Are Copperband Butterflys ich resistant?

[Deinonych]

Look like you didn't treat them.. you have to start again.

+1

Ich won't go away on its own as long as a fish is present. You must treat the infected fish in order to eradicate it. The tank didn't have parasites since it was fallow for 5 months - the tang reintroduced them to the aquarium.

 

[namxas]

Kordon Ich Attack for Fresh & Saltwater Aquariums

It says safe with corals and inverts and I have seen several posts of people on this site who have claimed success. The thing is, it says it takes 4-5 weeks for the treatment to clear the tank of ich. It seems to me that is about how long a fish might take to become immune to ich if it survives.

I tried the stuff way back when...snake oil. The "reef safe" preparations might knock back the odd cyst, but they won't work on a full-blown case of crypto, IME.

As of now, we use quinine sulfate to treat crypto. It can be had as Crypto Pro in "hobbyist amounts". We've found this to be about the best treatment we've used, esp. for resistant strains.

Take a look at this article...thanks to Adam Brody, there are some great photos showing how the critter becomes embedded under the fish's skin, as well as a video showing how it "spins", which is what makes the fish "itchy":

Understanding & Treating Cryptocaryon irritans a.k.a. Ich

 

[Dmorty217]

I am contemplating adding a copperband butterfly to my 120 gallon reef tank. I have tried numerous tangs in the past: blue Hippo, yellow, Powder blue and powder brown. All contract ich and die. Now, I have a tank full of fish and have added others in between the tangs and no one gets ich, only the tangs. I currenttl have a Rock beauty, 2 royal grammas, 2 pajama cardinals, a (flake food eating) yellowhead jawfish, 2 firefish and two Talbot and yellow tail damsels.
The LFS has a nice 4 inch Copperband who has been in their tank for 4 weeks and eating frozen food well.
So, my question, are CBB prone to ich? I have scoured the web sites and have not seen one picture of a CBB with ich, lots of "is this ich" post but none were actually ich.
What are your experiences?

All three of the tangs you have tried died because the ich is in your tank and they are more prone to getting it. With problems in your tank with ich, I would assume you will have problems getting one to eat and eat well enough to survive let alone have a immune system strong enough to prevent it from getting ich. What you really should do is buy a QT or two and treat your fish and either treat your DT or leave it fallow for 11 wks. Don't buy a CBB, don't buy any other fish, fix the problem you have or you will loose fish here and there until you do

 

[Dmorty217]

Oh and the fish in your DT aren't immune to it as was mentioned above, stop feeding them for a few days or throw another stressor in the tank and watch the outbreak begin. People who ink fish are immune to ich or that they can just live with it will all loose in the end

 

[homegrowncichli]

@JJK REEF00
We all know ich is not a virus, I was using the cold/flu as an example of how our immunity works.
@Dmorty217
Yes fish do have immunity, all animals do, but with fish it works differently from ours. They rely on their skin/slime layer and in a publication I read, (and I have tested this out in person) they need multiple exposures to it to develop immunity, similar to our viral booster shots. Immunity responce and effectiviness varies from species to species, ie, gobies vs tangs.

 

[Paul B]

People who think fish are immune to ich or that they can just live with it will all loose in the end

The 20 year old fish in my 42 year old reef may disagree with you.

 

[M007]

The 20 year old fish in my 42 year old reef may disagree with you.

+1, I have made it through some ugly times with the white dots from hell. Good water perams and proper feeding works for me

 

[msmith619]

So, update:
The Regal tang is now 2-3 weeks of head to toe white spots, literally covered in ich. No other fish in the tank is scratching or showing signs of infection. He is eating well and I soak frozen, pellets and flake in garlic and feed at least 5 times a day. He is fat and eating well and showing no signs of feeling sick.
I do not have a quarantine tank as I gave the old tank away.
After reading numerous articles, I have decided against adding Kick Ich or Ich Attack to my closed reef system as being dubious at best and possibly toxic to my corals at worst.
That being said, I have no way to catch a 2 inch regal tang in a 120 gallon reef tank with live rock and extensive coral.

BTW: I have several cleaner shrimp, skunk and fire and no, they show no interest in cleaning the ich for all of those who recommend cleaner shrimp.
I do have a cleaner wrasse (who eats frozen and flake well) and he really works the Tang over but, does not seem to making any headway on the ich.

I am wondering.......
Seachem makes Metronidazole and Focus.
Seachem Metronidazole for internal treatment of ich makes sense. In medicine we use Metronidazole to treat protozoan infections as well as amoebic infections.
Cryptocaryon irritans (also known as marine white spot disease or marine ich) is a species of ciliate protozoa that parasitizes marine fish, and is one of the most common causes of disease in marine aquaria.
Since ich is a protozoa, it should respond to Metronidazole.
Using Seachem Focus, which also contains nitrofurantoin, an antibiotic to help any secondary infections, to bind the Metronidazole to the food for internal usage should treat the attached protazoa and kill it at that stage.
If you use it all thru the life cycle, any protozoa that attch the fish should die and effectively rid the tank of the infection.

