Case of the Ich. How well does No Sick Fish work?

Capt_Cully

Active member
Had a buddy tear down a tank, it was running for 3 years, his fish were in his system about that long. SOOOO when I took them, I threw them into my display w/out quarantining them. My tangs broke out a little bit as did the copper band I added. But a little citron goby he gave me has it REAL BAD. I've shut off my skimmer and started adding NSF. How well does it work? When should I expect to see results, or should I be ready to flush? Thanks.
 
Some people claim it's great, others saw no effect. There's no evidence that it works, as far as I've seen.
 
Your best results would be putting the fish all in a qt tank and putting them in hypo to get rid of ich and then leave your main tank fishless for 3-4 weeks min.
 
its been 50/50 for me... first time it might have worked if i left my skimmer off... 2nd time i kept the skimmer off for about 8 days and it has cleared up for me and its been 3 weeks already. it didnt seem to have bothered the inverts and corals
 
how could i possibly expect to safely put ALL my fish in q-t IF i could catch them all. My Q-t is only 20 G. I'd happly do it, but isn't that just as stressful and dangerous? the simple filter wouldn't handle the load? Freq water changes??? Help needed!
 
Well, you could try waiting, or dump in some NSF. UV units are sometimes said to help. Perhaps some cleaner shrimp would be useful.
 
I agree. If you dont want to pull out all the fish and stress them then put some cleaner shrimp in the tank and run a UV. The only thing about UV is that sometimes they kill good stuff that enters them.
 
I'm going to feed garlic and ride out the 7 day course of NSF. The tangs seem to be unaffected. I have seen them with what seemed to be ich which goes away. When I add a new fish they break out, then it goes away. They seem to be looking better already. The CBB looks a little improved as well. The Citron goby is in a BAD WAY. All the other fish are not affected. And I already have two cleaners, two fire shrimp and 3 peppermints. I'll keep my fingers crossed and we'll see. I'll update in 5 days. Thanks for all the input. Much appreciated.
 
bertoni- Is it harmful to LR or LS to use hypo in a display tank. I have a cycled 55g tank I just added two oscelaris to for quarantine. I have since read that it is recommended to use hypo on clowns since they are so susceptible to ick.
Thanks
Fred
 
You'll kill any invertebrates in the LR or LS if you do hypo on them. I wouldn't do it, but they'll function as base rock afterwards.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6543263#post6543263 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bertoni
You'll kill any invertebrates in the LR or LS if you do hypo on them. I wouldn't do it, but they'll function as base rock afterwards.

Base rock which would eventually turn back into live rock with other live rock present. But I agree with you on the hypo.
 
I do not believe in treatments for fish unless their condition is severe. I have always just fed my fish as much food as they can eat, while maintaining water quality. This always gets rid of ich in my case. If not either its bad water quality, or they are still not eating enough.

Water quality is such a huge subject that it can be hard to pinpoint an exact cause. There are also stabiltiy characteristics that fall into water "quality". If your temperature fluctuates too much it can cause osmotic imbalance, and cause stress , lowering its ablity to fight off disease because it uses more energy to mantain osmorgulation. Also high temperature can cause fish to need more food, because their metabolism needs change to temperature. They are cold blooded so they eat according to the temperature of surrounding water. Then there is pollution variables like ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates.If they are high they will be stressed and be more suceptible to parsitic infection. Especially ich. Also there are things like metals that cause irritation to fish skin, like copper. Some scalless fish are very sensitive to copper treatments, wich can make their condtion worse.

Salinity fluctuations are also a big stressor wich effects the fishes ablility to maintain proper osmorgulation.But thats another story....

I suspect your temp is fluctuating, the salinity is not maintained properly and your feeding your fish not enough. But this is my opinion only.
 
All of my fish are doing much better after 7 days with the skimmer off Except, my clown goby. He doesn't seem much better, so I'm going to try to catch him and quarantine him. As for the others, they get plenty to eat, marinated in garlic and they all seem to be thriving.

Can't really tell if the NSF helped or if it was just time, garlic, or the combination of all three. We'll see if it re-appears anytime soon. Thanks for all the input RC.
 
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