Has ich gotten me??

[psilo]

Hi all--

So last night, infact, 12 hours ago, I was looking at the tank. Everything was great, nothing clinging to my fish friends at all.

This morning, I first notice my coral beauty angel seems to have a grain of sand on his (arm) fin. Thought that was weird, and since it didnt come off I figured he had ich Even though it was one sugar grain sized spot.

Then I looked at my tang, who I had observed very carefully last night and noticed 0 problems..

his sides each have like 10 sugar grain sized spots on them.

Would I be correct in diagnosing this as ich?

I'm worried as to how I can get these fish out with all of my live rock. I'd consider various treatments but I dont want to kill my inverts (even though i only have like ~10 hermits and ~5 snails)

tank is 55g, 3 months old (carried over from my year old 25 gallon)

Please give me your best suggestions, hyposalinity or copper meds? Again i have no idea how I can get these guys out

Thanks!

 

[kravi]

Soak all the food in garlic extract and buy a UV sterilizer with a nice slow pump. Sterilizer will help get rid of the ich in the water, and the garlic may help the fishes' immune systems fight off the ich.

--Me

 

[psilo]

 

[besl]

Although I do not run UV, I read that UV is only effective at preventing ich from becoming active and that once they become active UV is of no use - you should read further before you take action in this direction. Copper will destroy the LR, so I would not go down that path. You could either remove and QT the fish and treat (with Cu), you could leave the fish in the display and treat with a Reef safe med (e.g. Kick Ich, etc), you could try garlic (although this is generally preventive and not the cure), you could add cleaner shrimp and hope they eat the parasites, etc. Good luck and hope this has a happy ending for you.

 

[TrojanScott]

A UV sterilizer isn't gonna help cure ich. Help prevent, maybe, but not cure.

If you wanna try treating them while in the tank, (and there are people that think this is a viable alternative, you're not further streesing the fish by trying to get him out... try some of the reef safe methods like Kick Ich as besl mentioned above. Some also swear that ginger helps, buy some and let it absorb through the food. (no proven facts that it helps, but there are plenty of threads that have quite a few people that thing it helps, it's worth a shot.)

 

[psilo]

Just got off the phone with the petshop guy, $25 for kick ich, quite a bit more than I read online.

From what ive read on kichichs site and what lfs guy told me, its only good at killing things in the water, and nothing can really remove whats on the fish themselves.

In hoping thats true i just hooked up a friends uv sterilizer, going to try kick ich too unless anyone has any other suggestions.

tang still eating, just fed him in a ton of seaweed in hoping itll help him be a little more robust.

 

[TrojanScott]

UV will not help the fish either. Only proven method I know of is copper treatment, but you'd obviously have to remove the fish. Soak the food in ginger and selcon, and hope they can fight it off. (lot of fish do)

 

[tcblue]

when i had ich on my tang i fitted a uv and it went well happy with uv it may have been coincidence but swear by it now

 

[TWallace]

Generally nothing kills the ich that's on the fish already. It's the free swimming stage of ich that's killed by copper, hypo, UV or other treatments. Ich does have a short life cycle though. The parasites on the fish will release within a few days to swim around, produce more parasites and die.

 

[psilo]

fish in quarantine now, i guess ill try hyposalinity treatment

no one else in the tank looks upset. spots had gotten way worse on the coral beauty since this morning when i first posted

tang has less dots on him but was viciously scraping the rocks and whatnot.

im wondering if i brought this on myself, a few days ago some liverock i have had for a while showed a few nasty asptasias..
after remember what i had read, i decided to inject with calcium

took probably 5 ccs of calcium from a calicum bottle of bionic and used that

wondering if that raised ph or something crazily?

any input? thx

 

[psilo]

Sigh, was up til 4am last night making sure the fish were ok in their quarantine tank. Then realized the heater in there wasnt working

Moved clown out of his nano setup to the ich display (still running uv sterilizer) and moved the ich contammed (yellow tang and coral beaut) into his tank, minus all rock. I doubt the sands got much in it, fairly new nano, so from here I will attempt hyposalinity.