"ICH FREE TANK" Quest Begins

[jimmyj7090]

Bumping an old thread....

It's been 3 years without a single spot. I still have the CBB, chevron, true perc pair, maroon perc pair, and I have added a blue spot jawfish.

Bumping a really old thread.

It's been near 4 yrs. I did lose my CBB but I think that was because it was not getting enough food. No ick seen since this thread started (near 4 yrs)

 

[myfast]

This is a very helpful post. Thanks for bumping it! I don't know if I would have come across it otherwise!

 

[Triggerfish]

Hey jimmyj--

yeah..things looking good hear as well..fish doing great no signs of spots on any fish including the powder blue for like 7 months..that last blast of copper in May think did the trick..
my interest in the hobby has subsided drastically,,but still hangin in there...

 

[jimmyj7090]

Glad your at least hanging on

I lost my CBB, I'm super bummed.

 

[Psionicdragon]

Hey Trigger,

Long time no speak. Hows your tank now?

 

[Triggerfish]

yeah,,been awhile.. tank overall is doing ok...fish are doing fantastic though..appear to be very healthy..no signs of ich for many months now.. thanks for inquiry.
below is the current fish list,havent added anything in over a year except the chromis..
4 chromis
yellow tang
powderblue tang
koran angel
yellow wrasse
firefish
mated percs

 

[RegalAngel]

yeah,,been awhile.. tank overall is doing ok...fish are doing fantastic though..appear to be very healthy..no signs of ich for many months now.. thanks for inquiry.
below is the current fish list,havent added anything in over a year except the chromis..
4 chromis
yellow tang
powderblue tang
koran angel
yellow wrasse
firefish
mated percs

In my reading of your Ich erradication methods, it appears Hyposalinity did NOT work, but Cupramine (Copper) did.

Just wondering why after 5 weeks the Hypo treatment didn't work? How did you measure salinity? Perhaps it was higher than you thought?

 

[Triggerfish]

Just wondering why after 5 weeks the Hypo treatment didn't work? How did you measure salinity? Perhaps it was higher than you thought?

imo..hypo treatment has too many factors involved to be deemed reliable. the lengthy treatment along with the extended monitoring period is just to much effort. salinity was measured with refractometer calibrated as best as could be done. yeah perhaps for an hour it was elevated above 1.008 which would cause me to have to begin over again.. 24/7 monitoring is not for me..

 

[janakaybravo]

Hypo did work for me but takes 6-7 weeks. I am ich free for years now and hypo all new additions.

 

[Triggerfish]

So far so good

So far so good

fish still looking good. i had to get my powder blue out due to being to much of a bully. i had to tear tank down to him out.. so lots of stress put on the fish as it took awhile. over the past 3-4 weeks post stress, not single sign of ich on any of the fish...
Again, two copper treatments in main tank seemed to have been the final demise of the ich strain. :celeb1:

 

[jimmyj7090]

Good to hear

 

[wooden_reefer]

You guy's might think I've lost my mind. My LFS just got in a Helfrich's Firefish. These are hard to find, and are pretty expensive, between $200 to $250 (Foster & Smith has them at $249 and The Marine Center has them at $199 ) if they even have them. The guy's at the LFS are friends of mine, so they sold this one to me at $100. No way could I pass that up. Then the question came, to QT or not to QT. The only fish I've ever added to my big tank without QT was my Mandarin and that was because of their particular diet requirements, and that they have a good slime coat on them. After a lot of conversations, as a group, we all decided that it would be best not to subject this guy to the stress of QT, so I drip acclimated him and put him in. I also considered that Firefish do not seem to be as prone to Ich, and this one looked very healthy. Here's a picture of him. I believe I made the right decision. As additional proof that I've lost it, they had three more Sailfins, and damn it, I want one in my tank. Now this is NOT a fish that I would ever consider throwing in a display without QT, but since my efforts so far have been absolutely, hideously terrible with Sailfins, I decided to convert my QT to a regular tank, with real sand, live rock, and everything else that a tank should have, and I picked the healthiest one they had. I bought a couple other fish that I liked, to keep the Sailfin company. I will not treat this tank for Ich, and if it breaks out, I will let it run it's coarse to see what happens. If theres no Ich, the Sailfin will go in the big tank, along with the Longnose Butterfly, and the Solar Wrasse and blennies will occupy and live happily ever after in the 50 gallon tank. Heres a picture of how the QT looks set up normally. I'll probably add a little more LR to it. Oh, I forgot, I HAD to buy another clam too.

