Very Tired of dealing with parasites...
 

Long story but ever since my move about 7 months ago, things have never been the same with my tank. I have not been able to get rid of the ich in the system. Before the move, I QT'd everything that went into the tank even corals. I never had ich. That was about a year ich free.

After a disaster of a move where I lost a bunch of fish and all my corals, the fish that did make it, suddenly had ich! Where the heck did it come from all of a sudden???? Nothing was added. They were stressed though. So it must have been there all along. I QT's them in hypo for 6 weeks. LR was QT'd in a different tank and some was even dry. Two weeks after setting up the display, ich again. So I figured 6 weeks was not enough. I did it all over again for 8 weeks. After the 8 weeks, nothing new added, I put them all back in the display. After about two weeks, ich again! So I decided to just try to let them fight it off. They have done very well and the outbreaks are now very, very minor and only effect the two puffers. I don't understand why hypo is not working this time. I have calibrated my refractometer so many times and used my brothers as well. Got 1.008 every time. Im sure the salinity was low enough. It seemed to have gone. I never saw white spots for three to four weeks. But it always comes back.

Anyways I am sick of dealing with this and think I may give up saltwater for a while. I am traveling for work quite often now and may be away for 3 months at a time. I don't want to leave my fiance in charge of a tank with parasites...its not fair to her. I just don't have the time or energy for this right now.

So I think I am going to try to go back to freshwater puffers for now. I love Fahaka Puffers and think my tank would be perfect for one. Way cheaper to maintain and WAY less disease to ever deal with.

Anyways, how would you guys go about this? I need to first find homes for my fish and corals I guess and then sell my skimmer and whatever equipment I won't need. My dilemma is though, how do I find homes for fish that need to be QT'd again??? Should I do it myself before selling them? I just can't figure out how to go about this. Most of the fish have no signs of ich but I don't want to sell them and not tell people they have been exposed. What would you guys do?

And then the biggest dilemma for me is that I am very attached to my fish. Its going to be so hard to let them go even though I think its for their own good because I don't have the time to help them. But how likely is it that I can find a good home for them? I think I know of someone who may be able to take the Burrfish and I know will give her a great home! But as for the others I have no idea. I don't want to just post an ad and have them go to random homes. Man I have no idea what to do :neutral:

Any advice or suggestions would be great right now. I don't know where to start to get these guys to a good home.

This is whats in the tank now:

4" Burrfish
5" Dogface
6" Niger Trigger
5" Blue Spotted Rabbitfish
2" Coral Beauty (will talk to original owner about him though)
3" Cleaner Wrasse
5" Fu Manchu Lion
4" Stripped Cardinal
A bunch of damsels

After writing this I am not even sure I can let them go...Maybe another shot at QT? I just don't have the space to QT them all. And I don't mean tanks, I mean physically in my place I can't set up a bunch of rubbermaids again. Not to mention I will be away a lot and not able to monitor QT which is so important.

Ya know, I'm not sure what I do or why I don't have problems, but my last ich carrier was a sailfin tang I brought home last month. I did nothing but feed a bit of garlic on nori, and turned the lights out for a day. Within two days, the ich was gone. I had the same thing with my powder blue. Ich gone in a day. Not saying it was garlic, since I only fed once to the sailfin, but I figure a calm tank, good water quality and an environment that provides hiding places causes the fish to relax and use it's own immune system to fight off the ich. Just my experience with this....

Oh I hear this all the time but its just not working for me. I feed very heavily with garlic and all kinds of vitamins. I do water changes once a week now to keep nitrates down to 5 or below. Usually 0 though. There is no aggression in my tank. The fish usually seem fine and happy but right now my dogface is not looking great and thats why Im feeling like I want to give up for now. It had been soooooo long since I saw ich and then last night to find it again was horrible. Temperture does not change more than 1 degree a day, EVER. I have the tank set up better than ever. Big skimmer, ozone, big refugium. Water quality is better than I have ever kept it but still they just keep getting ich.

My burrfish seems to have IP again too. I have heard they have to be dewormed throughout their whole lives sometimes though. I don't know if thats true but this would be the third time she has to be medicated for IP in about 6 months. She is a VERY tough little fish though. So active and nothing seems to bug her.

Ya, that's weird. My temp hit 90 over a couple of days, no ich for me. Other than getting the fish home with ich, I've never had it pop up. Maybe something else you haven't considered? Electrical shorts, etc?

I have checked that too :mrgreen:

I have everything on GFCI, so if there was stray current, it would shut down. Especially everytime I put my hands in the tank.

