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

[davandwilk]

I gave up on the copper last night because I had to do fresh water dip on the tang again. I thought about just raising the copper level until things died down. But changed my mind and went to the TTM, just hope its ich and not some other parasite.

I bought some chloroquine phosphate off of ebay, but then some on here said it didnt work for them and there fish died.

One way or another I will try each method until Its gone or the fish dies. I hate that the fish has to stay in such a small tank for so long.

[nuttyd]

Agree with the whole remove fish into quarantine tank, Ich has a shelf life and will die off if it does not have host. If you treat the fish in a separate tank, the ich should die off in the main. I have had luck using metro soaked foods with garlic for flavor and adding metro to the water. Also, if the fish can take higher temps, you can raise the temp in the quarantine tank to kill off the ich.

[billsreef]

Originally Posted by nuttyd

Also, if the fish can take higher temps, you can raise the temp in the quarantine tank to kill off the ich.

That concept is a carry over from fresh water ich,Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, which is an entirely different organism than salt water ich, Cryptocaryon irritans. Higher temperatures actually benefit Cyrptocaryon. By the time you get the temperature high enough to kill it off, you'll also kill the fish.

[SeaCubed]

Started reading this post but there's a lot in there. For the first time in my saltwater history I think I have ick. Have had it in freshwater and always cured it with a little salt and heat but don't know how to do it in fresh: luckily it's a fairly new tank and only a couple fish so and no corals so not worried about hurting Anything thing else with a cure. New blue hippo appears to be the one that brough it in. At first it just looked like bumps and not ich but starting to look more like ich and it looks as my wrasse is getting it too. All fish are still looking healthy and eating so I don't know how bad is too bad. Anything easy I should do or let it run the course and maybe cure itself if the fish stays healthy. The odds of catching the fish isn't good cause of all my rock. Quick simply suggestions while it's still small spread or do nothing and hope.

Thanks guys

[Breakthecycle2]

Originally Posted by SeaCubed

Started reading this post but there's a lot in there. For the first time in my saltwater history I think I have ick. Have had it in freshwater and always cured it with a little salt and heat but don't know how to do it in fresh: luckily it's a fairly new tank and only a couple fish so and no corals so not worried about hurting Anything thing else with a cure. New blue hippo appears to be the one that brough it in. At first it just looked like bumps and not ich but starting to look more like ich and it looks as my wrasse is getting it too. All fish are still looking healthy and eating so I don't know how bad is too bad. Anything easy I should do or let it run the course and maybe cure itself if the fish stays healthy. The odds of catching the fish isn't good cause of all my rock. Quick simply suggestions while it's still small spread or do nothing and hope.

Thanks guys

ICH doesn't "run a course" per say. If you don't eradicate it, it will be always be there. If you have no inverts, you could try hypo salinity, but you're best bet is taking all fish out and treating with copper of CP in a QT tank, leaving the main tank fishless for 76 days. I just had to do this from August on. My case was velvet, but it could have been some ICH mixed in. I just finally put fish in the tank a month ago.

[Am17]

Originally Posted by Breakthecycle2

ICH doesn't "run a course" per say. If you don't eradicate it, it will be always be there. If you have no inverts, you could try hypo salinity, but you're best bet is taking all fish out and treating with copper of CP in a QT tank, leaving the main tank fishless for 76 days. I just had to do this from August on. My case was velvet, but it could have been some ICH mixed in. I just finally put fish in the tank a month ago.

Is it really 76 days? Geez, I put my fish back in after four weeks and they've been doing well for the past couple months now. Is it at all possible to introduce Ich to a system from new invertebrates, or it strictly fish?

[powderblue1]

Didn't read the whole thread so forgive if this has been stated, but getting totally rid of ich is virtually impossible once it is in the tank and has gotten into the sand-bed. However you can kill it in the water column with a strong enough UV sterilizer and this will eventually get levels low enough to have a strong immune system prevail and remain symptom-free. Now for the magic. Garlic is great, but mix it with pure DRIED GINGER ROOT POWDER and your fish will have super immune systems! Now I'm just giving all my tricks away! I hope you reefers appreciate it!

[tmz]

Garlic and ginger have no magic and don't cure ich .

If it's in the tank ,it will die without a fish in the tank. Over a period of 72 days any cysts will no longer viable based on studies. More often they wane in a month or so but 72 days is the safer timeframe.

