I have ick in my reef what can I do

[jlfnjlf]

I have ick in my reef tank I already lost the carrier, and now my royal gramma has taken ill. Is there anything I can do tonight? I use the Seachem aquacure in my FW tank, but all my corals got real PO'd when I tried using it in my reef tank.

if someone can give me some advice I would be grateful.

John

 

[loup]

you can either take out all your fish to qt for hypo or copper. If that's not possible, feed food w/ selcon, garlic or other viatim supplement.

 

[Freed]

Taking the rest of the fish out and placing them in QT for at least 4-6 weeks is your best bet. In there, you can perform hyposalinity on them to kill any remaining ich on them. While doing this any ich in the main tank will die without any fish to feed off of. Give it a try, it really works.

 

[bkmorris]

there is a product called stop parasite by chem-marin that works pretty well in reef tanks. just be sure to buffer the ph really well.

 

[jlfnjlf]

All,

pH has been in the dumps for the last week. I had several conversation with John at Your Reef about the overall chemistry in my tank. I just did a 30% water change per John's recommendation. I am buffering the pH, but it does not want to stay above 8.0. I have selcon, so I will start thawing my brine shrimp in it.

Brooke,

Do you know if Your Reef stocks the chem-marin? I have read several articles raving about it, and I have yet to find one the puts it down.

I am one of those people without a QT tank, so I am hoping I have good luck with the chem-marin.

I learn best from my mistakes as painful as they can be...

John

 

[Undergrad]

John,
At the very least, if your other fish don't make it, wait a minimum of 1 month before adding any more fish. If this is a hard thing to do, tell yourself that you're letting your pod populations recover . Best of luck to you.

 

[Justin74]

On a side note, brine shrimp are virtually useless in terms of nutrition and the equivalence of a rice patty. Secondly you want to rinse any frozen food in RO before putting them in the tank or soaking in additional supplements. The frozen juice of any foods is pure nuiscant algae power booster.

With the pH problem I highly recommend you add buff during before or after the lights go on or off, this way you'll maximize it's full potential and wont need to worry about over burning. Dripping kalk at night also helps for significant drops durring the night. The less it drops at night the easier it will be to maintain higher pH levels. The first week after a waterchange only buff is really required to get your pH up since all the calcium you need is being provided via the water change. After a week or so, replace the buff supplementing with kalk. This is how I maintain my pH and works great. Also be sure to change/clean any filter media after your waterchange, except for carbon, I usually leave that in a few days after so I dont shock biofiltration/balance and give the bacteria time to repopulate.

Once I get everything dialed in, I rarely use buff except once following a waterchange, then just drip kalk for my makeup water, which is about a gallon a day. I personally follow pretty quickly with the kalk as I have a lot of stonies and they suck it up pretty quickly.

Good luck, I think the hyposalinity method for Ich is the best way to go as well.

-Justin

 

[robertloop]

I find the ph problem interesting. If the ph is fixed the fish may recover on thier own. What is the KH? Any new sand or rock work? If you have not already..... have your salt level checked by a second source. Also.... what's your brand of salt?

 

[jlfnjlf]

KH is running at 15 on the salifert test.
Ca is running 300 on the salifert test.
I double tested both today

I use IO salt, and I have not added anything new in quite some time.

I started using B-ionic original about 2 weeks ago and I am still on the minimum end of the dosing. John at Your Reef recommended I discontinue dosing until I get the pH back in line.

SG with a refractometer and IO hydrometer is 0.026

It has been way to long since the last chemistry class I was in. I know pH is all about free hydrogen ions in a solution, but then my mind goes numb.

John

 

[cwegescheide]

I had the same problem several months back and i fed my fish a special anti-parasitic fish food for about a month or so ago now I'd say and my fish recovered. Never another hint of Ich and so far soo good. I still feed the medicated food every once in a while. Didn't really have a name for it though. I can tell you the LFS owner is an active member on here and if your interested I can PM you his handle and maybe he could tell you the name of it.

Chris

 

[dots]

Ich is like a cold.......when we get stressed, we get sick.....ich rears its ugly head when fish are stressed. Fish are REALLY stressed when collected, shipped, transfered and finaly dumped into a small tank,(compared to the ocean), with possibly some unsavory tankmates.

Ich will go away on its own as the fish fights it naturally. Some fish do a better job at this because of thier slime coats. Some fish, tangs especially don't do this very well and CONSTANTLY have ich.

