Ich diagnose help: "if and when" to remove to HT

[FFalas]

Hi All, I have been running the current full SPS reef tank for 1.5yrs now. Until now fishes have always been in top notch health.
Stock: mimic tang, snowflake percula pair, sixline, mandarin, aip-eating-filefish

Four weeks ago I overtrusted a third party's QT skills and introduced four anthia (three resplendent and a lyretail - these were going to be the last addition to the tank) one of which developed some spots a week on. I have not acted until I was clearer it would have been ick.

Is it ich?
No fish until then had displayed any issues. at the moment the spots (which look much like ick) are mostly on the initial one anthia (none of the others show any signs) on the tang (no more than five or six) and maybe sixline (one speck could well be sand). I am still not 100% sure I can diagnose this to be a cryptocaryon bloom granted if it came with the anthia it would be a month in !

So far my current plan of action has been to boost the feeding, up ozone to a redox of 400mV(night reading) and up my 10w UV to 30w whilst trying to discern whether I am indeed dealing with ick.

Tank is very stocked with corals and with made-to-measure ceramics which means it would all have to go to fish them all out: at massive stress to the fish. Dont want to do this wrong, so..any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[MrTuskfish]

If you don't quarantine ALL new fish, I don't care where they came from, you are risking ich. A pic would help diagnosis it; but it sure sounds like it. If it is ich, you have no choice to treat them in a HT/QT while the tank goes fishless for 12 weeks. I've been in this hobby 30-some years and have never seen a fish die from the "stress" of being moved. Countless fish die all the time because of ich, however. IMO, "stress" is the most over-used term in the hobby and the thought of treating a tank full of fish really "stresses " the owner. If a fish can handle the "stress" of living on a reef; I'm sure it can handle the "massive stress" of being moved. Feeding, ozone, UV, etc, will not cure ich. There simply is no way to cure ich in a reef tank.

I don't know how big your tank is; but but with most tanks; you can siphon/pump most of the water into Brute trash cans of storage totes. Fish will collect in remaining pools of water and are easy to get out. Then just pump back the water.

 

[FFalas]

Will try and get a pic up but yes only reason these didnt make it into QT was that the person selling these -which i trusted with good husbandry- had QTd them already for me.

Anyways I am still in two minds as to whether it could be ick. I have had some fishes suffer from ick before and it looks somewhat like it, but a month on and no fish except the one with the white specks shows any sign of distress (much unlike in my previous experience). tang scratched itself once but had that fish with a few spots not been there I would not have noticed any strange behavior

Draining the tank unfortunately is not going to change things as the person who made my custom ceramics put a cave right at the bottom of the ceramic that covers my overflow - thats where they'd hide..

 

[RarefiedAir24]

If you don't quarantine ALL new fish, I don't care where they came from, you are risking ich. A pic would help diagnosis it; but it sure sounds like it. If it is ich, you have no choice to treat them in a HT/QT while the tank goes fishless for 12 weeks. I've been in this hobby 30-some years and have never seen a fish die from the "stress" of being moved. Countless fish die all the time because of ich, however. IMO, "stress" is the most over-used term in the hobby and the thought of treating a tank full of fish really "stresses " the owner. If a fish can handle the "stress" of living on a reef; I'm sure it can handle the "massive stress" of being moved. Feeding, ozone, UV, etc, will not cure ich. There simply is no way to cure ich in a reef tank.

I don't know how big your tank is; but but with most tanks; you can siphon/pump most of the water into Brute trash cans of storage totes. Fish will collect in remaining pools of water and are easy to get out. Then just pump back the water.

I'm not sure how you could say Stress is over-rated? No, the Stress itself doesn't kill the fish, it's the catalyst that weakens the fish immune system that leads to other complications..

And I'd beg to differ, there's far less stress for a fish living on a reef, where it's in it's natural habitat as opposed to an aquarium..

Stress in fish is a very real and serious issue. http://www.liveaquaria.com/PIC/article.cfm?aid=88

 

[wooden_reefer]

The whole idea of stress IS overrated to a significant degree in this hobby.

Of course stress is a factor in many situations with many diseases, but IME stress is NOT an important factor for ich. Stress may make it worse but the lack of stress is not a major positive factor as far as ich is concerned.