[powderblue1]

Not saying they cure ich. Saying that they strengthen fish immune system. Fish that have strong immune systems don't succumb to ich as easily. This is a fact

[tmz]

It's not a fact that ginger or garlic helps fish in a tank with ich whatsoever and none to substantiate a claim that dosing either or both enhances a fish's immune system and/or resistance to crytocaryon irritans. Cryptocaryon irritans attacks both healthy and stressed fish.

Dawdling on effective treatment in favor of homeopathic concoctions leaves a tank with ich and fish vulnerable to it.

[powderblue1]

I'm sorry Tom. We seem to find ourselves in these debates often to start off my experience here and I apologize for that, but I do find it intriguing I am not suggesting just dosing it to the aqueous solution in which the aquatic life resides, but instead soaking food with it so the fish ingests it with the organics it feeds upon. This will strengthen the immune system of any vertebrate. There are are many studies with enormous sample sizes, which as you know increases reliability of results, that state it does in fact do just that (enhance and strengthen the immune system). This is an ancient remedy and does indeed work. Thank you for your insights.

[powderblue1]

Originally Posted by marc nichols

% years ago when I acquired Hot Lips, our powder brown tang, she came with ick. I removed all but one fish from the display and did the quarantine thing for double the required time. In the mean time I tried to catch/kill starve the holdout with no success. So, back went Hot Lips and the other inmates. Back came the ick.

So, did the holistic thing with vitamins, garlic and the best feed plan I could devise. That worked! In 5 years, have not lost a fish or seen any sign of ick.

This man is correct...

[powderblue1]

Originally Posted by Paul B

Paracites that are much larger than ich and dead skin. Even if a shrimp ate a few paracites, there are tens of thousands of them so the shrimp will be ineffective.
Shrimp and cleaner fish are totally useless at curing ich but if you like cheaner shrimp and fish, then buy them. I have them in my tank because I like them but I know they will do nothing for ich.
You can quarantine or not quarantine, that is up to you but your fish should be in a state of health where they are not bothered by ich.
Fish in a new system wil never be in great health no mater what they look like so in those systems it is better to quarantine. As the system ages, after a few years the fish should be in breeding condition and they will not succumb from ich.
I personally have not had a quarantine or hospital tank in probably 25 years and I have no problems from ich or anything else. I buy fish from all different places and even collect some myself along with seawater, seaweeeds and rocks.
The key is food and stress.
If you don't believe any of that, then quarantine everything. You will need to.

This man is correct!

[tmz]

No quarantine , Hot lips etc. Bad advice.... Discussed at length many times in many threads. Nothing" intriguing" or personal ;no need to apologize to me I'm just correcting bad information when I see it for the sake of readers who might take it seriously. Put the hammer away. It's just nonsense. There are no studies to show enhancements to the immune system for marine fish from garlic or ginger as claimed. Lots of wishful thinking though. It's not a debate just nonsense. Folks should ignore it and treat with effective methods which are carefully and thoroughly explored in the fish disease forum.

[HK_Fuey]

Spot on Tom. There are so many myths about curing Ich (and other parasites/diseases). It's best to stick with tried and scientifically tested methods if you want your fish to survive. There are also so many misdiagnosed cases of Ich, where it was probably something else, but gets reported as a case of Ich that was cured through some magic potion a fish shop sold as a reefsafe treatment for Ich. Too many people willing to make money from magic potions that don't really do anything.

[Mamacheng]

PLEASE HELP my puffer fish. My fishes (5 remaining) have ich and I moved them into a 10-gallon QT tank 3 nights ago. Puffer fish had one cloudy eye when transferred and now both eyes are cloudy and he cannot see anything. Ever since the other eye turned cloudy, he is not eating. Appetite of all my fish has gone down which I know it is normal due to the copper treatment. My biggest concern is the puffer since he is not eating at all. I even tried garlic guard and that did not work. The ich has fallen off the fish and he looks healthy otherwise. I am not sure if the cloudy eyes will go away with the continue treatment of copper. I know the treatment of ich takes time but I do not want him to starve to death during the treatment. At the same time, uneaten food is accumulating and I know that is bad for the water. What should I do?

I have 2 damsels, puffer is young so he is not big at all, clownfish, and koran left.. my butterfly angelfish, goby, and hippo tang died during the 1st 12 hours of treatment since they were extremely infected.

[ohmygod]

power feeding definitely help a whole lot.