 

[homegrowncichli]

There are ich medications that are reef safe, but you have to use so much of it and I don't think its effective.

Since you're going though what I did way back when (I had ich twice in my reef), and assuming you believe me in regards to fish immunity, I do have a solution for you. Its called herd immunity.
When ich wiped out my tank, I lost everything except for 1 species of fish. Within 2 months of adding a single ich infected fish, ich population bloomed exponentially with each generation and every single fish was covered, at which point, my tangs, clownfish, even my damsels died. However, my 6 blue-green chromis survived and became immune. I then added 4 more chromis to get a school of 10 and they also developed immunity very quickly. Once the chromis were asymptomatic, I was able to add any one single fish, no matter what. So when ich is randomly swimming around, it may hit a chromis or the new fish. The ones that hit the chromis are pretty effectively cleared by its immune system and that breaks the ich's cycle. The ich that hits the new fish will all reproduce, but the new ich will be soaked up by the chromis, preventing the run away bloom.
Using herd immunity, I was able to introduce zebrasoma tangs, more clownfish and damsels. Evenually I also added my hippo tang (regal to you) which had the weakest immunity. He was a ich factory for the rest of the year, till one day, ich died out.

NOTE: I also added a powder brown tang to my sump. I believe this fish's immunity is weaker than the hippo tang. I kept him in the sump, so I could expose him to the ich, and catch him and treat him with cupramine in a separate tank in case he couldn't do it himself. (I just needed him to develop what immunity and live though each exposure) He was doing fine until one day I added a bunch of damsels to the sump also, which the ich then blooomed off of and the tang died suddenly on the first bloom, a day before I was going to catch him. My mistake, since the damsels weren't immune, and the ich bloom happened in the sump, whereas my immune fish were in the main. I then rememebered ich can only swim a short distance, like a foot.

 

[msmith619]

Since you're going though what I did way back when (I had ich twice in my reef), and assuming you believe me in regards to fish immunity, I do have a solution for you. Its called herd immunity.
Using herd immunity, I was able to introduce zebrasoma tangs, more clownfish and damsels. Evenually I also added my hippo tang (regal to you) which had the weakest immunity. He was a ich factory for the rest of the year, till one day, ich died out.

That is great news. I still want to add a yellow tang and a couple Onyx clowns to finish my set up down the road. Once this guy seems clear, in a couple months, I may try adding one at a time and seeing how it goes.

 

[MrTuskfish]

That is great news. I still want to add a yellow tang and a couple Onyx clowns to finish my set up down the road. Once this guy seems clear, in a couple months, I may try adding one at a time and seeing how it goes.

Giant mistake. Any immunity to ich is limited to individual strains of ich and is temporary. I'd love to see some serious research on "herd immunity".

 

[jjk_reef00]

There are ich medications that are reef safe, but you have to use so much of it and I don't think its effective.

Since you're going though what I did way back when (I had ich twice in my reef), and assuming you believe me in regards to fish immunity, I do have a solution for you. Its called herd immunity.
When ich wiped out my tank, I lost everything except for 1 species of fish. Within 2 months of adding a single ich infected fish, ich population bloomed exponentially with each generation and every single fish was covered, at which point, my tangs, clownfish, even my damsels died. However, my 6 blue-green chromis survived and became immune. I then added 4 more chromis to get a school of 10 and they also developed immunity very quickly. Once the chromis were asymptomatic, I was able to add any one single fish, no matter what. So when ich is randomly swimming around, it may hit a chromis or the new fish. The ones that hit the chromis are pretty effectively cleared by its immune system and that breaks the ich's cycle. The ich that hits the new fish will all reproduce, but the new ich will be soaked up by the chromis, preventing the run away bloom.
Using herd immunity, I was able to introduce zebrasoma tangs, more clownfish and damsels. Evenually I also added my hippo tang (regal to you) which had the weakest immunity. He was a ich factory for the rest of the year, till one day, ich died out.

NOTE: I also added a powder brown tang to my sump. I believe this fish's immunity is weaker than the hippo tang. I kept him in the sump, so I could expose him to the ich, and catch him and treat him with cupramine in a separate tank in case he couldn't do it himself. (I just needed him to develop what immunity and live though each exposure) He was doing fine until one day I added a bunch of damsels to the sump also, which the ich then blooomed off of and the tang died suddenly on the first bloom, a day before I was going to catch him. My mistake, since the damsels weren't immune, and the ich bloom happened in the sump, whereas my immune fish were in the main. I then rememebered ich can only swim a short distance, like a foot.

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read about ich...
There are no reef safe cures, and ich can easily travel over a foot just by being carried by the flow in the tank...
Most of the fish you are keeping are very hardy so they are less affected by ich.
So if you want a tank full of damsels then go with your false theory of immunity.
If you want any fish that is moderately delicate you should use proper QT procedures to make sure ich never enters your DT.