Ich is more a matter of spatial relation, math, and chance, in view of the lifecycle of ich and the closed state of a tank, than with stress. Ich is mostly not a matter of immunity, but waterborne concentration of pathogens in a closed system.

 

[HumbleFish]

IME if some wussy fish can't handle the "stress" of being QT'd; he's not going to fare well in a DT full of other fish.

 

[jamesbaur13]

I wouldn't pull your fish at this point. I agree with you. In your situation you'd be best to wait and see.

One thing which I didn't see mentioned in your original post, but I am assuming you are also doing... change out carbon and run carbon.

It very well could be that your tank has ich. Even if you are 100% this is the case I'd still be reluctant to pull the fish. I see no evidence of ich being the unstoppable exponential force that others are describing. If it were it would have a 100% kill rate... it doesn't, even over the course of years.

I disagree with what the others have said about stress. Increased stress in an environment where ich has been introduced will see an increase in infestation.

However, in your case, where you would be moving established fish into a quarantine tank... it's not as much an issue. Your fish have learned that you are their food source, you are periodically within their tank to do maint. They are conditioned to your presence. Yes, they will be more stressed, but not to the degree in which a new fish purchase is. I'd be surprised if you lost a fish during QT because of stress alone, it's more likely that it'd be a water quality issue.

 

[MrTuskfish]

I'm not sure how you could say Stress is over-rated? No, the Stress itself doesn't kill the fish, it's the catalyst that weakens the fish immune system that leads to other complications..

And I'd beg to differ, there's far less stress for a fish living on a reef, where it's in it's natural habitat as opposed to an aquarium..

Stress in fish is a very real and serious issue. http://www.liveaquaria.com/PIC/article.cfm?aid=88

What other complications? I think once acclimated, fish have very little stress compared to wild fish; that's why well kept fish can easily live as long as wild fish, and they don't worry about getting eaten. Sure stress is real, but any healthy fish in a healthy habitat can handle it. The idea that ignoring ich because moving the fish will "stress" them too much is absurd. Its a great excuse, though, and used often."Stress" from catching a fish is worse than dying from ich?

 

[jamesbaur13]

"Stress" from catching a fish is worse than dying from ich?

Please excuse me for being blunt... I'm not convinced on the cure.

I know Snorvich did make a post approx 2 yrs ago about a study that was done. In that study it was determined that a 10wk fallow period is 99.5% effective in curing ich.

You are recommending a 12wk fallow period, which is perfectly understandable given the amount of unsuccessful treatments that have been reported.

My question is where does it stop and where exactly are we now?

 

[HumbleFish]

My question is where does it stop and where exactly are we now?

Nothing is 100%. All you can do is go with what the odds say. I suspect in the vast majority of cases, fallow failures can be blamed on operator error. But I guess there is also that 0.5% chance of having the "Typhoid Mary" strain of Ich after going fallow for 10 weeks. Sucks! It's like dying in a dentist chair when all you went in there for was to have a cavity filled! It means if 200 of us here have Ich and go fallow for 10 weeks; 1 of us is gonna get screwed by the system and should have just practiced Ich management instead! Which I have no problem with Ich management, BTW. Just so long as the person understands the risks and what's entailed.

 

[MrTuskfish]

Please excuse me for being blunt... I'm not convinced on the cure.

I know Snorvich did make a post approx 2 yrs ago about a study that was done. In that study it was determined that a 10wk fallow period is 99.5% effective in curing ich.

You are recommending a 12wk fallow period, which is perfectly understandable given the amount of unsuccessful treatments that have been reported.

My question is where does it stop and where exactly are we now?

Yeah, Snorvich's sticky ( http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2041951 shows that 99.7% of all ich life cycle forms will die in a fishless tank within 9 weeks. For a long time, I always suggested 10 weeks, maybe hoping to catch that .3%. I guess going out to 12 weeks just evolved as people said they still had it after 10 weeks. 11 weeks? 12 weeks? Who knows when, if ever we reach a total kill. Probably never. I really think some strains of ich are evolving with the hobby and lasting longer. That is just a pure, non-scientific guess on my part. You asked when it will stop. I agree with HumbleFish above and think errors by the hobbyist are responsible for some of these failures.I also think a lot of people treating ich see no ich spots and say "that's gotta be close enough" and toss the fish back into the DT; with predictable results. I 'm sure that Murphy's laws applies to any fallow tank situation. Because I'm sure that the studies in Snorvich's sticky had no such failures, maybe 9 weeks is as close to perfect as we'll get. The authors of the study ended their study at the 9 week mark, would extending the experiment another 3 weeks change anything? Probably not (IMO)

