Clown has ich

[Stipe]

I recently aquaried a maroon clown, yay. He is now in a quaratine with my other newly aquaried chromis. To mach things short, my clown have a couple of white spots on him, is swimmign at the top of the water in circles with his fils closed into his body. My diognosis ICH. This is my first case of it (as i only have 2 fish, i maintain coral only tanks).

Cures that i researched about are,

-hypo salinity ( isnt this where you lower the salinity?)

-Copper (would melafix work?)

-Garlic ( He wont eat the poor bugger)

-Fresh water dips (Im scared to do thsi to him now, he loks kinda stressed.)

-Rise in temp to about 82 (Will this hurt him longtime or should i jsut do it for a day or two?)

So im planning on garlic, but he wotn eat. Im adding an air stone so he can breath. Also i need your advice on lowering the water salinity to match his internal body salinity, (is the sp in his body around 0.019). Also im goign to head out to tommorow and get a copepr solution. Fresh water dips, should i?, advice needed on that too.

 

[White Tiger]

Melafix will not work. Use hypo or a copper-based medication.

 

[Stipe]

i have bought seachems cupramine, buffered active copper and im lowering the water top 0.019. I dont think too low will help my little guy too much. Also the fresh water dips should bedone, once a week, once a day, once a month???

 

[cristhiam]

Don't do both, I would do hypo works every time and it's not too stressful for the fish. You need to go 1.009 for 4 to 6 weeks, follow this instructions http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/hyposalinity.html

 

[White Tiger]

You don't have to do a freshwater dip.

 

[Stipe]

I was thinking, fresh water dip with methanel blue (is that how u spell i t?)

 

[Stipe]

ya ai got it now, 'methylene blue '

 

[cristhiam]

fresh water dips are not very effective with ich. ich is embeded in the fish skin, some might drop but it stresses the fish.

 

[Stipe]

Yes i know that but with soft bodied animals such as a clownish it reaches deeper in and actualy affects the ich. Any how could you say that fresh water dips are stressful compared to the tonnes of poisons you (and im not pointing at you i mean to everyone) put in your tank, from copper to formaline, high temps and in some cases hypo salinity. I dont thin fresh water dips are that stressful. I always give my axolotls salt water dips when they have and infection.

 

[wwildcats04]

thats why you also use methylene blue

 

[cristhiam]

I dont use copper or any meds, hypo works. And if you do it carefully fish don't get streesed. I put every new fish throug hypo.

 

[Stipe]

"thats why you also use methylene blue", actually thats methylene blue is a fairly safe chemical. Also i never said i didnt, im just statign why tell people that those types of therapy is unsafe when they dose with posions.

 

[rightnow]

I had an Ich problem and I solved it doing the following:
I got a bucket and dipped my ClownFish for 2-3hours using 1 tab of Furur-2 and 10 drops of Quick Cure. Make sure you put in an Air-stone.
Do this 2 days in a row. It should be gone. Also you can mix Garlic with the food your Clown likes. You can use real garlic or go to GNC and they have a bottle of liquid garlic. I used mysis shrimp,garlic, and the flake food he eats. The garlic will boost his immume system and help him fight off the parasite. After the ick is gone I would still feed the garli once every couple days as a preventative step. If you do this correctly your Clown will be ick-free!

 

[bureau13]

Hypo will work with ich, but not velvet, which is similar to ich but kills faster. Copper will work with both. Cupramine from Seachem seems to be the copper medication of choice, and is reportedly less stressful to fish than other copper-based meds if used in the proper dose. That's what I will be using in my QT tank if I can ever get the bloody nitrites out.

jds