I just can't figure it out. I think all the "wasted" time QTing is what has really discouraged me. About 4 months for most of the fish. Plus I have been still QTing the last few new additions even though ich is already in the tank. Just didn't want to make it worse. Amazingly the rabbitfish has never had it. The Niger did for a day but otherwise nothing I can see. The coral Beauty none either. Its really just the puffers and I see the damsels flashing a lot too.

It kind of makes me miss freshwater where I never QT'd and never once had any disease in all the years I had freshwater. Not to mention how much cheaper it is. Feels like Im paying so much money just to keep sick fish.

Maybe find a friend who has some spare moments every day to help you with your QT? Place a few in different peoples care.. then in a month and a half or so bring them back home to your tank. Where by this time the ich should have cycled out.

The QT would need to be hypo, so your QT babysitters need to have the ability to maintain that.

Yeah I had thought of something like this but I don't want to ask people to do this even for pay. Its a lot of responsibility. And if anything happened to them during QT I wouldn't want someone else to feel really guilty.

If I do decide to QT, I will try to QT them myself. I think if I set up my ozone in the QT then I can keep the water quality up. It would be crowded but Im not as concerned about that as I am about water quality.

Just need to set up an UV Sterilizer (more than 30W) with 55 GPH only, ich will be gone in 2 weeks. After that you still need to run for another month or so to make sure ich is gone forever. It worked for me, I never used any medication or quarantine.

Thats no different than using ozone though and actually ozone should be way more efficient than UV. I could give it a shot (and thanks for the thought) but with ozone already running, I don't really see the point. I do think ozone is the reason the ich is not as bad as it could be. The problem with both ozone and UV is that ich is that they both only kill what passes through them and Ich does not stay in its free swimming stage very long.

It may be worth a shot though. It can't hurt anything. But if I do decide to keep this tank up, I am going to just go ahead and QT them once again. Maybe for 10 weeks this time! Apparently 8 was not enough :sad:

Just remember the trick is can not go more than 55 GPH. Once in a while I get the ich back but with this treatment it always work for me

Ok, well I still am not sure I need to add UV when I already have ozone running but if I decide to give it a try, I will remember that. Thanks.

Well it looks like the most of the ich has already dropped off the puffers again. Neither of them seem stressed at all. Of course all that means is that the ich not on them but all over the tank.

I don't know...seems like each time they get ich it drops off in a day or two. Does that mean anything? In the past I remember it always staying on them for at least a week before dropping off.

is it possible the ich could be flaring up due to being transfered in and out of quarantine? id feel pretty stressed if i kept getting booted out of my home to live in a plastic box. and now that theyre home again and settling in the ich is dropping off.

as for why its not dying off... im clueless...

Right, this is exactly what I felt after two rounds of hypo for about three and a half months. So thats why for the past 4 months or so I have NOT QT'd but tried to let them fight it off themselves. Its worked ok and they are fighting it off to a point but it just will not go away. It had been quite a while since the last time I saw spots until last night. They are mostly gone already tonight, so a little less than 24 hrs. Thats kind of encouraging but man this is getting ridiculous!

Now I don't know...QT again! Risk some of them not making it and stress them again. Or keep letting them fight it on their own? Risking them getting really sick I guess. Its hard to figure out for me right now which is why I am still considering finding them good homes. Problem there is that how can I find people who want to take fish with ich???

Blah!

One solution is to turn your display into a QT - yank all the live rock and let it cook in a rubbermaid for a few months, then nuke the display with cupramine.

If my memory is correct, you've got an acrylic tank so there's no risk getting copper embedded into the silicone. You'll sacrifice your corals but since they're softies, I believe, they should be easily replaceable.

Cupramine was the thing that finally destroyed the ich cycle when I first got my hippo tang after going through all that other crap like hypo, garlic, cleaner shrimp, UV, witchcraft etc. etc. Going hypo may make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but darn it, do what human beings have always done when faced with an annoyance: stomp the living daylights out of it with harsh chemicals!!!

The trick with ich is you need to keep ALL fish out of the display for a tleast a month and a half. 6 to 8 weeks usually.

There is another method which requires you to remove the fish and transfer them to a new clean sterilized tank every week for a certain amount of time, this will eliminate the ich as well. But is a bit more stressful to the fish.

Either way, you need to leave the display empty of all fish or you will have ich present forever unless all the fish develop a immunity to ich.

LOL...your post made me laugh!

I can't use copper with my puffers. They are scaleless and cannot handle copper. My tank is actually glass too, so I prefer not to use copper in it!

I also don't want to loose my corals...I have a decent amount now and they are just starting to grow. I could move them to a holding tank, thats easy enough.

The thing is that the fish that can tolerate copper are not the ones really showing ich at all. Its mostly the puffers.

Thanks for the ideas though!

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

Treatment #5..

more good reading

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-1...ture/index.php

Yeah I have read both is those many, many times LOL. Thanks though!