Of course, the elephant in the room is quarantine. If everyone would use a good QT regimen, the fallow period would no longer be a big deal. I think the folks who spend a fair amount of time on this forum section spend tha majority of their time helping folks who have ignored using a QT, or are looking for some magic that would allow them to avoid a fallow tank at all. These are often very long threads. Resistance to ich treatment, with a stocked tank, is hard to penetrate.

 

[coral_lagoon]

Yeah you need to catch all your fish,and put them in a Q tank. Then let your main tank go fallow for 10 weeks..

 

[MrTuskfish]

I'm not sure how you could say Stress is over-rated? No, the Stress itself doesn't kill the fish, it's the catalyst that weakens the fish immune system that leads to other complications..

And I'd beg to differ, there's far less stress for a fish living on a reef, where it's in it's natural habitat as opposed to an aquarium..

Stress in fish is a very real and serious issue. http://www.liveaquaria.com/PIC/article.cfm?aid=88

I didn't say "stress" was over-rated, I said it was over-used. Big difference.

 

[FFalas]

I remember reading a study where 30% of fish sampled suffered of ich.
Obviously in the wild their territory would be so much bigger that the trophonts would be dropped away from where the fish may pick it up again which is obviously not the case for our tanks. However the argument has to be made that most fish will at some point sleep in the same cave/hole that another fish -possibly infected- may have slept in the night before, hence in a way bridging the gap between the wild and our closed environments.
This brings me to the assumption that ich on a fish is not per se an issue, unless the concentrations significantly increase.
However in case of a minor infection (Ie low densities of theronts in the water column), why would it be so unreasonable to think that if you had sufficient circulation through a UV unit capable of killing the theronts combined with a fish's ability to fend the parasite you might be able to contain or even fend off the parasite?
I am just brainstorming here and please dont take my comments as a lack of care for the fish or foresight. The QT was entrusted to a person I trusted and was obviously poorly executed.

I have now setup the HT, ready in case things get worse. But in my particular case a month into the first symptoms I have not noticed any fish showing any spots or any distress (except a counted number of 5 on the tang for a few days - which I would not have noticed had I not been looking so closely) and the spots on the one anthia. I have seen fishes with ick and these dont seem to fit the behavior although the spots seem to.

This apparent calm for so long in is the only reason why my fish havent been netted and chucked into the HT. If you are interested I will keep you posted, and if I can find the charger I will try to take a pic and maybe see if it is cryptocaryon we are dealing with.

 

[MrTuskfish]

Physical contact, like your example of the fish sleeping together , really doesn't have anything to do with a fish getting ich from the other.The form of the ich parasite on an infected fish is not contagious.Fish get ich from free-swimming theronts, not directly from other fish. That is why a tank needs a fallow period to kill the new theronts looking for a host. Fish can develop as long as 12 weeks after a tank has been fishless. The main reason UV cannot eliminate ich is simply that every newly released ich theronts must find the UV intake before it finds a fish host. IMO, this is impossible. Most new theronts are released at night and fish sleep on the substrate at night. UV will kill some ich (some isn't good enough). One cyst can release hundreds of new theronts. Of course, only ich that passes through a properly maintained UV, with proper wattage and flow rate will be killed. UV is helpful with reducing algae, some bacteria, and killing ich between tanks in multi-tank systems. But it simply will not and cannot eliminate or prevent ich. expecting a fish to fend off ich without treatment is a big mistake, IMO & IME. The number of spots you see is not a reliable indicator of ich population

 

[Paul B]

