You need to remove all fish to a QT. If you leave fish in display ich will have a host. If you remove all fish there will be no host. That breaks the life cycle. End of ich if you quarantine all new inhabitants. If you do not put all in HT you will get ich again. Hypo is tolerated better. Some fish can not take the copper.
Have ICH looky here!!!!!
- Thread starter WaterKeeper
- Start date
MotherFish
New member
MarcB,
I noticed you didn't include what the active ingredient is in that "reefsafe" product.
Did they not list it on the bottle?
Without knowing the ingredients in the product there is no way to know what the effects on your tank or inhabitants will be.
That being said, to the best of my knowledge there is no such thing as a reefsafe Ich product that effectively kills Ich (Cryptocaryon Irritans).
Every product that I know of which is deadly to the Ich invert is also deadly to almost every other invert in your tank.
Luckily you already have a 40g that can be setup as an HT.
Either try "night-netting" (sneaking up and netting them after lights-out) or buy/make a simple fishtrap and patiently trap them all over the course of a few days.
You can find several other methods for catching fish without tearing apart your display tank here: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=707656
All of the species you listed are able to handle a copper treatment, however, my preferred method is hyposalinity as it requires no chemicals which can be expired or leached out of the tank, no monitoring with testkits that can be expired or misread, and actually reduces the physical demands/stress on the fish by reducing the amount of salt that the fish must process and excrete.
Also, just because a fish isn't showing visible signs of Ich DOES NOT mean that it is immune or free of the parasites.
It only takes one parasite hidden in the gill tissue or overlooked on the body to reinfect an entire tank or to keep a low-level infestation alive.
I noticed you didn't include what the active ingredient is in that "reefsafe" product.
Did they not list it on the bottle?
Without knowing the ingredients in the product there is no way to know what the effects on your tank or inhabitants will be.
That being said, to the best of my knowledge there is no such thing as a reefsafe Ich product that effectively kills Ich (Cryptocaryon Irritans).
Every product that I know of which is deadly to the Ich invert is also deadly to almost every other invert in your tank.
Luckily you already have a 40g that can be setup as an HT.
Either try "night-netting" (sneaking up and netting them after lights-out) or buy/make a simple fishtrap and patiently trap them all over the course of a few days.
You can find several other methods for catching fish without tearing apart your display tank here: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=707656
All of the species you listed are able to handle a copper treatment, however, my preferred method is hyposalinity as it requires no chemicals which can be expired or leached out of the tank, no monitoring with testkits that can be expired or misread, and actually reduces the physical demands/stress on the fish by reducing the amount of salt that the fish must process and excrete.
Also, just because a fish isn't showing visible signs of Ich DOES NOT mean that it is immune or free of the parasites.
It only takes one parasite hidden in the gill tissue or overlooked on the body to reinfect an entire tank or to keep a low-level infestation alive.
MotherFish
New member
I'm sorry for your loss, Taqpol.
We have all been there, or will be there soon.
That's just one of the sad realities of becoming attached to and caring for living creatures.
One mistake people make is believing Ich to be a disease that can be fought off by feedings and a healthy immune system.
It is not.
Ich is actually a parasite, and while a healthy immune system may help prevent or fight off secondary infections of the wound sites it does nothing to prevent the parasite from biting and burrowing in the first place anymore than your immune system can prevent a mosquito from biting you.
What you experienced is common with Ich and is the reason it can be so deadly in an enclosed area like our tanks.
When an Ich parasite drops off the fish it encysts on the substrate to reproduce and divide into hundreds of new parasites.
Normally only a very few out of those hundreds will find a host, but if there happens to be a fish sleeping nearby When those hundreds of new parasites are released back into the watercolumn they can overwhelm the fish with a massive infestation which can eventually cause death.
As I mentioned above, just because your fish shows no signs of Ich doesn't mean that they are parasite-free.
It only takes one hidden parasite to create hundreds of new parasites and infect new fish or cause a massive infestation on a fish that didn't previously show symptoms like the two you lost.
