4 months fishless but ick came back!

Chihuahua6

Chihuahua6

Premium Member
I feel sick right now. I removed my live rock over four months ago and kept it in circulation saltwater without any fish for over four months. I just added it to a tank where I combined my old fish with two new ones that were quarantined for over two months and doing well, no signs of ick with any of these fish.

Now one week later four of the five fish have anywhere from three spots to 20. I thought four months + was plenty of time to break the ick lifecycle but I was wrong.

Does anyone have a link to that site that described the ick lifecycle? Maybe it said 6 months to be sure? I am so upset right now. I have to remove the rock and put it someplace else which is really inconvenient and start dosing copper and dealing with that headache all over again. I am so angry :furious:
 
That sux!!!

I've seen tanks where all the fish were QT'd and the tank was thought to be Ich free...only to have a stressing event and have Ich come back out of seemingly nowhere...I still advocate QT'ing all new arrivals, but after many years in this hobby I tend to believe that Ich is very often present in tanks despite our best attempts to get rid of it.

I treat and make sure new fish are healthy as needed in QT...beyond that I make sure they are fat and healthy and do all I can to remove stress in terms of aggression as well as environmental stresses.
 
did you medicate your fish or just qt them? Ich is not always visible on fish. If they weren't medicated, they could have had it the whole time in QT. Did you add anything else such as coral, rock, inverts? They could have carried the cysts as well.

if you medicated, and didn't add anything, then sorry dude.
 
I think it stems from not treating the fish... 4 months should have been more than enough to get rid of all the ich. You needed to treat your fish in QT, not just watch for signs of ich. It can live in the gills and you'll never see it.

Do something stressful (like add a bunch of rock to the tank or move them around) and you'll start seeing the ich show up in a couple days on the fish body itself.
 
I personally have had ich in my tank for over a year, all my fish are healthy and eating well and they fight it off naturally. I still QT all fish despite having ich in my display, simply because I want them eating extremely well before they go into the display. As long as they are fat and happy, and not stressed, they will fight it off with a good varied diet.
 
from what i understand, not sure how true this is but ich is present fish all of the time. From wha i have been told is that the stress of the fish is what makes it show its ugly head. i have started Ruby Reef Kick ich cycle Sunday. I will start a thread to discuss the stages and how its going.
 
I have to agree with Michaelprater, it is virtually impossible for people to have ich free aquariums unless the fish live in the most sterile conditions/unnatural condtions all the time. Ich can be controlled with excellent water quality and good diet.

Ich break outs means the fish are over stressed remove the stress and the fish will often recover
 
michealprater said:
I still QT all fish despite having ich in my display, simply because I want them eating extremely well before they go into the display.
Just to add to this. I also treat them for the ich while in QT. They are in a stressed state at first so I do not treat anything. Once they eat, I use prazipro regardless, and if they show ich, I use Cupramine. I make sure they are eating agressively and disease free. Then I introduce them to my aquarium and they inevetably get ich as expected, but they are eating so well, it just disappears in a few days.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Ich doesn't have to be present in all fish and it can be eradicated. If the OP just removed the live rock and left the original fish in the tank with out using hypo or copper then the ich never went away in the first place. If the old fish was treated properly and the new fish were not properly treated then the new fish introduced it back in.

Ich needs a host and with out one it will die out. You could easily have all your fish with ich and not know it as they really like the gills where you can not see them. You can keep your fish fat and full and never see signs of ich. That's great! But you can get rid of ich completely.

To be sure that you keep ich out of your tank then you need to QT everything and treat the fish or keep fishless when it comes to non-fish additions. Corals, inverts of all kinds, even macro algae can bring ich into the tank.
 
jason2459 said:
Ich doesn't have to be present in all fish and it can be eradicated. If the OP just removed the live rock and left the original fish in the tank with out using hypo or copper then the ich never went away in the first place. If the old fish was treated properly and the new fish were not properly treated then the new fish introduced it back in.

Ich needs a host and with out one it will die out. You could easily have all your fish with ich and not know it as they really like the gills where you can not see them. You can keep your fish fat and full and never see signs of ich. That's great! But you can get rid of ich completely.

To be sure that you keep ich out of your tank then you need to QT everything and treat the fish or keep fishless when it comes to non-fish additions. Corals, inverts of all kinds, even macro algae can bring ich into the tank.
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If a coral can bring ich in, how exactly do you get rid of the ich on the coral in QT without the use of hypo or copper which the coral will not tolerate? Not debating, just asking.
 
michealprater said:
If a coral can bring ich in, how exactly do you get rid of the ich on the coral in QT without the use of hypo or copper which the coral will not tolerate? Not debating, just asking.
Click to expand...

