now that fish are back in the DT, I am crazy paranoid about adding ANYTHING to the tank. I have corals in a QT tank and they have been there for about 4 weeks now. Do I need to leave the corals in the QT for 8-9 weeks? Any benefit to removing corals off the plugs are gluing them to new/clean plugs? How about adding snails and crabs? My LFS keeps fish in the same system as their CUC.

[tmz]

I don't , ( over 50 fish in my ich free system along with hundreds of corals) unless I got the coral from a tank infested with ich.
The chain of custody for most corals won't expose them to many fish or parasites if any for a long period of time;most parasites hatch in two weeks . The parasite cysts don't settle on coral tissue.
The rock or plug the coral is on can be brushed off or sinipped off if you are concerned about any tomites or cora pests like tegastes(red bugs, zoa pox et alia). I think it's a good idea to qt and/ or dip corals for there own pests( like tegastes and acro eating flatworms, etc. in any case. It's possible a cyst may be attatched to a snail shell .I just brush them vigorously before adding them to the tank. I suppose I could qt them and/or pour a little peroxide on the shell .

Nothing is 100% certain but it is very highly likely an aqaurium will a get ich at some point without qt and very highly unlikely when new fish are afforded the proper quartantine and preventative treatment.

[greech]

Thanks Tom. I really appreciate you sharing your experience.

I will definitely do the tank transfer/QT on all new fish going forward and of course will dip/QT new corals. Just was hoping to reduce the coral QT time period a little. Thanks again for the tips!

[Eac7466]

Lots of great info

[scubadan206]

My local Petco has ick in their tanks. They think that quarantining a few of the sick fish and treating them with some kind of herbal supplement will solve the problem. They've lost about half of their stock, and yet they keep selling what looks healthy and is still alive.
Unless they get real, real soon, I will not be buying any more fish from them.
The problem is that the employees have no say in how things are addressed. Their corporate people tell them what they are to do, and they have no say in it.

[pitbull_nc]

I agree with most all of the methods everyone has said works and am a big believer in qt but when I was new to the hobby I had a huge outbreak and bought a skunk shrimp aka a cleaner shrimp and watched him firsthand save my tank. I have a hard time with someone saying that they don't work. I understand there are always better ways of doing things but personally it worked for me and I feel its safer than some of the above recommendations

[tmz]

Lystamta amboinensis(skunk cleaner shrimp) do not eradicate or control crytocaryon irritans. They feed on damaged skin and some external parsites. While they might pick up an ich parsite or two' there is no evidence to suggest they are on their menu. Even if they did pick a few off while picking at the damaged skin, they wouldn't touch any of the encysted parasites or those in the fish.

While we are on the subject,another popular biological cleaner is the cleaner wrasse; same story ,unfortunately:

Alexandra Grutter The stomach contents of Labroides dimidiatus(cleaner wrasse) were examined by Alexandra Grutter Their diet consists of gnathiid isopods, scales, copepods and non-parasitic copepods (Grutter, 2000). No crytocaryon irritans was found.

As for the notion that using a cleaner shrimp is safer than proven treatment methods, it is clearly more dangerous to leave cryptocaryon irriatns in the tank without an effective treatment.

[pitbull_nc]

Originally Posted by tmz

Lystamta amboinensis(skunk cleaner shrimp) do not eradicate or control crytocaryon irritans. They feed on damaged skin and some external parsites. While they might pick up an ich parsite or two' there is no evidence to suggest they are on their menu. Even if they did pick a few off while picking at the damaged skin, they wouldn't touch any of the encysted parasites or those in the fish.

While we are on the subject,another popular biological cleaner is the cleaner wrasse; same story ,unfortunately:

Alexandra Grutter The stomach contents of Labroides dimidiatus(cleaner wrasse) were examined by Alexandra Grutter Their diet consists of gnathiid isopods, scales, copepods and non-parasitic copepods (Grutter, 2000). No crytocaryon irritans was found.

As for the notion that using a cleaner shrimp is safer than proven treatment methods, it is clearly more dangerous to leave cryptocaryon irriatns in the tank without an effective treatment.

As said...it is hard for me to fall into this when I saw my tank first hand cured from it. I did no other treatments and have been ich free for 5 years now. I am not saying it is safer then all of the other methods that have been described, however I do suggest that it is safer than a copper treatment. Once again I wouldn't be adamant about it if I didn't have the first hand experience.

[tmz]

It is what it is no matter how adamant you choose to be.
Lystmata amboinensis(skunk cleaner shrimp) do not eradicate or control crytocaryon irritans.
Copper is one proven effective treatment. Failing to provide effective treatment in a hospital/qt tank is unsafe since ich is often deadly.

