help with ick

bluewatr24

New member
Looking for some advice on how to cure ick from my royal gramma. No hospital tank and cannot use copper because of corals and inverts. is there any natural ways that wont impact the tank?

24gAP
 
I have always used the little bottles of chopped garlic and mixed a half teaspoon with some of the garlic oil in the little bottle with my frozen mix and blended it in a little mini la-machine. You just need to pay attention to your water quality and make you tank as best as possible and hope that it will eventually go away. You fish is stressed out typically and his slime coat is weak which allows the ich to attach to him. This of course gives you the vicious cycle of ich getting worse as more are developed and possibly more attaching to him, or he get's healthier and less attach until none at all attach.

Good Luck, but I have always had good luck with the garlic and paying close attention to my tanks water parameters. In my opinion the most import things to keep consistent is, the temp, salinity, PH and low nitrates.

P.S. Some say that Garlic does nothing and has never been proven to work, but it has always worked for me. They say that the garlic makes your fish healthier and also puts out an odor, or secretes something from the fish's skin that the ich just hates.
 
There are some really good threads /articles on this in the disease forum. Really, QT with treatment-copper or hypo are the only ways to go. It will be worth it in the long run. Good luck. ICk sucks.
 
If you already don't have a QT tank setup, the fish is liable to be stressed out terribly in a newly setup QT tank and die anyway, so you can try to treat him in the tank. If he does not make it, keep the main tank without fish for at least 5-6 weeks and allow the ich to finish it's cycle. You would then be able to setup a QT tank in the meantime running it for 2-3 weeks to cycle and prep. Then you can run it with copper or hypo for your new additions for 3 weeks then they can go into the main tank free of ich or any other parasites. If you run the main tank a little warmer at like 82, the ich will go through it's life cycle a bit quicker since the higher temp speeds up there life cycle making them more active. Then bring the temp back down to your typical running temp before you add the new fish from QT.
 
My fish get some garlic every feeding, it keeps them healthy. It is in my formula 2 flake that I feed them every morning, and it is in my frozen mix that I blend together and feed every other day.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8190014#post8190014 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by i2go
Just miced garlic? woa , like garlic we eat?
I buy the small bottle of chopped garlic in the fresh fruit and vegetable section at Meijer or Walmart, which is bottled in it's own oils. I use a half teaspoon of the chopped garlic and some of the oil in my frozen mix that I blend together, which is Mysis, Prime Reef and some Krill mixed with the garlic. I then freeze this blended mix and give some every other day in the evening for there meaty food. I feed them a little of the Formula 2 flake every morning which has like 2% garlic in it.
 
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<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8182550#post8182550 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bluewatr24
thanks it seems to be dissapearing ill try the garlic over the weekend if it doest get any better

this is just a phase in the Ick life cycle. They'll be back in a few days.
 
Yep, start treating immediately.

It will look like there going away as they drop off the fish and sit on the bottom of the tank and hatch a couple days later, then they come back with twice as many on the fish.

Each of those white spots on your fish sucks off of the fish and solidifies sort of, which then falls off of the fish. This 2nd phase of the ich lasts a couple days and each of these when they hatch release like a 100 tomites that then go looking for a host (fish) to attatch to.
 
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