[tmz]

There are some anecdotal accounts of copper treatments limiting a feeding response ,though that is not usually the case . Adding extra food won't help and may lead to an ammonia issue. Tank transfer treatment is med free which is one reason I prefer it. This thread may be of interest:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...sh+acclimation

If it were my fish; I'd :

Move the fish to a tank with new salt water and proceed with a tank transfer treatment.

Alternatively; check the ammonia and copper level in the current qt tank ; siphon out uneaten food ; keep it clean and consider a larger qt tank.

[Mghanayem]

Has anyone tried Seachem Metroplex?

[powderblue1]

hello Mama,
I am sorry to hear about your poor puffer. Stop the Cu treatment immediately! It combined with the stress of removing him from his home is killing your Puffer! At this point you should transfer it to a tank with fresh SW as, stated already by another, and slowly lower the salinity to 1.009. Keep it there for 4-weeks and then transfer the puffer back into the display after slowly bringing the salinity back up to 1.023 (or whatever you have your display tank at). I would also recommend the same treatment for your display, but that would mean removing all inverts and corals that can't handle it. It will also mess with the biological filter in your display, but it will return once the salinity is back up. I am not a proponent of ripping a fish out of his home to cure ich. Remove the inverts and corals that can't handle hypo-salinity and treat them with the Cu if you must, but let the fish remain, but it is too late for that now (It is probably the main reason you puffer fell ill to the point of not eating, the added stress on top of the ich in its gills). Follow the above instructions and your Puffer will have a chance. And when I say "slowly" for the salinity changes I mean over a 72 - 96-hour period. Good Luck and let me know how it goes

[tmz]

Treating corals and inverts with Cu will kill them; residual copper in the tank and on the rock and substrate will render it useless for inverts going forward.


Hyposalinity treatments in a quarantine tank are sometimes useful for crptocaryon irritans , but there are restitant strains of the parasite. Subjecting a reef tank to hyposoalintiy will kill many of the isontonic organisms(micro biota, and inverts ) and will suppress the biofilter.

[ReefInterest]

I'm curious -- do we have any data on tanks that have had ich exposure and have gone untreated? Have we looked at surviving fish a year later and determined if any of the parasite remains?

I ask because another discussion reminded my of an incident in a display tank that I had. The tank contained 2 ocellaris clowfish, a bi-color blenny, a pygmy angel, and a (later introduced) blue tang. The tang came down with ich (probably "came with ich"), which spread to one of the clowns. Those died, but the other fish never showed any symptoms, and the ich never reappeared

This brings up the following possibilities:

1) It wasn't ich.
2) It was ich, but died after being unable to infect hosts with a built up immunity.
3) It was ich, and it hung around in the other fish's gills, waiting for its opportunity to strike a weakend fish or a newly-introduced fish (neither of which happened).

I'm not sure, reading through this thread, whether there is a claim that ich won't disappear on its own (never to return) while fish are still present in the system, or by what percentage of tanks that might be true for.

p.s. It could very well be #3 above, but I'd like to understand, statistically, what the confidence in that number is.

[ReefInterest]

Maybe to be more specific: if an episode of ich doesn't kill all the fish in a tank after going untreated, what is the likelihood that an autopsied fish would be positive for the parasite one year later (with no visible outbreak during that time)?

[MadCnty]

So if you get an outbreak in a reef system, you should transfer all fish to a qt and dose there??? As copper is not good for corals, true??? Just wondering... As I have never had an outbreak, but yet preparing for the worse...
Also IF you had a FOWLR with just one fish can you not qt that fish & treat said fish, and let the tank ick die off naturally w/o dosing copper??? Hope you all understand what I am asking... Again never had ick but would like to have answers before it happens, so I am more informed if/when it does...
Also what is the timeline of getting rid of ick in a DT without dosing copper (ie no fish)???

[tmz]

There is quite a bit about temporary partial immunity and long term survival in the fish disease forum. Several studies are noted as well. The skinny is that exposed survivros may develop a partial temporary immunity and the parsite may expire after a year or two in tanks if no new strains are introduced even if there are fish there to to host it . In theory , a single strain can't reproduce indefinitely without some cross breeding. In my case , years ago crtypocrayon persisted for two years with no additions even though some surviving fish in the sytem showed no symptoms and others only minimal occasional symnptoms. During that time new fish pretreated and free of it were attacked by it when introduced.