Who has had ich and........

I have had Ich in my aquarium before. and do not have a problem with it any longer. My philosophy was fish wont get sick if their immune system is up, and stress is down. so when i feed, i had a few drops of garlic juice, it encourages eating and garlic also improves the immune system. healthy fish are happy fish.
 
I have had Ich in my aquarium before. and do not have a problem with it any longer. My philosophy was fish wont get sick if their immune system is up, and stress is down. so when i feed, i had a few drops of garlic juice, it encourages eating and garlic also improves the immune system. healthy fish are happy fish.

Unfortunately, this is NOT a virus but a parasite for which no immunity exists.
It might help the fish survive longer for them to be very healthy but the parasites will multiply and soon the fishes will be overwhelmed by many parasites.

Fast action is necessary to avoid a catastrophe in these cases to keep Ich in check, otherwise the fish will not survive. Treatment is the answer, and there are many available to kill Ich, and some are reef safe.
 
Hey vodka guy, be careful with that 0.02% in China, Estonia, Poland, Norway, Sweden and Puerto Rico (for drivers 18-20 years old).

Alright, enough kidding (yourselves ??), i've been at this sport a very long time. I've researched, read scientific papers spoke at length more than once to renownd DVM's with public aquaria, have worked with large scale installation and maintenance outfits so have seen and or experienced all of the scenarios many times over, i know how they go and quite frankly debating the topic with internet personas i know nothing or little of bores me.

You people and i'm not directing this at Bill, who want to assert survival of the fittest tactics and think you're on to something then for all of our sakes establish guidelines and be very specific of all details of your systems and practices - i.e., include vital information such as: LxWxH, size of display tank, % of open swimming space, total # of gallons, numbers, size and species of fish along with dates of purchase/release into your display tank, inverts present and their numbers, plus number of tank set ups in the household and frequency of new fish, introductions of live food sources e.g. lv brine shrimp, clams, mussels etc., dates and frequency (i'm sure i missed a few). "Maybe", then we can get a baseline pattern of your success and failures. That is if you've enough years of long term success to back up any of your claims. And please spare me the rational, because i disagree doesn't mean i don't get it, i'd like to see this move up a level.
And again well i can't promise i'll participate further, at least we'll be getting somewhere past the he said she said therefor it must be mentality.
 
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Unfortunately, this is NOT a virus but a parasite for which no immunity exists.
It might help the fish survive longer for them to be very healthy but the parasites will multiply and soon the fishes will be overwhelmed by many parasites.

Fast action is necessary to avoid a catastrophe in these cases to keep Ich in check, otherwise the fish will not survive. Treatment is the answer, and there are many available to kill Ich, and some are reef safe.


You lost all credibility to me when you said there are reef safe treatments that work....
 
Hey vodka guy, be careful with that 0.02% in China, Estonia, Poland, Norway, Sweden and Puerto Rico (for drivers 18-20 years old).

Alright, enough kidding (yourselves ??), i've been at this sport a very long time. I've researched, read scientific papers spoke at length more than once to renownd DVM's with public aquaria, have worked with large scale installation and maintenance outfits so have seen and or experienced all of the scenarios many times over, i know how they go and quite frankly debating the topic with internet personas i know nothing or little of bores me.

You people and i'm not directing this at Bill, who want to assert survival of the fittest tactics and think you're on to something then for all of our sakes establish guidelines and be very specific of all details of your systems and practices - i.e., include vital information such as: LxWxH, size of display tank, % of open swimming space, total # of gallons, numbers, size and species of fish along with dates of purchase/release into your display tank, inverts present and their numbers, plus number of tank set ups in the household and frequency of new fish, introductions of live food sources e.g. lv brine shrimp, clams, mussels etc., dates and frequency (i'm sure i missed a few). "Maybe", then we can get a baseline pattern of your success and failures. That is if you've enough years of long term success to back up any of your claims. And please spare me the rational, because i disagree doesn't mean i don't get it, i'd like to see this move up a level.
And again well i can't promise i'll participate further, at least we'll be getting somewhere past the he said she said therefor it must be mentality.

Hi Marc,,,

Marc and I have had several discussions about QT and proper procudures. Marc is also aware of how I feel right now knowing my current situation. Call me the guinnea pig.....But I now know my main tank has ich....Even after doing "the right" thing and QTing all my fish.....That being said I will see what happens if I do nothing but keep my water quality good and feed a good diet......
 
ich never leaves, they incubate on fish, and are either in the water column or on the rockwork. i found that as soon as i added garlic juice to my food, the ich went away, and none of my fish ever got it again. i had it for months then started the garlic and never had it again. hope this helps.

ohh and about them being a parasite is true, but as a heatly fish the parasite will less likely attach than to a sick fish.

when a fish is stressed or sick parasites, diseases and such, will "attack" the fish.. keep your fish healthy
 
I tried the "feed well and let nature take its course" method and it did not work for me. As soon as I saw a couple spots on my Kole tang, I started increasing the feedings and soaking the food in garlic. I kept this up for two weeks and finally decided to break down the tank today and qt all fish after losing two and the others in severe distress. The LFS was not open today, so I got some Instant Ocean Lifeguard from Petco just to do something. I will let the DT sit fallow for 2-3 months and use "sterile technique" to qt all current and future fish/coral/inverts.
 
