How do I treat ick without removing fish?

Easttuth

Easttuth

New member
This is my first real outbreak of ick. I believe it was caused by too many changes at one time. I did a pretty big water change, added a large fish, put on a new skimmer, and added a much larger pump all in about 2 weeks. Looking back it sounds dumb now, but it's too late at this point.

With my rock structure it would be hard to catch the fish that are showing signs so I was hoping to treat them while still in the tank. I think I've read before were people soaked their food in a chemical that would treat it. Anything like this would be ideal.


Any help is appreciated. Thank you to all of you that help with these questions.
 
There is no good answer for you. Actual aquariums have used chloroquine phosphate in invert tanks with fish that had ich. The CP was added to food with a gel binder and fed to the fish. They also used products to absorb any of the uneaten food that would then release the CP in the water which WILL kill all inverts and algae alike. This was done in a giant clam display tank in Pittsburgh and was reported to stop the ich outbreak. I'm sighting this from a book I have and can go into more detail if need be. I have also used seachem paraguard to treat flukes and ich in QT with great success and have used it in less than the recommended dose in my DT with the only negative affect being when I did the recommended full dose, I lost a clam.
 
When you used it in your display tank did you see positive results or only the negative affect (dead clam)?

thanks Morty
 
With the paraguard and how it has to be dosed in the tank you will end up using ALOT of it and for a few weeks. At half dose I didn't really notice much change in the fish or inverts but I only did that for 7 days because I was blowing thru the paraguard. I know paraguard works because I have used it with success in QT but again a lot less water to treat. I was also soaking food in paraguard... Not sure if that did anything or not? Unfortunately you don't have a lot of options at your disposal and what ones you do have limited research and success behind it. Some will say hypo is a option but it's much harder to do successfully than all other treatment methods including tearing your tank apart to catch your fish. Problem is you have to break the life cycle in the DT, you can break it on your fish with TTM and 2 wks. The ich in the tank will live without a fish to host for 12 wks without medication that will also kill inverts and biological filtration. Snorvich knows more than I could ever hope to about ich and all diseases alike for that matter. I don't think I'm leaving anything out, if I am he will help you
 
Thanks for the knowledge. I was considering redoing my rock structure soon anyway so this might just be a push in that direction. The main drawback is this is a show tank in my retail grocery store, so during the 12 weeks of QT I'm going to have to hear customer after customer ask what's going on with the fish!

There's a LFS here in Orlando that swears by their food for helping with Ick, I'm going to go speak with them about it tomorrow before I do anything.

If anyone has any success with treating it I'd love to hear from them.
 
It wasn't from the WC, it was from the ich parasite. How do you QT new fish.

Hypo or CP are your only in tank options.

All of the "reef safe" ich treatments are BS. There is some food medicated with CP, so if that's what they're using, it might work.
 
Depending on how many inverts & corals you have, you can always run hypo in the main tank & keep them in a separate tank during treatment.
 
I'm considering turning it into a FOWLR. If I went that way what would be the best method? Remove all corals and treat with copper? I realize this means I'll never be able to use this tank for corals again, but I'm ok with that.
 
Easttuth said:
I'm considering turning it into a FOWLR. If I went that way what would be the best method? Remove all corals and treat with copper? I realize this means I'll never be able to use this tank for corals again, but I'm ok with that.
Click to expand...

TTM the fish and treat the DT with CP or just treat with CP after removing inverts.
 
Just did this research too. My tank did not yet have lots of coral. 6 softies. So I bit the bullet and pulled the rock and caught the fish. In hospital tank just set up. If they look ok tomorrow cupramine starts. 3 weeks of that plus TT. Would have to do all the water changes anyway as the tanks have no bio yet.

I'd add one thing. Even w 11-12 weeks fallow unless you QT every single thing that you add, including coral and snails, there's a big likelihood that crypto and other nasties get reintroduced. A professional aquarist I discussed this with says a UV sterilizer is very helpful to keep disease and parasites in check. And as the 72 day cyst is such an outlier and most crypto cysts hatch in less than 3-4 weeks you could probably get away with 5-6 weeks fallow and not have a future outbreak, even though there would be a very small amount of crypto left in the tank.

Oh, second thing: Pretty much everyone knowledgeable also says diet is very important. Varied and if possible NLS pellets or similar included for the vitamins.

Good luck!
 
Easttuth said:
I'm considering turning it into a FOWLR. If I went that way what would be the best method? Remove all corals and treat with copper? I realize this means I'll never be able to use this tank for corals again, but I'm ok with that.
Click to expand...

I almost forgot Dr Tims food has medication put into the food for just the type of problem you have. Although I have no idea if the stuff works or not
 
A professional aquarist would know that UV does not really act as a parasite prevention mechanism. A good water clarifier however. If you want to solve the problem permanently, do it the right way.
 
You don't need to combine copper with TTM. Just run the copper for 4-6 weeks, IMHO. Most cysts do hatch by the 4-6 week mark, but 72 days is a 100% guarantee. Given you went through the trouble of ripping the tank apart, better to go for the 100% fix IMHO.

I recently introduced crypto via inverts. I'll be setting up an invert QT, and QTing all verts for 10 weeks going forward.

A UV sterilizer is of questionable usefulness. Each hatching cysts produces hundreds of parasites. The odds of all of them going through a UV are close to zero. Even if you only have a few dozen attach to fish, that means many thousands of new parasites the next time they hatch.
 
Dmorty217 said:
Sorry Dr G
Click to expand...

Sorry Morty, I forgot you posted that earlier. I found some at a LFS today and they swear by it (but they are also salesmen). Another hobbyist pointed me in that direction as well so I guess it's worth a try for a little while before doing anything drastic.

I'm in the early stages of a 500g build so this is pretty bad timing for me because I was hoping to put a lot of effort into the other project.
 
Who starts these rumers that changes to the tank caused ich? The only thing that causes ich is ich, its a parasite nothing causes it. Its just is.
 
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