AHHHH!!! I have Ich

[chris121277]

Heres the situation, I have a 60gal reef tank with way to much rock work and soft corals to get my fish out and into a hospital tank. My powder brown tang came down with ich and has sence gave it to a few other members of my tank (coral beauty, clowns, foxface) I have turned the temp up to 82deg and have used a product called "Paracide Green" twice now and havent noticed any improvement. I don't want to kill my corals and don't want to loose my fish what else can i try

Thanx for your help
Chris

[dabandit]

cleaner shrimp I think they are called,I've never tried but I remember hearing they will eat? the i.c.k

[chris121277]

I have 1 in there, should i get another one today?

[Aquattro]

Chris, there are lots of threads existing on ich here, do a quick search and you should find something. Maybe search for garlic as well...

[fishytime]

First of all you can turn your heater back down. Temperature doesnt speed up the life cycle of the ich parasite like it does with fresh water ich. There are several "reef safe" ich cures on the market(kick ich, no sick fish, prazi pro(I think thats what its called)) that have worked for some. None have worked for me personally. If you dont have alot of coral you could house it temporarily in a rubbermaid and try hypo-salinity in the display. Garlic and a good vitamin like selcon in the food will help increase the fishes chances of fighting it off. Best of luck.

[dabandit]

Sorry man I dont know anything about the shrimp,I've never had ick. I did have a fish showing a couple spots once and the garlic extract as mentioned above cleared it right up. Heck I'd be curious to know if the shrimp works,let me know how he's doing. I know everyone will disagree with me but I dont believe in quarantine,netting a sick fish and changing the water parameters even slightlly puts alot of stress on a fish that cant deal with it,but thats just an opinion
I feel for you,watching your fish die never gets any easier

[dabandit]

I have heard though that increasing the number of shrimp in your tank will induce more active behavior and less hiding.

[chris121277]

when the tan first started showing a few spots the shrimp seemed to be eating them off, but now the tang doesn't seem to visit him as often.

[robzilla]

i've got a bottle of garlic xtreme if you need. and selcon

[Slick Fork]

The ONLY ways to completely eliminate ich are hyposalinity or copper. Neither of which are particularly agreeable to anything else in your display tank. Garlic will help stimulate a feeding response and a fish that eats may be able to fight it off temporarily but you will then always have Ich in your display.

The best solution is for you to now remove ALL the fish from the display into a quarantine tank and treat with either hyposalinity or copper.

The other route would be to remove all coral, live rock, sand and invertebrates into a rubbermaid tub and apply the hyposalinity treatment to the display. DO NOT use copper in your display as it will leave traces that linger and cause problems for ages.

Either route you choose, the fish and everything else should be kept seperate for 6-8 weeks to allow the Ich parasites to go through their life cycle. That means no fish at all in with your liverock, sandbed, corals, etc. Once you have completely eliminated Ich from your system QUARANTINE everything properly before it goes into your tank and you won't ever have this problem again!

Good luck

[dkcrx]

I have heard though that increasing the number of shrimp in your tank will induce more active behavior and less hiding.

true, the more the beter, they will set up a cleaning station that your fish will practicly line up for, "depending on the size of fish".

[dkcrx]

Also you can try a new product from zeovit, Dan at Aquatic Addictions can tell you what it's called, seems to work great and all you do is mix it in your fishs food befor you feed.

[untamed]

I have a number of cleaner shrimp and the fish love to be cleaned. It is a daily evening ritual for most all of the fish.

However...the cleaner shrimp do NOT do a very good job of removing the ich parasites and I would not suggest that this is a cure in any way. In fact, I'm not even sure that it even helps in any way.

I am in a similar situation. My achilles tang has shown signs of ich for nearly years now, but it is getting worse of late and I'm concerned.

[chris121277]

Well the ich is winning
I've lost the Coral Beauty and the Powder Brown Tang:sad:

How do I do a fresh water dip?
want to try that on my Clown and Foxface

I'm feading garlic, got the temp up to 82deg and using Paracide Green, they just keep getting worse.

Very frustrating

[fkshiu]

Most people learn to live with ich. All those home remedies of garlic, cleaner shrimp, UV etc probably help keep ich in a chronic low level state within a tank. You're happy as long as you don't see the spots - which are only a visible symptom of the parasite infection. However, once the infection gets serious and fish start dropping left and right your only course of action if you want to save any fish is to remove either all the fish or all the live rock/inverts and start hyposalinity and/or copper treatment. These are the only two things that are scientifically proven to KILL ich (crytocaryon irritans).

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.php

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-10/sp/feature/index.php