Ich Help

[Kdocimo90]

My angel has ich and they seem to be coming off of him (bad thing)... How can I treat this without taking all the fish, coral, inverts out? I cannot go through the hassle of doing all that. I would prefer a Treatment that doesnt take months and months to resolve the problem.

Thanks
Kevin

 

[paulamrein]

Well, you can maintain a tank with ich without irraticating the problem. There are many problems that come with that though. Introductions of new fish are 50/50, meaning that most new introductions will get ich and set off another epidemic. Each epidemic has a chance of getting worse. And, there is always the risk of secondary infections that come with it. But, keeping your fish population to a bare minimum, great water quality, compatible tank mates and most importantly VERY good diet. You should see it come and go. Fair warning, they can and most of the time do regenerate rapidly, and even healthy fish can be taken over no matter the circumstances. Parasites in an aquarium environment is a cancer. Some live with it, and it can go into remission only to pop up again anytime. It's a gamble, that most people play, but everyone at one point or another will lose. The house always wins.
What concerns me is that it's not that you don't have the means to solve this problem. Is that you don't want to be hassled by it. It's your tank, do what you feel comfortable doing, and want to do. But solving a very inexpensive easy problem just because you don't want to be bothered with it will bite you in the end. No offence, no one WANTS to be hassled with a QT or pulling your fish out for months. But if you want a healthy system, it's a necessary evil.

 

[Amazon4]

Kdocimo90 - I'm going through the same thing. When the ick first appeared we treated the tank with No Ick. The end result after 2 weeks was the loss of a blue spotted jawfish, scopas tang, neon goby, and lyretail anthia.

We ultimately decided that we had to hypo the remaining fish: watchman goby, bartlett's anthia and rabbitfish. The only one who didn't show any signs of ick was the goby.

We are leaving our 180g tank fallow for 8 weeks. The survivors are in a 20long going through hypo.

I know it's not easy. We've never had an ick problem until the 180. But we are now going the route of hypo'ing all new additions from this point on. There's just no good way to deal with ick. And if going through hypo is the best way to prevent future outbreaks and losses, then that's what we'll do.

FYI - we spent a lot of money on the No Ick. It, unfortunately, was a waste. It takes a lot of that stuff to treat a large system. We have about 300g total volume. I imagine you do too

Also, catching them wasn't nearly as bad as we expected. We moved most of the rock from one end of the tank. Made a divider out of egg crate, and kept the fish in that same end. Then gently caught them in a specimen container. Took about 15 minutes I think, and was pretty low stress on the fish. Not the nightmare we anticipated.


best of luck!