I am still going to look into finding homes. If I can find good homes for my Niger, Burrfish and Dogface then I will tear down the rest of the tank. If not in the next week or so, I will try the QT thing again.

For whatever reason I really would rather find them homes and go back to freshwater. Im just tired of all the parasites in saltwater. But it's very important to me that I know where they are going and will be taken care of. If not, I will keep them and deal with this.

Two puffers, 1 tank=stress? Ich is not carried in to the tank. It is a parasite that is constantly present in the aquarium. It is only when a fish becomes week or stressed that their immune systems cant fight it off. I would try and figure out the reason for the stress.

A good read on ick. Dispells some of the myths.

http://www.txinstall.com/ich/ich.htm

Why would two puffers in one tank equal stress?

If you have any idea what would be stressing them, let me know! There is zero aggression. Not even the odd chase. They are fed 3 times a day. Nitrates are kept to 5 and below at all times. Temperature has not swung more than 1 degree in 4 months (this has been a lot of work). Stress is exactly what I have worked my butt off to make sure is NOT in the tank. I think the reason this is such a mild break out each time (about 5-6 spots on the two puffers) is because the tank is so stress free. Sorry if it sounds like Im attacking your comment but I made it very clear in the beginning that I have worked extra hard to make sure stress in not a factor. And I strongly believe it has not been. Or I think they would all be dead months ago.

Maybe I need to clear this up...This is not a big outbreak by any means. Its only 2 of the 15 or so fish that even get the ich and its about 5-6 spots each usually. This last time the dogface did have it a bit worse than that but by this morning almost all the spots are gone. So its not a terrible outbreak and the fish don't even seem to notice its there but it still really bugs me and I am worried that if something does go wrong (power outtage, temperature swing, etc.) that they will get attacked hard by the ich.

BTW, as written in the Reefkeeping articles, I do NOT believe ich is present in every tank. And you can rid your tank of ich. Its just been hard this time.

Yeah good article. About the same as the Reefkeeping ones with a few added points which are good.

I have talked to a bunch of people and really don't believe the 11 months and then ich dies off theory. I guess in that last article it was saying it kind of "slows" down? Not dies off? Someone had told me that they added nothing to a tank for over two years but their tangs would still get ich once in a while. 5 years after that and the tangs still get a bit of ich.

I'm surprised Hypo didn't work. I have used Hypo before in the past and it worked great. Did you QT all of your fish and do hypo on all of them? Four weeks of QT and hypo for all of our fish got rid of the ich in our first set up.

This is a huge myth that keeps getting tossed around. Ich is not always present. It needs a host or it does not live. Given then right precautions when acquiring (new) fish or anything you add to your tank, you will never have ich in your tank.

Yup everything for 6 weeks the first time and 8 weeks the second time. 1.008 both time using three different refractometers to make sure.

I agree and I was so careful but there is something I missed somewhere obviously. What Im so frustrated about is why after all the treatment its still around. The tank was fallow for 8 weeks. Before that it was dry for a month. And during this time the fish were all in hypo for 8 weeks. Where the heck was the ich hiding???

I have read that sometimes Ich can last in cyst form for up to 7 months. :crazyeye:

Perhaps this has happened to you? Beyond that, it is best to do hypo, then normal QT for a month to see if the ich is truly gone. Since hypo only works if the salinity is strictly watched, perhaps your refractometer is mis calibrated and the salinity was not bang on, some Ich survives the treatment. Thinking your 8 weeks was enough you re-introduce them to your DT but some Ich survived and voila. All over again! Very frustrating for sure.

So your entire treatment length can be as long as 2 months. 1 month hypo, 1 month normal QT.. and 2 month fallow DT.

Not an easy prospect for sure.

Yeah I think your probably right...

Im sure the refractometer is working though because after hypo did not work the first time I borrow BOTH of my brothers refractometers. So I used three to make sure and they all read 1.008 after being calibrated. The fish were in 1.008 for 8 weeks. Then one more week or raising the salinity back up and then back to the display that was fallow for 9 months.

Ich was living somewhere though. It survived.

Yeah, the trick to it all is to have those fish that were in hypo stay in a QT tank at normal salinity for a month. Let the "possible" ich survivors a chance to show up on the fish again. If it does, back to hypo for another treatment.. it sucks but it has to be done.

Yeah I did not do that part. I thought after the 8 weeks there was no way any ich could have survived. But I was wrong.

Well today there is no signs of ich at all...just means I can't see it of course...I know its still there. So I am going to wait it out still and see if they fight it off again. I think I will hold off on QT until I see the first sign of stress or discomfort. Then I will decide what to do. Still may try to switch to freshwater I think.