Bah Humbug .... Ich!

[ca1ore]

Tank has been setup for three months, all fish (except for a DD leopard Trio) QT'd for at least 8 weeks, usually 12; and now Hippo pretty clearly has ich. This tank was an upgrade from a prior 90, and hippo has had the occasional spot for a while, but nothing more, so a wrote it off as lympho. Still no other fish symptomatic, but seems pretty clear that it's ich.

So, how to proceed?

I do still have my old 90, and it certainly can be pressed into service as a HT, but for 30 fish? Has anyone done this? I have plenty of seeded media, but again, enough for 30 fish?

Disassembly of the reef seems likely as fish traps have not worked for me in the past.

I asked this elsewhere, but has anyone had experience with Dr. G parasitic caviar? I'm always skeptical of reef-safe medications as my experience is they don't work.

 

[MrTuskfish]

If there was a reef-safe ich cure, everyone in the hobby would know about it. Any food-type cure would have to be fed for many weeks, because of ich's life cycle.

 

[Deahttub]

Get a UV sterilizer...put one on my tank when i had an Ick problem and after 4-6 weeks it was gone...key is to have high watts and low flow...

 

[E Rosewater]

UV Sterilizer will not help much.

If you're not prophetically treating there's always the chance that the ich won't get bad enough to see the symptoms and will get through QT.

Unfortunately from your initial post you seem to understand that your only treatment options are not going to be pleasant.

30 fish seems like it would be a lot in a 90 and if there was a reef safe treatment everyone would use it and it make an absolute fortune from the reefing community. Petco is having a dollar per gallon sale.

Or you could buy a very large Brute Stock tank fairly inexpensively (probably quite a bit less than the price of the fish in the tank).

You have to decide if the risk of a future ich outbreak killing your livestock outweighs the challenges associated with treating.

 

[Yodeling]

ca1ore, similar boat here. New tank and hippo is sick. Tbh, I'm considering just treating the DT with Cupramine. Seems easier to quarantine corals than fish (corals won't get stressed out and kill each other but the tangs will). Also researching ozone. Reportedly it's more effective than UV, but I'm skeptical about its effectiveness in eliminating the disease. Never heard of the product you referenced, but tbh it sounds like snake oil.

 

[ca1ore]

Item in question is Dr. G ANTI parasite caviar :lol:. Whether it is snake oil or not, seems to me unlikely to be effective. I do run a big UV on my tank, and while it can certainly help to reduce parasite pressures in my experience, it does not eliminate the problem.

 

[Deinonych]

Depending on your invert population, you could treat the DT with CP. I removed my corals, shrimp and mollusks to a dedicated QT and dosed the DT. I completed treatment a bit over a week ago and so far so good.

 

[E Rosewater]

Treating with copper in the DT is could be a bad idea for a two big reasons both due to the same thing.

Copper adsorbs onto Calcium Carbonate such as your live rock and potentially your substrate. The reasons this is an issue is that this will reduce the amount of copper in the water leading to less effective or completely ineffective treatment. The second reason is there will be a release of the copper back into the water column for an indefinite period of time after stopping treatment.

 

[Deinonych]

CP = chloroquine phosphate, not copper.

 

[E Rosewater]

Sorry I should have quoted, my response was to Yodeling, not to you.

 

[Deinonych]

Sorry I should have quoted, my response was to Yodeling, not to you.

No harm, no foul! :thumbsup:

 

[ca1ore]

Depending on your invert population, you could treat the DT with CP. I removed my corals, shrimp and mollusks to a dedicated QT and dosed the DT. I completed treatment a bit over a week ago and so far so good.

I think it would be more difficult for me to do that rather than just remove the fish. Just out of curiosity, have you returned the inverts to your tank yet? If treating the display I wonder how long to wait?

 

[ca1ore]

Any thoughts on how to best HT leopard wrasses ..... And a mandarin?

 

[Deinonych]

I think it would be more difficult for me to do that rather than just remove the fish. Just out of curiosity, have you returned the inverts to your tank yet? If treating the display I wonder how long to wait?

No, I haven't returned the inverts to the tank yet. I'm letting them go a full 10 weeks before returning them to make sure any crypto cyst hitchhikers die off. Also will give me plenty of time to remove the CP fully. I'm running UV, carbon, GFO and Poly-filter right now. It's probably already been fully removed by now, but I'm going to keep running UV for another week, and the others for a few weeks further. Starting to see algae grow back on the overflow, which has kept my Tailspot Blenny busy.

 

[ca1ore]

Well, after daily feedings of this anti-parasite food my tank is free of active ich, for now. This is simply an observation, not a conclusion. Will see whether it returns or not.

 

[Deinonych]

Interesting. Keep us posted!

 

[DSPs]

Well, after daily feedings of this anti-parasite food my tank is free of active ich, for now. This is simply an observation, not a conclusion. Will see whether it returns or not.

Good to hear! I just did the same thing with my wifes new hawk fish and he is doing awesome now!

 

[ca1ore]

Interesting. Keep us posted!

Yes, will do! I will not be surprised to see ich rear its ugly head again, but for now I see no symptoms - either direct (spots) or indirect (flashing, breathing problems or twitching).

 

[Deinonych]

Yes, will do! I will not be surprised to see ich rear its ugly head again, but for now I see no symptoms - either direct (spots) or indirect (flashing, breathing problems or twitching).

That's definitely a good sign. Are you going to continue feeding the medicated food, or have you completed the treatment?

 

[ca1ore]

The LFS that recommended this stuff suggested two weeks, which is what the package states also, so that it what I have done. I must confess to having been quite nervous about adding something containing CP to my reef tank, even if it was in the food, but there seems to have been no ill effect. At this point I shall stop using it and just see what happens. Seems quite plausible that the food could have cleared the Hippo of ich, but it will have done nothing to rid the tank itself of the parasite. If the fish are 'protected' perhaps the parasite will die off, as if the tank were fallow, but I guess only a bit of time will tell.