Help! reef safe ich medication

[moneylaw]

I read the best way is to do hyposalinity to get rid of ich, but it would be a lot of work (also will take too long) for me to set up quantine tank, cycle it and do hyposalinity.

Does anyone use any reef safe ich medication successfully (not killing your corals and getting rid of ich effectively). I need help! Your help is much appreciated.


Thanks.

Ken

 

[650-IS350]

You can try adding extra stuff to your food...

I use

Garlic Extreme - keeps fish eating ( even when sick/keeps them voracious )

VITA-C Helps in aiding them fight off anything

Selcon- added vitamins plus helps other vitamins and medication to attach to the food

Zoe - for added vitamins/minerals/


I've done this numerous times to save fish with Ich

 

[mcurl98]

I've not heard of any reef safe effective medication that seem to work for most people. The ones that claim to irradicate ich and are reef safe get mixed reviews. Is it bad? All the fish? Often times it will clear up in time as long as the fish are eating well. I soak the food in garlic as some say it helps but who knows for sure. I have a lot of luck with cleaner shrimp and my U/V on but, again, who knows if they help or if it just gets better with time and quality feeding-not a time to skimp on food though. If it is real bad, no way around either killing your some reef inhabitants or setting up another tank. I see you have some FW experience. The difference, IMO, is that FW ich doesn't go away unless you treat it-SW ich often goes away if the fish are otherwise healthy and eating. Just my 2 cents as this topic spurs a lot of opinions.

 

[650-IS350]

the only thing with with cleaner shrimps is that they mostly go for the tic looking pests on fish ( cironoid or something like that )..

From what I've read all over garlic also helps besides keeping the fish eating... the ich parasite dosnt like the taste of garlic on fish.

 

[mcurl98]

guess it depends on your shrimp. Seems as though my fishes' ich got real bad at night so that in the morning, the fish had quite a bit on it. They would park in front of the shrimps and get stripped of it.

 

[moneylaw]

Thanks guy, The fishes are eating as of today, and it is not in bad stage yet. It is still in early stage, Everything was fine until friday when I added a blue hippo tang (I know I should have quantine it, but too lazy to set it up and wait for it to cycle). And yesterday, I started seeing ich on blue hippo, and today on yellow tang. I also have two cleaner shrimps and one fire shrimp in the tank, but no UV. So you think I should just wait and see? Thanks again.

 

[650-IS350]

They do eat dead tissue, clean wounds, dead/bad scales and remove cirolanid isopods...

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~delbeek/delb9.html

 

[moneylaw]

how about you delso650? Does ich goes away in your tank without any medication? Or do you quantine and treate the fishes? Thanks.

 

[650-IS350]

NO QT even though I do have one.... I just do what I described...

 

[Thales]

Re: Help! reef safe ich medication

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10731367#post10731367 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by moneylaw
I read the best way is to do hyposalinity to get rid of ich, but it would be a lot of work (also will take too long) for me to set up quantine tank, cycle it and do hyposalinity.

So you know what you have to do you just don't feel like doing because it would take effort?

Does anyone use any reef safe ich medication successfully (not killing your corals and getting rid of ich effectively). I need help! Your help is much appreciated.

There is no reef safe medication that successfully cures ich. There are a lot of anecdotal stories about everything from a reef treatment to changing tank light bulbs to feeding fish ginger that claim those things cured ich. The problem is there is no real evidence that those things had any effect on the parasite. There are only two treatments (three kind of) shown to cure ich - copper and hypo, both are not reef safe.

The best help I could give you would be advice to not skimp, not cut corners and to take the time and effort to do things right.

 

[bookfish]

Also 2 tangs in a 60 gallon tank is pushing the envelope IMO. Tangs do need constant grazing opportunities and it's hard to get that in newer tanks. All just my opinion but it also sounds like you may be rushing the stocking speed a bit.

 

[moneylaw]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10732348#post10732348 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bookfish
Also 2 tangs in a 60 gallon tank is pushing the envelope IMO. Tangs do need constant grazing opportunities and it's hard to get that in newer tanks. All just my opinion but it also sounds like you may be rushing the stocking speed a bit.

Thanks for your comment. I do know that tangs are not meant to be in a small tank. I do plan to get a bigger tank(around 200 gallons) in a couple of years. Right now, my tangs are very small, (blue hippo is about 1.5 inches and yellow is about 2.5 inches. So I think they should be ok for now. And I wait at least two, three weeks before I add a fish. It is just unfortunate that I added that blue tang (with the knowledge that blue hippo are easier to get ich).