Some say ich is always present in a tank and only appears when fish are stressed, when adding a new fish can stress out the others just as bad as the newbie, hence the appearance of the new fish contaminating the tank.....I tend to believe this myself.

If the params of the tank are in check it should subside, cleaner shrimp can help....and the "reef safe" treatments can help, however I found they just mess up the quality just as bad.

However, it is a judgement call, for extreme cases you may want to pull the fish and QT them and treat with copper.....but who want to rip thier tank apart? You can try a "reef safe" treatment but are generally expensive and take longer to treat than copper, or you can just get some cleaners, and wait it out....usually a mild case will subside, but be prepared to lose a fish if its massive......

Food for thought, it has also been said that ich rarely causes the death rather an infection that results from the scratching on the rocks.......

However, if you really want to be ich free, take out the fish QT and treat with copper, and let the main tank run fallow for about 2-3 months, the time for the lifecyle of the ich to run through and die, with time for overlapping generations to die off also.

Good Luck.

 

[jlfnjlf]

Now this article reccomends B-ionic to raise pH.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/june2002/chem.htm

Just keep reading reading reading

 

[Freed]

Sigh, not another one?
:sad1:

 

[jlfnjlf]

Well Freed help me out here. You seem to be the ick myth rumor terminator.

 

[Freed]

Has to do with the post above yours.

 

[dots]

Have you read all the articles of Ca/Alk and the correlation with Ph?

In an oversimplified explanation, ph, the amount of "acid" concentration is controlled by Alkalinity, much like a shock absorbers do with the springs in your car. When your Alk is high, the ph will be rock solid at that level and will not move easily, conversly when it is low ph will fluctuate willy nilly. If your ph is already too high, and you add a two part additive maintainence system such as B-Ionic to that will raise your alk, it will lock in that "wrong" ph.

 

[wombat2]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8285891#post8285891 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Freed
Taking the rest of the fish out and placing them in QT for at least 4-6 weeks is your best bet. In there, you can perform hyposalinity on them to kill any remaining ich on them. While doing this any ich in the main tank will die without any fish to feed off of. Give it a try, it really works.

The absolute best advice IMO.

Some things about Cryptocaryon:
The best treatments are hyposalinity and copper based medications. These are NOT reef safe. I for one would never put any chemical designed to kill dinoflagellates (Cryptocaryon) into a reef tank with living corals (zooxanthellae are dinoflagellates). Hopefully the connection is obvious enough.

There is not much evidence that garlic does much of anything to cure a fish already infected with Cryptocaryon.

Cleaner shrimp won't do a damn thing.

Cryptocaryon can and should be eliminated from any reef tank. It is not "present in every system" as is sometimes stated. It is really not very difficult to eradicate. A system kept fishless for 6 weeks (8 weeks to be safe) at typical reef temperatures will be devoid of Cryptocaryon as its life cycle requires it to find a fish host. Any new fish should be added only after a quarantine of 4-6 weeks. How do you treat an infected fish? I find the easiest cure is to keep the fish in a quarantine tank at a depressed specific gravity of 1.009. This does not kill the dinoflagellate outright but stops it from completing its life cycle. Thus, the fish should be kept at this SG for 4-6 weeks. Acclimating the fish to and from this salinity should be done over a 48 hour period or so.

Hope this helps,
Matt

 

[xia]

Here's a great article to help you understand the life cycle of ich.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.php

 

[Freed]

Thanks for the back up Wombat.

 

[dots]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8286626#post8286626 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Freed
Has to do with the post above yours.

I read all that I could find when I was dealing with the stuff......and that is what I found out from my first hand observations.....and reading more than one or 10 articles on it......but what it really gets down to is what we are willing to do to treat it in a reef tank without dissrupting the whole system.

There must be something missing from the equation, because there are a hundred "snake oil" products for this "problem" and why isn't every fish in the ocean dead from ich? Its always there isn't it?

But to tell you the truth I am NOT about to break down a tank for a tang, tuna, or turnip and the "reef" safe remedies don't work, and everyone and there mother wants to corelate garlic as a miracle cure..........

But those are my own PERSONAL observations........I ain't on a fish forum trying to preach my wonders, just trying to help a fellow MARS member with a problem that I seemed to solve myself

..........But, to be quite honest I would flush all of my fish today, if they didn't help the coral look better.....I am sure that would get the ich off of em!!!

roll your eyes on someone else.......................With enough effort I could probably find 10 articles that say the EXACT opposite.....where do you think I heard it in the first place.....made it up? All I know is my fish had it......and now they don't..........