Lunchbox360
New member
i noticed white spots on his nose
my hippo
and this is my baby I CANT LOSE HER=[
my hippo
and this is my baby I CANT LOSE HER=[
do my fish have ich i need a ID check
- Thread starter Lunchbox360
- Start date
I agree. Pictures are not crisp/sharp enough. What is behavior of fish?
Lunchbox360
New member
i did not QT yet i have had the clowns for about 2 months now and their behavior is normal playful swimming and eating normal. all normal behavior
i can put them in my hospital tank today i just wanna make sure i dont wanna stress them out or harm them by adding copper to the hospital tank when it might be something else but im pretty sure it might be ICH :uhoh2:
Lunchbox360
New member
and as a addon water parameters
Amon. 0.0
nitrite-0.0
nitrate-2.0
temp 77.5-77.8
Dkh-12
PH-8.0-8.05
water quality is good tho
Amon. 0.0
nitrite-0.0
nitrate-2.0
temp 77.5-77.8
Dkh-12
PH-8.0-8.05
water quality is good tho
ianisbaulle
New member
Ok, yes this is ich.
According to my experience and many times trying to fight ich the best go is to do nothing. Please dont remove or stress the fishes.
Ich is at sleeping stage in almost every tank. A small stress can wake up the ich when the fish immune system drop down.
As long as you dont stress the fish anymore for at least a month you ll be fine. Adding some fresh ginger juice extract mixed with the fish food help a lot.
Dont change the water until the fishes are clear, dont go 50 times a day to check your fishes condition and stress them out more.
As per my experience, each time i got ich, the best treatment was to left aside the tank for a month as if i was in holiday and lets the fish recover by them self. Ich is very very related to stress and water condition. But you water seem good.
Please dont add any creepy magical treatment in your tank it will worst the situation.
I know it s difficult to dont act against ich when you see some but as i can see the fish are just a bit infected so no need to worry about.
According to my experience and many times trying to fight ich the best go is to do nothing. Please dont remove or stress the fishes.
Ich is at sleeping stage in almost every tank. A small stress can wake up the ich when the fish immune system drop down.
As long as you dont stress the fish anymore for at least a month you ll be fine. Adding some fresh ginger juice extract mixed with the fish food help a lot.
Dont change the water until the fishes are clear, dont go 50 times a day to check your fishes condition and stress them out more.
As per my experience, each time i got ich, the best treatment was to left aside the tank for a month as if i was in holiday and lets the fish recover by them self. Ich is very very related to stress and water condition. But you water seem good.
Please dont add any creepy magical treatment in your tank it will worst the situation.
I know it s difficult to dont act against ich when you see some but as i can see the fish are just a bit infected so no need to worry about.
Such as ginger juice.
ianisbaulle
New member
Try to add 3 to 5 ginger juice drop directly to the food, it will not arm the water quality and it s very effective as i successfully fight ich on infected fish in QT. Ginger is well known as an immune booster and it does the job on fishes if they are just a bit infected.
I disagree that ginger or garlic have any effect on ich or a fishes immune system. Please cite your reference that ginger is well known as an immune booster in marine fish.
SoloGarth
Active member
do my fish have ich i need a ID check
We have no way of knowing for sure it is ich. And "do nothing" is not good advice. Ich is easy to treat and doing nothing with most of the other similar ailments will likely result in fish death.
While it is possible for fish to live with Ich we have a responsibility to the animals we keep and part of that is to not let them be infested with parasites that they cannot get away from.
I wholeheartedly disagree with your advice and wish people would stop offering this advice of do nothing and they might get better.
We have no way of knowing for sure it is ich. And "do nothing" is not good advice. Ich is easy to treat and doing nothing with most of the other similar ailments will likely result in fish death.
While it is possible for fish to live with Ich we have a responsibility to the animals we keep and part of that is to not let them be infested with parasites that they cannot get away from.
I wholeheartedly disagree with your advice and wish people would stop offering this advice of do nothing and they might get better.
That pretty much sums it all up. If ich was correctly treated using TTM or other viable methods and the tank remains fallow for 72 days....it wouldn't have come back. It's not some magical parasite that spontaneously propagates because of stress. Stress tends to bring out the visual symptoms of the parasite because the fish was already infected. because you don't see it, doesn't mean it wasn't there in the first place.
To the OP, i suggest following any advise the Snorvich provides. there's a reason he's the primary "go to guy" here on the forum for treatment advice.
Justintegra
New member
It's been over two weeks. Can you tell us what you did and how it worked out, Lunchbox360?
Deinonych
New member
Obvious troll is obvious.
ThRoewer
New member
Sometimes doing nothing is good advice (at least until proper steps can be taken to rid the system of the parasite).
How to react correctly largely depends on your means, your fish and the progression of the infection.
If the spots get more and larger with each wave treatment is required immediately as the fish get weaker and sicker.
If the spots get smaller and less it may be better to wait as the fish are strong enough to deal with it themselves. In such case any change in environment may rather cause a deterioration of their health (especially if you have such finicky fish like regal angels). This is advisable especially if you don't have the means to treat all your fish at once and then hold them for the required fallow period.
A middle way would be to only treat the fish that actually show symptoms and deal with the rest later.
I have done all of the above and had the most losses with the first and the least if any losses with the last two approaches.