Those who take the time to understand the life cycle of the parasite won't be misguided by the interpretation of events in your tank.

Good luck,though ;hope your fish continue to do well.

[Staisman]

I got ich with my clown fish, I kept them in qt tank for over 4 weeks and no signs of ich, after I put them into my DT the symptoms showed up the next week. So I decide to do hyposalinity method. I was decreasing the salinity for 3 days from 1.025 to 1.009 the forth day my coral beauty died, even tho he never had ich symptoms shown and never been in my DT, my clown fish died on 5th day. I would like to say that this method is not really good.

[billsreef]

Hypo in the display tank? Did you monitor ammonia? Hypo would have killed off life in the LR and caused an ammonia spike that would have required active control...such as lots of frequent and large water changes. Hypo, like any other effective treatment, should really be done in a separate treatment tank.

[Staisman]

In QT of course. I had coral beauty in the QT and I moved my clowns from DT to the QT to treat them all at once. I thought about ammonia spike since my QT was established so I did check and had 0 ammonia.

[billsreef]

Good. I've seen people do it in the display and get crazy ammonia.

How did you measure salinity? Those levels shouldn't have caused any fish mortality of those species, so I expect either something other than ich was going on, or problems with instrumentation.

[Staisman]

I have refractometer calibrated with 35 ppt solution, it was right salinity. The angel, when i took him out and placed on the piece of paper towel left a color trace from his skin. He was in my QT over a week and was eating good, was very healthy looking. He was swimming up top the day I finally dropped to 1.009 lvl and next morning he was dead. The clown start doing the same next day and over night died. I have one clown left and now i am gradually rising the salinity back. He is very stressed also, very cranky and swimming fast back and force.

[Staisman]

Ok I would like to share my success after some failure.
So as I stated above I lost two fish due to hypersalinity method I was trying to implement, since it didn't go well I decide to try some medication. I bought ICH-X from Hikari I believe, put my last survivor (my second clown fish) into separate tank, he won't eat anymore and was at the surface all the time, increased temperature to 83F and put ICH-X in it. Next day he was eating, and I noticed something white worm looking string attached to his body 2mm long. Second day I did 20% water change and added another dose of ICH-X, also soaked all his food in garlic extract and feed it to him. Now 4 days later he is looking good, eating good and spots are all gone.
It also says reef safe on the bottle of ICH-X but in the instructions recommended to use separate tank.
Ingredients: water, formaldehyde (<5%), methanol (<2%), malachite green chloride (<0.1%)
KEY BENEFITS
Treats Ich
Treats Cryptocaryonaisis
Treats Trichodiniasis
Treats Velvet (Gold Dust)
Treats Saprolegniasis
Highly Effective
Uses A Less Harsh Form Of Malachite Green
Excellent When Used after PraziPro (as a separate treatment)

[tmz]

ICh X is formallin, 3% formaldehyde. It is not reef safe. The label on the product is misleading.

[OnceTrueFalseBr]

Originally Posted by Jedidad

I've had success in the past using a short 5-10 minute freshwater dip. the fresh water supposedly causes the cysts to burst and release the parasites into the water. then rinse the fish to keep from transfering the parasites back into the main tank. just be sure to get the ph of the dip water the same as that of the tank. the salinity difference is enough shock to the fish as it is. also be sure to keep a very close eye on the fish during the dip so you can put them back in salt water if they begin to act funny.

"waddaya mean funny? Funny like a clown? does it amuse you? "
- Joe Pesci

[tmz]

I've had success in the past using a short 5-10 minute freshwater dip. the fresh water supposedly causes the cysts to burst and release the parasites into the water. then rinse the fish to keep from transferring the parasites back into the main tank. just be sure to get the ph of the dip water the same as that of the tank. the salinity difference is enough shock to the fish as it is. also be sure to keep a very close eye on the fish during the dip so you can put them back in salt water if they begin to act funny.

That is just not accurate.


The cysts(tomites) are not on the fish ;they are on surfaces in the tank ; only the "hatched" parasites(trophonts) are on/in the fish and the free swimming theronts are in the water. So they never touch the fresh water.

The pH is irrelevant in a freshwater dip. How do you adjust it,btw ? How long do you dip?

Drops in sg to 1.009 don't shock the fish. They can't tolerate lower sg than that for more than short periods of time. Jumps up in sg do lead to osmotic shock.

Most of the parasites(trophonts) are embedded in tissue ,so the fresh water dip has little to no effect on them.