In the case of anything non-fish related like corals you just keep the QT fishless for at least 6 weeks. I'd do 8 weeks to be sure. The ich if present will die off with out a fish host. You can also do some dips before going into QT to rid of any flat worms etc. and watch in QT for any pests that can do damage to all your other corals.
 
ich itself is present in the ocean as mentioned but when they hatch off the fish they normally are no where around to get it back. in a closed off tank they can not get away from it. as in humans we normally carry the cold virus but only get it when our immune system is down. ich spreads when the crystals fall off the fish and hatch and become free swimming. thats when the UV light and products like Kick Ich will work to kill them. You can not get rid of them while they are on the fish unless you copper dip them which in itself stresses the fish because you are subjecting them to poison. I have some fish that do not display having it but i know they do. In all vitamins and garlic can help keep it at bay but getting rid of it all together is extremely difficult. Im in the process of using Kick Ich to see if it truly works. we will see.
 
A lot of it has to do with flaws in applying the treatments. Hypo is only effective at 1.009sg for 3 to 4 weeks. So what happens? You get hypo down to 1.009 on Monday. Wednesday you test again, and because of evaporation, it's up to 1.011 or so. You add water to bring it back down. Chances are somewhere along the lines of treatment, something happened to break the treatment cycle. Same thing for copper treatments. Added copper Monday to the correct levels, Friday rolls around and the levels have dropped off and you add more. This especially true in the typical QT, as they tend to be small in size, which causes the levels to swim significantly.
 
I tried the kick ich / rid ich/ no ich / etc. stuff. All it ended up doing was giving my cyano with all it's "organic" cure stuff. I went through the entire procedure and came to a conclusion. They all pretty much say keep dosing until some period of time after you don't notice the ich anymore and this is what I came up with.

/Theory:
Keep buying our product and dosing until after you don't see it anymore. Then hopefully you'll think our product works because the ich is now in your sandbed and rock work waiting to multiply and look for your fish again. But hopefully by that time your fish will have had time to recover so they wont show any signs of ich even though they still have it and you'll tell everyone how great our products are.
/rant over

I finally gave in and got myself a QT. It wasn't expensive or near as hard as I thought it would be. I got my entire setup used for no more then $40 and got some coper and praziquantel. Tested the coper every day and just made sure it was in line with where it needed to be. Fish never stressed out and ate like pigs. Toughest part was waiting 8 weeks. I think I actually went 12 weeks the first time. I'd have to look it up but I know it wasn't less then 8 weeks.

So, to me QT is easy and eradicating ich is easy. Just because I have it in my mindset to QT everything now and ich and fluke are at least the last thing I or the fish have to worry about.
 
I have never seen a successful kick ich type of product story on here, therefore I have never tried it due to all the failure stories. Garlic does not cure ich, in fact researchers are now finding out garlic may actually do more harm than good to a fish. A uv sterilizer will kill free floating ich, but cannot rid a tank of it.
 
BTW, I also believe that a tank could be kept long term with ich with the right experience.... I guess I'm bipolar about this subject. :jester:


Just personally I'd rather rid it for good.
 
I believe certain fish cannot live with ich. Some examples would be jawfish, powder blues, diamond gobies. Even those fish that can live with ich, notice they are constantly scratching themselves on rocks trying to get it off. Imagine you itched constantly. I don't want that for my fish. I have had 2 tanks get infected with ich through poor qt procedures. Twice have I used the fallow procedure, and twice I have seen what seems to be success.

Recently I added an achilles (known ich magnet) to my tank with an established pbt (another known ich magnet.) The achilles came really close to death before I figured out how to make the pbt leave it alone. Believe me, both fish were stressed! There were, and still are no signs of ich. Ich is a parasite, stress does not cause it, just makes it easier for it to get a foothold. If it is not present in the tank, fish don't just "contract" it.
 
michealprater said:
I have never seen a successful kick ich type of product story on here, therefore I have never tried it due to all the failure stories. Garlic does not cure ich, in fact researchers are now finding out garlic may actually do more harm than good to a fish. A uv sterilizer will kill free floating ich, but cannot rid a tank of it.
Click to expand...
Can you post or PM me wherever you read that garlic info? The hocus pocus surrounding garlic has been one of my big pet peeves.
 
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