Any fish that does not show ich often do carry it. If there are fish more susceptible to ich in the tank, they may be affected.

Qt is not more stressful, especially for a small fish. The QT tank can be too small for a large fish, not a small fish.

I don't know about this firefish, but firefish in general feed and do well in QT.

 

[Korrine]

great read with great info!! I'm debating on putting any/all fish through hypo when I get my tank ready for fishies. To do or not to do...that is the question!

 

[guyguerra]

I was new to the hobby when I started battling Ich. After all these years of keeping multiple tanks I've found that the best policy is to add fish one at a time, and only at a rate where the prior fish survived and settled down. Most fish will be fine, and some will be weak, which is where you'll see Ich. Those fish probably weren't going to survive anyway. It's a lot of stress from the time these animals are caught, transfered, put in different types of water, etc.. Once they settle in and aren't stressed so much, they get over it. There really is no way to keep it out of a tank, and after trying all the drastic measures of hypo, medications, copper, whatever, I've found that slow growth in a tank is the best medication. I've lost more fish treating symptoms that I would have if I just slowed down.

 

[lhm nole]

Ich is near impossible to be free off I cupramine my whole fowlr setup for 3 months at .5 all fishes still ate well and had no adverse effects I decided to remove the copper took about week using water changes and cuprisorb all was good for 2 months no signs of ich fish all healthy and no noticeable scratching.

Then I made a bone headed move I had a friend that had 40 lbs of live rock he wanted to sell that has some caulerpa growing on it so I decided to buy it since it would help reseed the rock in my tank and also provide my tangs with a snack, after 2 days of adding rock notice a few of my fish scratching about 5 days later a few of my fish have spots on them, next came the cloudy eyes on my angels so decided to treat my tank again, it has been about 1 week and all the eyes have almost cleared up. Was not aware that friend had a bad ich breakout that took out his tangs and he failed to tell me.

I never thought you could get ich by adding live rock and corals but you can also new another person that got a carpet from the same person as my rock and their fish should signs of ich around the same time

So always qt EVERYTHING you can never be too careful.

 

[Triggerfish]

this thread started when i added live rock from another tank to mine. total breakout that took forever to control and eventually eradicate.
copper is what finally solved the problem.

through this exprience my strong recomendation is to quarantine with copper treatment. 2 weeks copper and then 4 week observation period. as many who have been in this hobby for awhile should be aware that rushing and takeing short cuts will eventually catch up.

also, many established healthy fishcan deal with small bouts of the parasite without really any short term effects.

my interest in the hobby has since gone way down.. i have plans to break down the 125 and just setup a 30g and see if my interest picks up again.

i dont post anymore so if anyone has a direct inquiry regarding anything to do with ich outbreaks i will be more than happy to guide you to what i would feel would be the most painless procedure... ive been through many procedures that have caused high stress. so at the very least you can avoid those...

Just post your inquiry on this thread

 

[Triggerfish]

Update on new tank.
well i did end up taking down the 125 couple yrs ago. took a bit over a year off , missed it and built a wall cabinet for a 75g year ago. will be upgrading to a 110 next week. everything going good. 15 total fish.
any contributors of this thread still around?

 

[jimmyj7090]

I'm still around. Good to hear you're getting back in.

 

[Triggerfish]

another go around with ich. what's seemed to really help this time with keeping the infestation minimal is a 32w UV.
had it pretty bad and lost a few fish. setup the UV and after about 2 months of
running this and clear fish added a chevron tang. after a month didnt noticed any signs of infestation.

I was thinking there could be no way the system is ich free after running the UV. Although without noticing it at all in a month i started to kind of wonder.

Well, i removed the UV to put in a quarantine tank for a pair of pyramind BF and within about a week a few spots have shown up on the tang.

UV is back running in main tank again so we will see what happens from here.

 

[jimmyj7090]

Kind of defies the conventional wisdom (that UV isn't supposed to be of much effect on ick), but that wouldn't be the first time.

My tank still seems to be clean, but I only have 3 fish so I guess that makes it easier.