I've been dealing with ich for about six weeks now. Despite knowing better, the tank was stocked rapidly (cured LR and live sand, fish, and corals) without proper quarantine. Everything was going fine until the wife brought home Dori, i.e. a juvenile regal tang, for my 5yr old daughters Yeah we have a pair of Nemos too!
To make a long story short, she was trapped and treated in a 10g hospital tank with Quick cure (formalin and malachite green) and hyposalinity. But of course this did nothing for the problem in the display tank. A few other fish got some cysts but nothing too terrible. After Dori looked better she went back into the main tank.
I treated the main tank with Ich Attack. I do believe this product is at least somewhat effective, and it did not harm any of my inverts (corals, clams, snails, conchs, pink cuke, or crabs) or LR. It temporarily turns the water brown and nosedives the redox potential, without really affecting pH. The recommended dose does seem inadequate, I would suggest dosing at least twice if not three times a day -- after several hours the redox potential recovers and the water clears, and I suspect it is no longer active. Unfortunately being organic, the skimmer will pull it out of the water as will carbon. So to keep the active ingredients in the water column for any length of time, filtration must be turned off... along with decreased light penetrating the browned water expect some a nuisance algae proliferation.
I also began marinating fish food (mixed frozen foods) with Seachem products, specifically Garlic Guard, Focus and Metronidazole. Cleaner shrimp were added too, but the fish which were most affected were too small to be cleaned.
Together these treatments were fairly effective although by no means did they eliminate the ich. I did feel the problem was under control and I did not lose any fish. In the absence of other more aggressive pathogens like velvet, the treatment of marine ich (including stress of capturing sick fish and removing them from the tank) may be worse than the disease itself.
I recently stopped dosing Ich Attack, and began supplementing the food marinade with fresh ground ginger root, based on the long thread elsewhere on RC. I wasn't expecting much, but surprisingly I have not seen a single ich cyst since the day after ginger-treated food was given.
Two things I learned from a lot of research on ich --
1. There is a stage in the life cycle where it can be dormant on a fish's gills indefinitely... hence the line of thinking that all aquariums harbor ich. This probably also explains why some people have done the "correct" treatment of isolating/treating all fish with copper, hyposalinity, etc. and leaving the display tank fishless for 6-8 weeks, then having it recur anyway.
2. After about 12-13 reproductive cycles, the organisms die presumably from progressive genetic mutation or apoptosis. So if no new fish are added to an aquarium for somewhere between 6-12 months, all active cryptocaryon will be dead. Dormant organisms in the gills may still be present though, potentially causing an outbreak if other stressors weaken the fish.
To make a long story short, she was trapped and treated in a 10g hospital tank with Quick cure (formalin and malachite green) and hyposalinity. But of course this did nothing for the problem in the display tank. A few other fish got some cysts but nothing too terrible. After Dori looked better she went back into the main tank.
I treated the main tank with Ich Attack. I do believe this product is at least somewhat effective, and it did not harm any of my inverts (corals, clams, snails, conchs, pink cuke, or crabs) or LR. It temporarily turns the water brown and nosedives the redox potential, without really affecting pH. The recommended dose does seem inadequate, I would suggest dosing at least twice if not three times a day -- after several hours the redox potential recovers and the water clears, and I suspect it is no longer active. Unfortunately being organic, the skimmer will pull it out of the water as will carbon. So to keep the active ingredients in the water column for any length of time, filtration must be turned off... along with decreased light penetrating the browned water expect some a nuisance algae proliferation.
I also began marinating fish food (mixed frozen foods) with Seachem products, specifically Garlic Guard, Focus and Metronidazole. Cleaner shrimp were added too, but the fish which were most affected were too small to be cleaned.
Together these treatments were fairly effective although by no means did they eliminate the ich. I did feel the problem was under control and I did not lose any fish. In the absence of other more aggressive pathogens like velvet, the treatment of marine ich (including stress of capturing sick fish and removing them from the tank) may be worse than the disease itself.
I recently stopped dosing Ich Attack, and began supplementing the food marinade with fresh ground ginger root, based on the long thread elsewhere on RC. I wasn't expecting much, but surprisingly I have not seen a single ich cyst since the day after ginger-treated food was given.
Two things I learned from a lot of research on ich --
1. There is a stage in the life cycle where it can be dormant on a fish's gills indefinitely... hence the line of thinking that all aquariums harbor ich. This probably also explains why some people have done the "correct" treatment of isolating/treating all fish with copper, hyposalinity, etc. and leaving the display tank fishless for 6-8 weeks, then having it recur anyway.
2. After about 12-13 reproductive cycles, the organisms die presumably from progressive genetic mutation or apoptosis. So if no new fish are added to an aquarium for somewhere between 6-12 months, all active cryptocaryon will be dead. Dormant organisms in the gills may still be present though, potentially causing an outbreak if other stressors weaken the fish.
