ick.. and black spots?

[DaVinci]

Alright.. so, the dread I had before my vacation came to pass. I came home, and the caretaker feeding the fish for us had been leaving the flourescent lights on in the room, causing a huge algae bloom, as well as overfeeding. The poor water quality and changes in routine caused nearly everything to contract ich. I THIIINK I can pull them through, slowly dropping into hyposalinity and firing up the uv sterilizer.

The thing that confuses me is on my yellow tang, instead of tiny white ich spots, it has tiny BLACK spots. Same size as your normal evil little white parisites, different color.

What is it?

 

[LukFox]

Black ich~. It's actually a flatworm, and you can kill them with prazipro. Sorry to hear you had such a terrible tank sitter, yikes!!

Also, you don't need to go down in salinity slowly. It's raising it UP that needs to be done very slowly. I hope your fish make it.

 

[RBU1]

Thats new to me...Black ich a fllatworm.....Interesting. I would treat black crypt just like I do the good old american white crypt.

 

[DaVinci]

Black ich~. It's actually a flatworm, and you can kill them with prazipro. Sorry to hear you had such a terrible tank sitter, yikes!!

Also, you don't need to go down in salinity slowly. It's raising it UP that needs to be done very slowly. I hope your fish make it.

Never seen that around, what type of medicine is it?

 

[RBU1]

Prazi is for flukes and worms will do nothing for crypt

 

[Chris27]

Thats new to me...Black ich a fllatworm.....Interesting. I would treat black crypt just like I do the good old american white crypt.

It's true, that is why we use prazipro for it and not copper. If you look closely at the fish throughout the day you'll see the black spots moving around.

For this situation though, copper combined with prizipro would be a good idea, that way you would address both in the same QT.

 

[LukFox]

Black ich isn't actually crpyt; it just looks like a black version of it so that's what people call it. After all, they really do look like black grains of salt at a distance. However they're flatworms, and prazipro is pretty easy on fish. Ask your LFS if they carry it, but if not it should be easily found online.

 

[DaVinci]

Black ich isn't actually crpyt; it just looks like a black version of it so that's what people call it. After all, they really do look like black grains of salt at a distance. However they're flatworms, and prazipro is pretty easy on fish. Ask your LFS if they carry it, but if not it should be easily found online.

Why would flatworms suddenly appear? I assume these aren't things that are present in every tank and strike when a fish's immune system is under stress, like ich..

 

[LukFox]

Why would flatworms suddenly appear? I assume these aren't things that are present in every tank and strike when a fish's immune system is under stress, like ich..

Ich isn't present in every tank unless it has been introduced, but I haven't done enough reading on the life cycle of the flatworm to know if it can pop up when fish are under stress. I will say I've seen it pop up on stressed fish, though, and then disappear on its own when the stress is removed, much like ich. I don't know if it does this in the same way however, as they are very different critters.