We use the word "stress" a lot in this hobby but it does not mean the same in fish as it does in us. We get stress when we work to hard, have marital problems, get fired or any number of social things that fish don't care about. Stress in fish means there is something from keeping them from being in optimal health. Fish in a tank are almost always not in optimal health. There are many reasons for this, being confined is just one of them. Another one is most of our fish never live in 15 or 18" of water and they know the water is to shallow for them. Many fish, like tangs always live in a school of hundreds or thousands of members which can not be duplicated in a tank.
We can't do anything anything about those things short of putting the fish back in the sea but there are some things we can do. We can feed correctly and very few of us do.
We can tell if a fish is in great shape if it is spawning or making spawning gestures. All fish spawn but they only do that if they are in perfect condition. Of course some fish like a copperband butterfly or tang will not spawn in a tank because they are broadcast spawners and most tanks are to small but if you have a pair of clownfish, gobies, pipefish, cardinals or most bottom fish and they are not spawning, they are not in their best condition and very prone to ich. Fish in breeding condition rarely, is ever get ich.
I don't want to comment on this ich thread except for that because I disagree with much of the information out there and this thread is going well so far without any arguments. But I just wanted to say something about stress.

 

[wooden_reefer]

We use the word "stress" a lot in this hobby but it does not mean the same in fish as it does in us. We get stress when we work to hard, have marital problems, get fired or any number of social things that fish don't care about. Stress in fish means there is something from keeping them from being in optimal health. Fish in a tank are almost always not in optimal health. There are many reasons for this, being confined is just one of them. Another one is most of our fish never live in 15 or 18" of water and they know the water is to shallow for them. Many fish, like tangs always live in a school of hundreds or thousands of members which can not be duplicated in a tank.
We can't do anything anything about those things short of putting the fish back in the sea but there are some things we can do. We can feed correctly and very few of us do.
We can tell if a fish is in great shape if it is spawning or making spawning gestures. All fish spawn but they only do that if they are in perfect condition. Of course some fish like a copperband butterfly or tang will not spawn in a tank because they are broadcast spawners and most tanks are to small but if you have a pair of clownfish, gobies, pipefish, cardinals or most bottom fish and they are not spawning, they are not in their best condition and very prone to ich. Fish in breeding condition rarely, is ever get ich.
I don't want to comment on this ich thread except for that because I disagree with much of the information out there and this thread is going well so far without any arguments. But I just wanted to say something about stress.

For some diseases, what keep fish from optimal health is having to face huge population of waterborne pathogens in a closed system.

Sometimes spatial relation/numbers are critical, such as against ich.

 

[FFalas]

Mr. Tuskfish - I am well aware there is no contagion by contact but what I intended to say is that -thanks to evolution- the trophonts will get released at night (therefore usually dropping near where a fish sleeps) and in that spot is where the theronts will excist to stick on the fish. This is what makes it particularly difficult in eradicating it in a reef tank, where the fish will always sleep in the same point to drop and pick up the now multiplied new parasites.
However linking this to the notion that 30% of wild fish are cryptocaryon carriers (allegedly healthy ones) then although it might not be the same fish sleeping in the particular den, it is just as likely that another fish will and hence pick up the theronts. In much the same way, the carrier fish is just as likely to pick up "another batch" in the place where he sleeps next (where a previous carrier would have slept).

All of this leads me to think that it is possible that of that carrier population, a portion of it is indeed a "permanent" carrier of the parasite - a condition that may be reproduced in the reef tank.
Literature points to 5/20% success rate in attaching to a fish; it would be interesting to know how this targeting occurs and the ability of the theronts+tomonts to encyst under different conditions

 

[MrTuskfish]

Mr. Tuskfish - I am well aware there is no contagion by contact but what I intended to say is that -thanks to evolution- the trophonts will get released at night (therefore usually dropping near where a fish sleeps) and in that spot is where the theronts will excist to stick on the fish. This is what makes it particularly difficult in eradicating it in a reef tank, where the fish will always sleep in the same point to drop and pick up the now multiplied new parasites.
However linking this to the notion that 30% of wild fish are cryptocaryon carriers (allegedly healthy ones) then although it might not be the same fish sleeping in the particular den, it is just as likely that another fish will and hence pick up the theronts. In much the same way, the carrier fish is just as likely to pick up "another batch" in the place where he sleeps next (where a previous carrier would have slept).

All of this leads me to think that it is possible that of that carrier population, a portion of it is indeed a "permanent" carrier of the parasite - a condition that may be reproduced in the reef tank.
Literature points to 5/20% success rate in attaching to a fish; it would be interesting to know how this targeting occurs and the ability of the theronts+tomonts to encyst under different conditions

The toughest thing about eradicating ich in a reef tank is that we don't have anything that will kill the ich, but not also kill the coral & other inverts.