 

[bookfish]

Yup, and the powder blue and brown are known as "ich magnets" in the biz.

 

[650-IS350]

which is why I dont do tangs anymore.. I had them nuke my tank with ich Twice when I first started reefkeeping...

 

[moneylaw]

Re: Re: Help! reef safe ich medication

Re: Re: Help! reef safe ich medication

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10731863#post10731863 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Thales
So you know what you have to do you just don't feel like doing because it would take effort?

There is no reef safe medication that successfully cures ich. There are a lot of anecdotal stories about everything from a reef treatment to changing tank light bulbs to feeding fish ginger that claim those things cured ich. The problem is there is no real evidence that those things had any effect on the parasite. There are only two treatments (three kind of) shown to cure ich - copper and hypo, both are not reef safe.

The best help I could give you would be advice to not skimp, not cut corners and to take the time and effort to do things right.

NO, not just because it take an effort. First, I need to set up the quantine tank and cycle it which will take some times even if I seed the QT. By the time my QT is ready, all my fishes might be dead by then. Also I can point to several people posting in several message boards that hyposalinity methods doesn't work for them. so I don't know who to belive. The only reason i said that hypo is the right way to do and I do not want to do it is so that people won't keep suggesting me to do hypo and give me some other options, because i already know that method and I want to get other options before deciding what to do.

I am not tryint to cut corner in getting rid of ich (I did cut corner adding fishes without quantine, old habbit from freshwater hobby ). I am just trying to gather all the informations on what people suggest and decide on my own what I will do. For example, a couple of people in this thread share their experience that they don't medicate and ich just goes away. I prefer that option over hypo since there is a big chance that I might do it wrong (for example, lowering salinity too fast) and kill all my fishes.

This is not an attack to your comment, I am just trying to explain to you my situation and my thought behind my post. I appreciate your inputs.

Ken.

 

[Psionicdragon]

or you can just go from 1.026 to 1.009 in 2 hours in your main tank

Well more like 30 min depending on how fast your tank water gets drained and filled up.

 

[happyface888]

Ich sucks, as mentioned earlier extra vitamins and garlic stuff helps fish. If you do plan to hypo your tank better remove all your rocks and sand your going to kill thoes bigs and what not. I had a 10g qt tank had it up for 1month than something from the filter nuked the tank and I tore it down...There is a way to speed it up toss your old water from your showtank in there and drop the salinity, ich will die with low salinity. Or you can ask someone who has a ich free tank to lend you a filter sponge to get the bacteria to speed things up. The hippo tang is a ich magnet but the yellow tang is pretty tough it can handle ich. I'd go with delso's recipe and get some fresh homemade food.

 

[650-IS350]

Hypo actually dosn't technically kill it.. it just disrupts the lifecycle of ICH.

Garlic : http://www.reefs.org/library/article/h_cortes-jorge.html/view?searchterm=ich

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

 

[moneylaw]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10733114#post10733114 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by happyface888
Ich sucks, as mentioned earlier extra vitamins and garlic stuff helps fish. If you do plan to hypo your tank better remove all your rocks and sand your going to kill thoes bigs and what not. I had a 10g qt tank had it up for 1month than something from the filter nuked the tank and I tore it down...There is a way to speed it up toss your old water from your showtank in there and drop the salinity, ich will die with low salinity. Or you can ask someone who has a ich free tank to lend you a filter sponge to get the bacteria to speed things up. The hippo tang is a ich magnet but the yellow tang is pretty tough it can handle ich. I'd go with delso's recipe and get some fresh homemade food.

Hey Tom,

Yeah, I am not planning to do hypo on my DT, I have many corals and many inverts in it. yeah, using old water from the DT help seed the QT too. But I won't still feel comfortable putting the fishes in my QT until i put in some ammonia and see the nitrate appear which will take some time.

http://www.saltwaterfish.com/vb/showthread.php?t=127007

here is some helpful thread on hypo for those of you who are looking for details info on hypo. But I think i will try the garlic and vitamins to see how it works for me first before doing hypo.

btw, did u ever get ich in ur tank and what did u do? I would like to hear as many people's experience as possible before deciding what to do.

 

[moneylaw]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10733205#post10733205 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by delsol650
Hypo actually dosn't technically kill it.. it just disrupts the lifecycle of ICH.

Garlic : http://www.reefs.org/library/article/h_cortes-jorge.html/view?searchterm=ich

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

Thanks, pretty good info on garlic.