Possible Ich?

[Torno]

I used to have a harlequin tusk fish. He got ich and I was ignorant and I hyposalinitied the display tank, killing inverts and causing a huge ammonia spike. My snowflake eel was the only survivor.

I finally raised the sg of that tank from 1.009 back to around 1.022-1.023 and got the ammonia down too by waterchanges.
So a month later I replace the tusk fish with a pearlscale butterfly. I think my display tank may still have ich as the butterfly has a few salt like specks, so how can I get ich out of the display tank?

I dont know if my butterfly has ich though. Yesterday it was almost 1/4 covered with white salt speckles and today I turn on the light and there's only about 1-2. Is he fighting this off himself? How will I know when its getting too bad and I need to place him in a hospital tank and treat with hypo?

Hes eating frozen mysis and swimming fine, any help will be appreciated.

Thank you, Neil

 

[sarahbab]

from everything that I have read, itch goes through stages. It may just be in a different stage. It will probably come back even worse than before. If I were you, I would go ahead and put him in a hospital tank.

 

[Torno]

ok.............. anybody else?

 

[Rondelet]

It is very possible that your Butterfly has ich. The parasites' life cycle has three basic stages: 1) one on the host (which is the white spot you see); 2) the white spots falls off the host to become a stage which attaches to some substrate, such as gravel (a developmental, reproductive stage); 3) a free swimming stage which emerges from the developmental/reproductive stage (main purpose is to find a new host - very short lived). Once the host is found by the free swimming stage, it turns into a feeding stage on the host and the cycle starts over again. Because of this, you often see the parasite for a while then it appears to disappear - only to come back in larger numbers. After a while the number of spots on your fish just starts to increase - until the fish is overrun with parasites and eventually dies. To better understand the life cycle - read the posts/articles noted in the thread at the beginning of the forum.

In your case - there are several options. First, it's possible that ich is in your tank and has infected your fish. In many instances, new fish are a little stressed out and many show some signs of ich. Once the fish settles down, it may develop immunity to the parasite. Not all infections take off to become clinical nightmares - although many do. With good water quality and nutrition the fish will beat back the infection. You can help by reducing stress, maintaining good water quality and feed high quality diets with vitamin and/or beta-glucan supplements.

The trick is to keep an eye on your fish to see if the parasite numbers are on the rise, or seem to be trailing off. If the spots appear to persist, or increase in numbers it's possible that your fish is not going to get over the infection and needs to be treated. Sounds like you've read up on treatment options. Best treatment options are to remove your fish to a quarantine tank and treat with hyposalinity or copper. Note, if you want to be sure the parasite is gone from your main display - you have to remove and treat all your fish as any left in the main display will act as carriers. The main display should remain fishless for 6 weeks, as the parasite population will die out without a fish host to maintain it.

 

[Torno]

Thats exactly the information I wanted, Thank You!