Thoughts on ich

[Paul B]

Don't mean to sound like I'm picking on you, but most protozoal infections (including Crypt) do start in the gills and gill cavities where we mere humans don't even see any signs of it..

Hey Bill, I guess it depends on whose research you want to read but it doesn't matter any way. Eventually, either before or after it appears someplace on the fish, it ends up in the gills where it becomes a problem.

But Bill, you can pick on me all you want. I can take it.

 

[gone_fishing]

Paul I find this thread quite interesting. Let me tell you how I found it, well searching for ich/crypto, but this is why I was searching...

I used a few QT after losing a tank to what I thought was ich. I started a new 250g system (DT 194g) in January. While it cycled I had three QT going. One with my clowns that had survived the wipe out 8 mo before, one with an engineer goby that I got from a trade, and one 20g with a foxface and kole tang that went through copper, hypo, prazipro, and furan 2 to rid them of what I perceived as ich and a secondary bacterial infection.

Each of the new fish went through tank transfer method and prazipro, except the yellow and powder brown tangs, which I observed for 37ish days in a 20g.

So fast forward...six weeks ago my clowns start spawning. I notice some spots on the foxface and powder brown. Oh, the clowns have previously murdered 3 fish in the QT/holding tank. A week goes by no spots, first batch hatches (I'm not raising them) and they breed again the following week. I notice then the kole tang, blue tang and engineer goby are covered in ich/velvet...I have no idea. They have lots of spots and look faded in color.

They have been this way for going on three weeks now, no change. So I decided a few days ago I would add prazipro to the DT (blue tang's eyes looked cloudy with big spots not little ones). At no time has any of the fish been breathing fast or acting strange, they keep begging me for food like usual.

So now the color has returned to all three, there are some bigger but still small spots on the foxface now, and some much lighter dusting on the kole and blue tangs. The clowns have laid three sets off eggs over this six weeks.

My other fish, a yellow tang, a cardinal and a chromis and the clowns have never had one spot, dusting or color change. And don't fish spawn when they are in top shape? How could they be spawning if the tank is this full of ich?

So this leads me also to ask Why? I certainly can read, study and interpret studies, threads, etc. But I find myself asking why? How this plays out, we will see. But why did this crop up after 2 1/2 months after the last additions (again they went through a strict QT) and why are only some fish affected? Why did it start when the clowns aggression is higher even though they stay in their anemone.

Certainly I'm not looking for answers to my "why" questions. Just giving another view point with a much younger tank and only 1 1/2 years experience with one whole tank loss before.

Very interesting thread on Why?

 

[Paul B]

And don't fish spawn when they are in top shape? How could they be spawning if the tank is this full of ich?

Gone Fishing, thank you for posting, your clowns are in excellent shape or they could not spawn. Being in that shape goes right along with my theory that healthy fish in breeding condition do not get ich or almost anything else even though the rest of your fish have some type of infliction. The clowns immune system, in their great shape is protecting them from the paracites. That is exactly what I have been saying. All we have to do is keep the fish in breeding condition and "Most" of the time, they will not be bothered by ich, flukes, oodinium, crypt or whatever you want to call it or whatever type of organism it is. We as aquarists tend to call everything ich, I do myself for this thread but I think we all know there are different organisms causing these problems.
As I said, this larger fireclown is about 18 years old, he is spawning and has always spawned, but according to popular opinion about ich, he should have been dead many years ago. He has never had a spot.

 

[chrisd1009]

<<< firm believer ich is stress related. Whenever someone has an ich outbreak, my 1st question is "what are your parameters?"
-Primary answer is "perfect". Most people who say "perfect", their water parameters are always far from that.
The beginner thinks their parameters are perfect when something goes wrong. The experienced knows the parameters are off and fixes them.
High NO3, high PO4 and most specifically, high temperatures lead to ich outbreaks.
My next question is stocking. How many and what type of fish.
-Primary answer, overstocked and full of fish who aren't suitable. Stress.
Water parameters, crowding, fighting all lead to stress. Show me a stressed tank, I'll show you a tank with ich.
Long story short, people who struggle with ich have far bigger problems than ich to deal with in their tanks. They just refuse to address those problems and try to treat ich.

 

[Triggerfish]

tanks that could go years with no ich even if ich infected fish are added.

this does sort of defy logic. it's there..maybe not noticed but there. depending on the strain and other variables, the results will vary. also some, if not all, strains will eventually die off on their own over time from what i have researched.

 

[Paul B]

this does sort of defy logic. it's there..maybe not noticed but there

Correct, I should have said "Noticable ich". The ich is there and it is in my tank, it has to be but it doesn't seem to bother anything. It is also always in the ocean.