 

[homegrowncichli]

@ mrtuskfish,
You are correct about temporary immunity. I made as assumuption the ich Msmith619 has now is the original strain in her tank, which means her original fish have some immunity to it, otherwise they would bloom out of control and there would be no survivors. Her new fish doesn't and it needs to survive the 2 or 3 exposures to it of that ich strain to acquire some immunity. (There is a publication on this with clownfish and marine velvet, but I didn't bookmark it. Here is a synopsis from reefkeeping regarding "Natural Immunity")

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-07/sp/feature/

As with Cryptocaryon irritans, it has been demonstrated that fish can develop immunity to Amyloodinium ocellatum after several non-lethal exposures, and that this immunity can last for at least six months (Cobb, Levy, & Noga, 1998). In one test, Tomato Clownfish (Amphiprion frenatus) were exposed in containers once per week to 40,000 dinospores per fish for thirty minutes. Afterwards, they were moved to separate aquaria for three days. At that point, each fish was given a freshwater dip for three minutes before being transferred to different recovery aquaria. Each recovery aquarium had its copper concentration maintained at 0.15-0.20 mg/l to cure the infestation. The fish remained there for a week to allow them time to recover. After this, the process was repeated again with another exposure followed by treatment.

After fourteen days a significant number of fish in the experiment showed an immune response, and after twenty-eight days all but one fish in the study were completely free of trophonts. What I found the most interesting was the mode of defense. Immune fish remained susceptible to dinosporic attachment, but for reasons that are unclear, the trophonts never grew, and dropped off their hosts prematurely. It was theorized that the fishes' immune response incorporated an "antitrophont mechanism" by which a host fish that had acquired immunity could "reject trophonts or at least severely retard trophont development." The authors then proposed, as a mode of protection for aquaculture facilities, intentionally adding immune fish to retard the infection of previously unexposed fish. Since both would be susceptible to attachment, the immune fish could be used as a sort of decoy, to decrease the total dinospore count in the environment. This would hopefully subject the non-immune fish to a non-lethal challenge of dinospores, and give those fish more time to develop resistance to the parasite.

The last interesting observation arising from this study concerned immunity specificity. While the authors did not intentionally perform any experiments to test whether this immune response would work only against Amyloodinium ocellatum, they did have an unexpected outbreak of Cryptocaryon irritans, which killed both unexposed and resistant fish. This suggests that any acquired immunity is parasite-specific. This should be a wakeup call to those of you who have still not come around to the necessity of quarantine and preventive treatment. It is better to be safe than sorry, and even professionals with years of training in fish pathology sometimes make mistakes in selecting allegedly healthy fishes. Quarantine, quarantine, quarantine!


Finally, I'm extrapolating herd immunity from other animals to fish, though I have not read anything specifically involving fish. The priciple would be the same as what the authors above have also suggested for aquaculture facilities.

 

[homegrowncichli]

@ JJKreef00
It appears you agree with me on the effectiveness on "reef safe" medication.
I also agree with you that proper quarantine procedures are the simpliest method, however, whats done is done and Msmith already has ich in the system. All we can do is triage the situation and that's what I'm offering.

And yes you are correct about who wants a display tank full of hardy chromis or damsels? Well, it can also be done with zebrasomas, but the cost would be a little more.

But which is the lesser of 2 evils? Take a chance with the ich living in the system for a year and killing new expensive fish, or have a tank full of common inexpensive (unwanted?) hardy fish, who can easily be immunized to the ich and who can provide herd immunity.

Oh, BTW, here is the reference to the publication. Luckily I was able to search for it using "immunity" and "marine velvet".

Cobb, Charles S., Michael G. Levy, & Edward J. Noga. 1998. "Development of Immunity by the Tomato Clownfish Amphiprion frenatus to the Dinoflagellate Parasite Amyloodinium ocellatum" Journal of Aquatic Animal Health, vol. 10 no. 3 pp. 259-263, 1998.

 

[msmith619]

Progress report:
So, after three weeks of a Blue Hippo covered in ich in my DT and not having a QT, I tried a different (desperate) route.

I have treated 5 days with Fishkeeper additive for Marine and Reef (made by Tropical Science), Seachem Metronidazole and Seachem Focus (Nitrofurantoin) in their food at every feeding.
The ich spots dissapperared 2 days into treatment. I used the Fish Keeper additive for 5 days and am still feeding the Metronidazole and Focus.

It has been 10 days. There is no sign of ich. The tang is fatter and even more active than before. All the fish are still healthy and I did not have to treat the DT. I am going to stop the Metronidazole and Focus today.

I know this is not the recommended course of action but, it was just about my only recourse and, in this case, it worked well. The ich was constant and the poor tang was covered from head to tail every day with hundreds of white spots, never a day without spots for 3 weeks. Two days into this treatment he lost all of the spots. Ich is a protozoan and we use Metronidazole on humans to treat protozoan infections. It just made sense to try it in the food and it seems to be working.