Ich help

[fytinirish992]

Im new the forum and new to the hobby. My tank has been set up for about 10 months now. So i have what i beleive to be an ich outbreak. The outbreak became noticeable about 1 week ago when i noticed it on my Eibli angel. I went out and got a neon goby but unfortunately it was to late. The next morning the Eibli passed away. I then noticed it on my sixline when he started scraping on rocks but it seems to have passed now. Then yesterday i see my neon has it and today he is dead. I have been using garlic and doing water changes. Any help would be good help.

 

[Avi]

Is your tank a reef or is it a fish only (FO)?

 

[Jstdv8]

if you have any fish left you need to bring them into a QT tank and start treating them with either copper or hyposalinity. If you use copper use the cupramine. it is mild and works well. if you use hyposalinity you will need a refractometer and must keep the water at .009 for 4 weeks. the copper treatment is also 4 weeks. once treatment is over leave your fish in the QT for 1 additional week.
During this time your display tank (DT) should be fishless (Fallow). you can leave inverts (crabs, snails, shrimp) and corals in the display tank during this time as they are not affected by ich.
Note: that just because they are not affected does not mean they cannot have the cysts attached to them. keep this in mind when making new purchases.
The lifecycle of ich is generally 28 days at the temperatures we keep our tropical tanks. so you need to treat for at least 4 weeks to cover this time. You are essentially trying to break the life cycle of the ich. hyposalinity targets the cysts before they expolde and release thier babies, copper targets the babies.
Only use one treatment or the other.
Once all treatments are completed and your fish in QT are not showing anymore signs of ich you can reacclimate them to your DT and put them back in the tank.
Now that you have am ich free enviornment you would do well to QT all future purchases for the same time period.

 

[fytinirish992]

Avi i currently have just fish, inverts and live rock w/ the exception of some mushrooms.

Jstdv8 thanks for the advice on the copper and QT, i have been thinkin about setting up a QT for a while and my procrastination finally caught up to me. I have been reading some of your other posts in the Thread "Let's Talk Ich" and that has really made me more aware and was very helpful. I have tried everything possible to stay away from copper and chemicals but nothing is really working so i suppose the time has come to try copper. Thanks again.

 

[Avi]

The advice about having a QT set up all the time is good advice. When I first set up my reef, I set up a QT and tended to never use it. The fish in the reef, which did on occasion show signs of ich, were never killed by it and it passed on its own, so I ignored quarantining. BUT.....then I set up a FOWLR. This tank was just a horror-show of losses. If it wasn't ich, it was velvet...frequently both. I lost so many really beautiful fish. Sometimes, the disease was difficult to identify. I think that was when it was velvet alone and it killed the fish very rapidly. SO...the QT!...I figured that I would have to quarantine when I acquired fish for the FOWLR, and I did. And, even though I quarantined new acquisitions for over a month, shortly after I put them in the FOWLR there would invariably be an parasitic outbreak. Finally, I took all of the fish out of the FO and put them in the QT and treated the QT with copper (using CopperSafe, in accordance with its instructions. It was successful in clearing all of the fish that I put in the QT. I left the FOWLR empty of fish for almost 8-weeks and then put all of the fish...with none other than the ones in the QT...back in the FOWLR. Withing three days, velvet!!

At that point I decided that I would either have to apply copper to the FOWLR itself...or...change it over to a freshwater tank.

I decided to treat with copper, again using CopperSafe in accordance with its instructions, and I haven't had a problem since.

I guess the moral of the story is that for some people...at least for me...a fish only tank isn't viable unless there's copper in there with the fish. Quarantining alone, in my case, for just about 8-weeks wasn't enough to prevent a parasitic outbreak. I don't know why...it just wasn't.

I'd recommend copper right in the FO and that's that for me. Of course, you have to be sure to never use the tank to keep many inverts. But oddly enough, I actually have a constant population of pods in the sump even with the copper. I can't explain that.

That's my experience with a FO tank. It wasn't pretty...but now...with copper, it is.

 

[Gogandantess]

^ Very interesting Avi. I would do the same if I didn't like my shrimps so much.