Chris, I agree with that

 

[lildraken]

That got me thinking, when I was in Viet Nam I had to take an anti malaria pill every day to prevent malaria. Malaria is a paracite very similar to ich.
If I didn't take the pill I was almost sure to contract malaria which was a court martial offence because the pill prevented it.
But the Vietnamese people who were born there and live in the jungle don't hardly get malaria.

A little off the subject but still interesting to know. A high percentage of Asian People have a single point mutation in their hemoglobin that causes resistence to Malaria. Similar to sickle cell anemia
http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/content/100/4/1172.full.html




but adding to your thoughts, I agree that fish develope an immunity to certain parasites but we frequently mix fish from different parts of the world. Fish from Fiji would not have an immediate immunity to a tank who has Ich present from the red sea. Assuming C. irritans can vary within species, Lets say hypothetically the current stock has a resisitence to the ich already in the water but this new fish without resistence serves as a host producing more parasites. The fish that developed an immunity and were able to fight off the parasite are now dealing with an infestation because of this new fish.

Lack of infestation could be due to a lot of other things like water flow. If you have a high water flow and your overflow filters a high percentage of impurities in the water column, then I would think it would be harder for the free swiming stage of a parasite to find or attach to a host unless the fish sleep in the same spot every night.


just a couple of thoughts

 

[mtcoins123]

Paul you may be on to something...
I came back into the hobby after a short hiatus and frankly I've been agast at these "just add water" dry rock tanks.... I can't help but think that having a "screen saver" on your monitor would acomplish nearly the same thing

I get it that these tanks reduce issues associated with pest algaes and bugs and such, but IMO they are more prone to issues like ich

just a gut feeling but I'm convinced the closer you approximate the biodiversity of the real thing, the less issues you have (within reason)

Once I got to here I had to interject and stop reading, I absolutely agree, like many other things in this world the little bugs on our skin, the fungus in the woods etc. etc. the real world is full of ugly things that clean up the garbage that gets us sick. us putting a fish in a sterile (RODI) water with all these cleaned and baked rocks and sterile substrate and conditioners is no different than going to the hospital when you aren't sick, you will be when you leave. and all the docs out here should be able to attest that most infectious diseases humans contract are contracted, you guessed it, in the hospital. are our fish different can we put them in a sterile environment and expect the one parasite that rode in with them to not flourish??? OK now I can go back and read the rest of this thread. BTW I try to replicate nature as well as I can with biodiversity in my tank weeds bugs and inverts in as many forms as I can get. OK had to come back I keep hearing a few things like fish immune system and similar to natural clean sea water and stress, OK I am no M.B. but I did raise hogs and dogs as a young man first natural sea water as I understand it incredibly dense with micro and macro life very far from "clean" and most life in the ocean congregates around areas that have dead things for the lesser life forms to feed from and in turn feed them, clean? Iich is tied to the fish immune system ... I don't know but I would think that if the fish immune system had that big a role in the susceptibility we would see a whole lot more tangs floating on the ocean surface, and if said susceptibility was tied to stress we would see them every time we had a typhoon and they got a bunch of boats thrown on their reef that was just run down by twelve thousand boats this year... hmm I think the evidence would show up out there as well if so. I just think we try to create too sterile an environment, something that looks like what we want instead of does the job the ocean does, as if we could reproduce that.

 

[jamesbaur13]

I think many are looking at ich from the wrong perspective.

Ich requires a fish host.

Through "Darwinism" ich has learned to survive a number of different environments. The most essential part of this being... the ability to propagate within the environment. That means reproducing without killing off their food source (the hosts).

Aggressive strains (ones which reproduce on a massive scale or ones with an accelerated reproductive cycle) do not survive in an enclosed environment because they will overtake the small population of hosts and ultimately kill them.

Nuisance strains (ones which reproduce on a small scale and have a decelerated reproductive cycle) will "thrive" in an enclosed environment.


Then there the fish...

Fish able to resist the "aggressive" strains are able to continue swimming along and make more little resistant fishes with the other survivors.

How much of this is inherited and how much of this is conditioned... I dunno.

I believe that ich has more to do with ich than fish do... if that makes sense.

 

[Paul B]

I absolutely agree, like many other things in this world the little bugs on our skin, the fungus in the woods etc. etc. the real world is full of ugly things that clean up the garbage that gets us sick. us putting a fish in a sterile (RODI) water with all these cleaned and baked rocks and sterile substrate and conditioners is no different than going to the hospital when you aren't sick, you will be when you leave.

I agree completely.

