Ick

[Annadvn]

I picked up a cherub angel for my 75g mixed reef yesterday.

Today i noticed he has ick, i did not quarantine him (I will be setting up a QT tank for future purchases! Lesson learned!)

the Angel is still active and eating as are all the other fish. No one is picking on him. What is the best treatment? If it was fresh water i would turn the heater up to 84F for a couple of weeks and do some extra water changes. Can i do this for SW?

I really don't want to tear my tank apart to get him out of there, i have a few big colonies of corals, so its difficult to get live rock in and out of the tank!

The other inhabitants are: pair maroon clowns, watchman goby, starey blennie, foxface, mandarin goby, flasher wrasse, hermit crabs, snails and a cleaner shrimp and what ever hitchhikers i haven't found yet! SPS, LPS and softies.

Water parameters: Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 10ppm (spiked this week due to protein skimmer breaking) CA 400ppm, Alk 10ppm, phos don't test, pH don't test.

I did a 10% water change tonight which didn't seem to phase him at all.

Thanks in advance

Anna

 

[dohc97]

most likely some or all your other fish will end up getting it. The temperature thing does not work with marine ich which is actually not ich but crypt. Read around and you will find there are only a couple methods that are proven to work, cupramine has been the most effective for me but it will require that you remove all the fish from the display into a qt. The other method that a lot of people use is hyposalinity which will also require that you remove fish into a qt.

 

[90ct]

Use Kent marine EXtreme Garlic and mix with food. Ick should be gone after 3 days.

 

[fishyness]

I tried the garlic and "wait and see" approach with no luck. I even ended up cross-contaminating-very easy to do. After losing too many fish, I now an running 2 hospital tanks with hypo. There is no more signs of ich on my fish. I REALLY did not want to tear down 2 reef tanks in one week but i feel much better about the fish, and for getting ich out of the tank. I don't believe it goes away on its own.:beer:

 

[sea of cortez]

I too tried garlic and NO ICH concert. The fish didnt seem to really like the garlic that much. And the NO ICK is very expensive and seemed to be more of a fertiliser for ICH than a treatment.
I see alot of people on here talking about KICK ICH I have never tried it so cant comment on it
After losing many fish while treating with NO ICK and garlic I set up some QT's to treat in
Mean while I had noticed my yellow tangs one completly cover with what looked like ICH and VELVET combo it was in very bad shape I expected it to be dead by mourning (same as the fish that died) So I tried ICH ATTACK 5 days of double dose and all fish are alive with no signs of ICH or anything else

 

[fishyness]

ICK attack did nothing for me, oh except for my corals started going south. :thumbdown Ive officially joined the "learned the hard way" club and will QT all new fish.

 

[RegalAngel]

http://joejaworski.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/the-marine-ich-epidemic/

 

[Pickupman66]

WOW, lots of folks getting Crypt lately. There are 2 sure ways to rid your tank of ICH. both are drastic, but in the long run, worth the trouble. the Reef safe treatments are hit and miss in my opinion. my best advise to anyone with Crypt (marine ICH) is to READ and be prepared to do what it takes.
I ahve read that it can go away on it own if you feed teh fish well. this can happen, but the parasite is still in the water but the fish can fend it off for the most part. 2 ways are:

1. setup a QT tank and Treat with Copper. let your display tank remain fish free for a period of at least 4-6 weeks.
2. again setup a QT and treat all fish with Hyposalinity water. 1.009 SG. this must be done with a Refractometer as the hygrometers are not accurate enough. again here, let the display run without fish for a period of 4-6 weeks.

now that ive offered suggestions, let me tell you why these work. Copper kills the parasite. no disputing that it will kill it in the DT along with all your inverts and corals. it will also be absorbed by the rock and substrate, so we DONT WANT THAT. hence use a QT for it.

the time period is for the crypt parasite to go thru its life cycle. go read about this and you will understand cause my fingers dont want to type it all out.

Hyposalinity works because in certain stages, the parasite cannot osmilate (spelling) the salt water to fresh water in its cell and it literally explodes. your fish can adjust, the parasite and inverts cannot and go POP!. that is why a freshwater dip works on many fish. but if you just dip the fish, then put it back into an infected tank, it will become infected again.

I didnt QT a fish in my new tank. it appeared healthy at the store. it got home and was NOT healty. it died. a week after that, I got 2 new healthy fish. within 3 days, one had noticable signs of Crypt. since I didnt have any inverts yet on a new tank, I made my whole system Hypo. within a week, the tang showed no signs of ich. it has itched every few days sporadically, but no visible signs. I have 2 weeks left to go which will make 30 days of hypo treatment. in the meantime, I added another angel that was clean and have had zero ill effects from the crypt.

after this, I will QT all new fish.

 

[dohc97]

Anna, did you go with one of the treatment options? any updates?