Well my update is so far so good. The only fish in the tank that had spots was the crosshatch. He has since lost all spots and is eating and acting like normal. Hopefully in time the ich will work its way out of te system or the fish will stay healthy enought to continue to fight it off. My female in QT, as of yesterday, is now at full strenght Cuprmaine and will stay that way for 4 weeks. Then I will introduce her to the tank and see what happens.
 
Some recent shots...

Crosshatch5-17-10.jpg


crosshatch-5-17-10.jpg


Angel.jpg


Tank1.jpg
 
hey RBU just a thought, but if your DT has ick already why are you givving the female crosshatch in QT cupramine if i may ask. The reason i say this is because if she goes thru 8 weeks of QT with treatment and not ick then you introduce her to an enviroment with ick AKA your DT then she will have a chance to contract the ick and the cupramine treatment was for no reason.

i retract this whole statement if you are treating with cupramine for any other reason besides ick which i am not aware of it.

i recently had an ick outbreak and instead of breaking down the tank so to speak. I moved all my corals and inverts to a QT tank and used hypo in my DT to combat ick. It has been 4 weeks now and no signs of ick. i will run the DT at hypo for 4 more weeks to be sure the ick is depleted. Also started feeding with garlic everyday.

just my .02 i guess
 
Ryno...

I understand that QTing a fish and then putting them in a tank with ich could be a waste of time. However.....There are other things that a fish could also have.....Like velvet or a different strain of ich. My thought and thoughts of other people are to still QT and treat all my fish for the reason stated above along with making the fish stronger to hopefully fight off the parasite in the main tank. I paid $300.00 for the female she is real small 3" range and $400.00 for the male he is in the 6" range.
 
Getting back to the origin of this thread....

I add myself to the list of people whose fish have ich...all the time...and live with it. It seems that my achilles and ABT are the only ones to show symptoms, which they show to various degrees all the time. My yellow tang, Nasos, clowns, foxface, wrasse, blue throat trigger and goby seem completely immune to it.

It has been like that for over three years now. I hear that it might burn itself out, but that hasn't happened yet.

So...I'm of the opinion that ich is not an automatic death sentence for any fish. It may not be the right course of action for everyone or every fish..but it seems to have been correct for me and my fish.

UPDATE: For no reason that I can figure...my achilles has suddenly developed a massive ich outbreak. He is listless...has not eaten for four days. I've FW dipped him twice to see if I could relieve him, but to no effect. So...I may lose him. No other fish in the tank seem affected in any way at the moment.

So...Maybe it will take over three years, but it looks like ich might claim my achilles tang. We'll know in a few days, I suppose.
 
Well did the tank temp change drastically? Any stress in the tank? In my opinion FW dips do more harm then good. They are stressing the fish out even more causing more harm. The time it takes for ich to die in FW is longer than the fish can survive. I wish you the best of luck. It sucks when fish get this crap...
 
Well did the tank temp change drastically? Any stress in the tank? In my opinion FW dips do more harm then good. They are stressing the fish out even more causing more harm. The time it takes for ich to die in FW is longer than the fish can survive. I wish you the best of luck. It sucks when fish get this crap...

The timer of my halides stuck on, leaving the lights on for 24hrs straight. The tank temp got quite high. That event happened over two weeks ago, though.

The only other thing is that I noticed that my salinity was lower than I like to keep it.

Neither of those two events seemed to have caused any other problems in the tank, but they may have contributed to stress on the fish or somehow changed the population of parasites in the tank.

Neither of those two events is anything that really hasn't happened before and the achilles has never had as much trouble as now. So, they could be nothing more that coincidence.
 
UPDATE: For no reason that I can figure...my achilles has suddenly developed a massive ich outbreak. He is listless...has not eaten for four days. I've FW dipped him twice to see if I could relieve him, but to no effect. So...I may lose him. No other fish in the tank seem affected in any way at the moment.

So...Maybe it will take over three years, but it looks like ich might claim my achilles tang. We'll know in a few days, I suppose.

Why don't you put it in QT and treat with copper. That's the fastest relief IMO. Just don't let it die helplessly.
 
untamed

the salinity dropping would not stress the fish, just food for thought but, the temp increase could
 
Copper is not the fastest...Copper only kills ich in the free floating stage. As long as the ich is attached to the fish it will do nothing. I would research a formalin dip. I am not positive on the formalin so reaseach it a little.
 
Formalin is great for amyloodinium and brooklynella but does little or nothing for ick.

For ick I like copper in conjunction with hypo-salinity (1.009) using a properly calibrated refractometer.
 
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