 

[567234ta]

why not conduct an experiment by taking one of these long term crypto resistant fish and putting them in with a few fish that have have it from a LFS. They shouldn't be hard to find at all, a petco may be your best bet. But that would tell you if it is the fish itself that has built an immunity or something in the water killing the parasite.

 

[Paul B]

That would be a decent experiment but I also think that stress, (like being in Petco) would bring on ich. But many times I put obvious ich infected fish in my reef and it either died or was cured but never once has any other fish ever gotten signs of infection.
It doesn't bother me much what shape fish in an LFS are "in regards to ich". Almost all fish in an LFS are exposed to ich and most stores and wholesalers keep copper in their tanks, if it were not for copper, there would not be a salt water fish hobby.
I do look for fish that are eating, no wounds, no sunken bellys etc. But ich is not a concern for me and I still believe it is mostly due to diet and stress. Live food such as worms keeps their immune system operating at peak efficiency which also keeps them in breeding condition and for me, breeding condition = no ich. How many years does my tank have to go ich free to prove that fish in great shape become immune?
I am not sure if the water, mud, creatures I add from the sea is beneficial or detrimental :fun5:

 

[567234ta]

How many years does my tank have to go ich free to prove that fish in great shape become immune?
:fun5:

50 lol

 

[Paul B]

50 lol

Ok then 8 years and 6 months and I can declare my reef ich free forever

 

[geaux xman]

Add a PBT and you'll know if your tank has ich or not.

 

[Paul B]

I don't particularly like tangs but if I put one in there, he would be fine. There has always been hippo tangs in there. I just spray paint them blue if they get spots. :fun5:

 

[567234ta]

I would like to know if there is a predator for crypto, that would be cool and would sell out in seconds.

 

[Paul B]

I would like to know if there is a predator for crypto

If there is, I don't know about it although there are plenty of tiny creatures out there, who knows.

 

[tmz]

Ich is a protoizoan. It doesn't come into a tank unless you put it there. There are plenty of techniques to keep a tank ich free.,the most important of which is quarantining and treating new specimens preventatively. It will kill healthy and stressed fish alike. Fish do develop partial immunity if exposed and if they survive. One parasite develops into hundreds and the life cycle is only 2 weeks or so. Do the math and it's easy to understand why ich outbreaks kill so many fish in closed systems. Garlic, uvs and so are not effective cures . There are a number of useful portocols and treatments that are well outlined in the Fish Disease Forum.

Suggesting a reef tank environment that has ich in it as a solution to ich infestations is absurd.

On a side note :

"The World Health Organization has estimated that in 2010, there were 216 million documented cases of malaria. Around 655,000 people died from the disease (roughly 2000 per day), most of whom are children in Africa.<sup id="cite_ref-World_Malaria_Report_2011_summary_0-0" class="reference">[1]</sup>"

Wikipedia

Doesn't seem indigenous folks have developed significant genetic immune responses to this protist..

 

[Paul B]

Suggesting a reef tank environment that has ich in it as a solution to ich infestations is absurd

In the first paragraph of this thread I said:

This is about why "some" tanks have no problem with ich, tanks that could go years with no ich even if ich infected fish are added.
Yes there are such tanks, plenty of them, but "why?"

Suggesting a reef tank environment that has ich in it as a solution to ich infestations is absurd.

"Not" wanting to learn why some tanks never lose any animals to ich is absurd.

Of course we don't want to have our fish infected with a paracite, but if we knew "why" some tanks are not bothered by it would be a major advance in this hobby.

"The World Health Organization has estimated that in 2010, there were 216 million documented cases of malaria. Around 655,000 people died from the disease (roughly 2000 per day), most of whom are children in Africa.[1]"

Yes they do and if you have ever seen the pictures of the places where most of those children live, you can see why. They have no clean water, hardly any food, and what they do have is meager, they are also covered in mosquetoes and biting flies. I lived in the jungle in Viet Nam for a year and I saw plenty of healthy people
that never seemed bothered by malaria, but I also saw plenty of people living in filth, those were the people that would contract malaria and a host of other things. This also goes along with my theory that if fish (and people) are living in healthy envirnments, eating the proper food and are not stressed, they will hardly ever be bothered by ich. I am not saying to put ich in a tank, I am saying that I want to know why many fish are not bothered. My tank is not bothered by it but I know many are and I personally want to know why. This is a learning forum, not a dictatorship which is the reason I am not telling people to do anything, I am asking questions and offering "my opinion" based on "my experiences" with over 57 years of dealing with the paracite. You can offer "your" opinions as well and a good opinion is to quarantine everything but it does not answer the original question.