I just have the case where the fish seem to got a handle on the infection after it first flared up. Now, over two months later most of the initially affected fish appear clean and the few that still show a few spots only show very small ones near the edges of the fins, where their immune system can't get to in full strength. Some fish never showed the slightest symptoms at all (pipefish, gobies, mandarins, banggai and two of the 3 percula pairs in the system).
I chose to do nothing as I had neither the means to treat all 19 fish in that system at once nor enough clean tanks to hold them afterwards.
I'm in the process of setting up a new tank and as soon as that is ready and clean I will shuffle all fish in batches through tank transfers into that tank.
After that I will implement a strict TTM regime for new fish and quarantine new corals. So far I handled it lax because I knew that my system was likely to have ich.
As for food additives: the only one that may make sense and that seemed to have actually an effect is beta-glucan powder mixed into the food. It is a proven immune booster. Though it does nothing against the parasites themselves. Garlic and ginger may actually do more harm than good.
How to react correctly largely depends on your means, your fish and the progression of the infection.
If the spots get more and larger with each wave treatment is required immediately as the fish get weaker and sicker.
If the spots get smaller and less it may be better to wait as the fish are strong enough to deal with it themselves. In such case any change in environment may rather cause a deterioration of their health (especially if you have such finicky fish like regal angels). This is advisable especially if you don't have the means to treat all your fish at once and then hold them for the required fallow period.
A middle way would be to only treat the fish that actually show symptoms and deal with the rest later.
I have done all of the above and had the most losses with the first and the least if any losses with the last two approaches.
I just have the case where the fish seem to got a handle on the infection after it first flared up. Now, over two months later most of the initially affected fish appear clean and the few that still show a few spots only show very small ones near the edges of the fins, where their immune system can't get to in full strength. Some fish never showed the slightest symptoms at all (pipefish, gobies, mandarins, banggai and two of the 3 percula pairs in the system).
I chose to do nothing as I had neither the means to treat all 19 fish in that system at once nor enough clean tanks to hold them afterwards.
I'm in the process of setting up a new tank and as soon as that is ready and clean I will shuffle all fish in batches through tank transfers into that tank.
After that I will implement a strict TTM regime for new fish and quarantine new corals. So far I handled it lax because I knew that my system was likely to have ich.
As for food additives: the only one that may make sense and that seemed to have actually an effect is beta-glucan powder mixed into the food. It is a proven immune booster. Though it does nothing against the parasites themselves. Garlic and ginger may actually do more harm than good.
seamonster124
New member
If it is ich, post#7 is the answer. Keep em happy and fat and they live happily with ich. Take down the tank and leave it empty on the garage for 3 years to kill ich, fill it up and bam u got it again
ThRoewer
New member
Only if you put ich infested fish into that tank. Ich can't survive being dried out, that's one of the things that have been scientifically proven with certainty.
Now, how long ich can survive in a wet tank without fish is debatable.
One study found that one among 8 ich strains used in that study can lay dormant for 72 days and then still infect fish. But until someone shows me definitive proof that this is the absolute upper limit for all ich strains and more importantly why ich can't linger any longer, this is just a finding of how long some ich strains can at a minimum survive without fish present under certain conditions. Until further proof I would assume that there are strains that can hang out even longer in some cases.
That doesn't mean you should just forgo all caution and do no fallow period of at least 72 days (more would be better while 6 weeks might also do the trick).
It just means that the statement that a tank is absolutely, 100%, totally certain, no need to worry ich free is just an opinion and not a scientifically founded fact.
ianisbaulle
New member
I m my opinion and experience it s a greater risk to take out the fishes from your stable system and put it in a pretty unstable one in QT. Any time your QT tank can fall down with a NO2 rise or even a NO3 rise will stress out the fishes. To catch your fishes from your reef tank you will have to completely disassembly your aquascaping and stress your coral. Keep them fat, healthy and unstressed.
ianisbaulle
New member
Buy 2 new tank, fresh live rock directly from sea and fresh sea water. Build 2 tanks with same water, rock and equipment. In tank A put 1 surgeontang or angel or else, do the same in tank B (let say you bought them directly to the fisherman in indonesia).
Tank A just do regular maintenance, the fish will be fine as long as the water quality is good, tank B stress the fish out by rising the NO3 or adding a same specie fish or changing every days the aquascaping or rising the temp or else and you ll see the fish will got ich even its a new tank with water and rock directly from sea. In my experience and opinion ich is in all system.
Tank A just do regular maintenance, the fish will be fine as long as the water quality is good, tank B stress the fish out by rising the NO3 or adding a same specie fish or changing every days the aquascaping or rising the temp or else and you ll see the fish will got ich even its a new tank with water and rock directly from sea. In my experience and opinion ich is in all system.
ThRoewer
New member
In general I would not dispute this, but it carries a risk. And if your fish are clearly sick with a deteriorating progression you will need to treat them or most likely loose them.
I just had to treat a pair of percula from my ich infested system, not against ich, which they showed no symptoms off, but against a bacterial infection they caught somehow (they were a bit squabbling with the regal angel in that tank or may have gotten it from the corals).
For the 6 days of antibiotic treatment I changed 50% of the 10 gallons daily but then just let them sit in the tank for another two weeks. I was expecting them to show signs of discomfort or even ammonia or nitrite poisoning and ready to change water if, but they were perfectly fine and happy. The tank was just equipped with a powerhead, a heater and a clean flowerpot (as anemone surrogate).
I only stopped this experiment when the female started getting aggressive against the male, likely due to boredom in the naked tank.
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