I am sure some here will disagree with me, but your last statement is very true when dealing with Ich.
The only way for QT of new fish to be completely effective against Ich is to treat the QT as if the fish have Ich whether they show any signs or not.
If even a single hidden parasite makes it to your display then all the QT time will have been for nothing.
MotherFish
New member
Personally I've tried "Kick-Ich" (which contains that same active ingredient) on two separate occasions.
In both cases the Ich came back.
That is by no means a clinical proving or disproving of 5-Nitroimidazoles, just my own limited experience.
Yours and others' experience may be completely different.
If I were you, I would definitely read everything I could about the product you're thinking of using before adding it to my tank.
Especially a product that requires a certain level of dosage to be effective that has no way of being monitored or measured after going in.
Something to keep in mind is that a lot of supposed Ich treatments appear to work simply because of the natural Ich lifecycle.
The "whitespots" normally drop off after feeding for a few days to begin the next phase of their reproduction.
This natural dropping off can easily confuse the typical hobbyist into thinking that whatever "cure" they are using at the moment has worked.
In both cases the Ich came back.
That is by no means a clinical proving or disproving of 5-Nitroimidazoles, just my own limited experience.
Yours and others' experience may be completely different.
If I were you, I would definitely read everything I could about the product you're thinking of using before adding it to my tank.
Especially a product that requires a certain level of dosage to be effective that has no way of being monitored or measured after going in.
Something to keep in mind is that a lot of supposed Ich treatments appear to work simply because of the natural Ich lifecycle.
The "whitespots" normally drop off after feeding for a few days to begin the next phase of their reproduction.
This natural dropping off can easily confuse the typical hobbyist into thinking that whatever "cure" they are using at the moment has worked.
Here's one where a pic would help. Lymphocystis is a viral disease that starts off with white tissue areas that merge to form nodular white globuals. Not cottony, but more like cauliflower, they can grow quite large. Happily these disease usually goes away in under a month on its own.
Saprolegnia sps. is a fungus disease that is often called cotton mouth but can infect other areas of the body. The disease is fairly common is FW fish and fairly rare in marine fish as the fungus is not tolerant of SW. For marine fish formalin dips are usually used.
I hope that helps but I'm not exactly sure of what disease it may be.
Marc,
If you check out the web you usually find that Nitroimidazoles are hit and miss and not recommended for display tank treatment. If you try one out I'd do it in a hospital tank.
Taqpol
New member
I guess my question from earlier is about some fishes "immunity" to certain strains of ich. If my remaining fish never show signs of ich can I assume that the ich in my tank can not infect them for some reason? If that was the case, if I added no new fish for the next 6-8 weeks would I have broken the cycle in the tank?
If you have never had ich in the tank there is no reason to believe it is there. It is a new arrival that always poses a problem and that is why one quarantines a new fish. If he proves to be ich free then there is far less chance that he will introduce it to the fish already established in the tank. I suppose that there is a chance that all the fish in the display are carriers that don't exhibit symptoms but that is very unlikely.
Aquarist007
New member
I also do not make a point of adding anything to the display tank --even the water from the LFS
but I guess if you quarantine everything--everything --then you don't have to worry about adding spittoon water to your tank:eek2:
:eek2: 
Aquarist007
New member
IMO threads can become confusing with so many different inputs, what works well for them, ect ect. Ich has been and always will be a very debateable subject on here.
I agree with you but I would suggest an information thread that is sticked with no input allowed written by someone with great credibility like Tom (Water keeper)
I left it as an open thread so we could get input on other methods of treatment. There have been a few, like using quinine, that held promise but didn't work out long term. Nitroimidazoles may end up being a viable treatment but more reports are needed on the method and results. I guarantee I am not the last word in disease treatment and the original post was pretty much based on a consensus of opinions on treatments that are known to work.
Aquarist007
New member
your wisdom rocks WK:smokin:
Aquarist007
New member
some tangs react badly to copper treatments
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