Fresh Water dip

[Yong269]

Ok... My clownfish has ich... my tank recently had an outbreak and lost few of my fish... my lfs told me to do a freshwater dip with paraguard for about 10 minutes. he told me that he does that for his fishes that has ich. so i caught my clown and fw dipped him with paraguard for about 10 minutes... he still the same... doesn't look like he gettin any better. I also try to feed him with flakes soaked in garlic guard but seems like he will spit it back out but when i give him just regular flakes he'll eat it.... Any suggestions??? Do i dip him for longer time?
Thanks for all the help.

 

[kevin2000]

FW dips aren't very effective when dealing with ich.

FW dips became popular because they can remove some of the trophonts from the fish (good thing) but they tend to be stressful (bad thing) and they have no impact on trophonts that are often deeply embedded in the fish (another bad thing).

Ich is a fast reproducing parasite ... thats what makes it deadly. One ich can produce 100's more within a month. If you want to eliminate ich you goal is to kill all ich .. that means all the ich on the fish as well as within the show tank (in the water column, substrate, live rock etc)

If you have an ich infested show tank the only method that will insure an ich free tank is to QT and treat all fish and let the show tank go without fish for about 5 weeks.

Heres a link concerning ich .. check out the treatment section for how to setup QT and use hyposalinity, copper etc.

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/marineich.html

I suggest you read the Ich FAQ at the top of this forum.