Six line wrasse eats ich off other fish????

fishoholic · #1 07-20-2008, 05:55 PM

I was reading up on six line wrasses and I read a few posts (from other sites) on how their six line wrasse ate the ich off of their other fish. Has anyone ever heard of this or seen it done?

I'm asking because my lavender tang has ich. The ich doesn't spread to the other fish and other then the white spots on her my lavender tang looks and acts perfectly healthy. She's nice and fat (eats lots) and doesn't try to scratch or itch herself on any of the rocks or sand bed. It's really annoying to see white spots all over her, if a six line could help that would be fantastic!

I have thought about QT but it's to hard to catch her in our 230g and if we take her out we won't be able to put her back in without the other tangs trying to kill her.

If anyone knows if this is possible please let me know

Kabong · #2 07-20-2008, 07:53 PM

Can't say I've heard of 6 lines eating Ich myself, But even if yours does.
I doubt it would be able to eliminate ich from your tank.
Also taking the tang out to treat wouldn't solve your problem either.
Part of ich life cycle is an off the fish, So you take the fish out cure him of ich, put him back in the tank and hes got ich again.
Just because you cant see ich doesn't mean its not there I'm afraid.
Basically your option's are QT and treat all your fish for over a month.
Or live with the fact that you have Ich in your tank and try to solve what the tangs issue is.

fishoholic · #3 07-20-2008, 08:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kabong

Can't say I've heard of 6 lines eating Ich myself, But even if yours does.
I doubt it would be able to eliminate ich from your tank.
Also taking the tang out to treat wouldn't solve your problem either.
Part of ich life cycle is an off the fish, So you take the fish out cure him of ich, put him back in the tank and hes got ich again.
Just because you cant see ich doesn't mean its not there I'm afraid.
Basically your option's are QT and treat all your fish for over a month.
Or live with the fact that you have Ich in your tank and try to solve what the tangs issue is.

Good points. The bizarre thing is, is that the tang doesn't seem to have any issues. She got white spots on her after we added a clown tang to our tank. The clown tang picked on her for a little bit for the first few days, after that they have been fine with each other. That was six months ago and my Lavender tang still has spots on her. We've feed garlic and selcon with mysis which seemed to help a bit but didn't get rid of the spots. None of the other fish have spots on them and the lavender acts like nothing is wrong with her. The white spots look like ich but maybe they're not?

I guess I was hoping that if something could pick off the white spots (can't keep a cleaner shrimp because my angels will eat it) my Lavender would now be healthy/less stressed enough to keep the spots from coming back. I believe the white spots annoy me more then they annoy her

Johnny Reefer · #4 07-20-2008, 08:32 PM

Try a Cleaner Wrasse.

wickedfrags · #5 07-20-2008, 09:09 PM

ich is an internal parasite, not an external one. Cleaner shrimp, cleaner wrasses ect. do not help with ick but will clean other parasites.

christyf5 · #6 07-20-2008, 09:37 PM

I swear by neon gobies. They're captive bred and easy to feed if theres nothing to pick at.

I was under the impression that ick (Cryptocaryon irritans) was an external parasite. It adheres to the skin of the fish, makes its way into the mucous layer and into the epithelium. While at this point anything attempting to "eat" the parasite off of the fish would be ineffective, the initial "spots" found on the fish as tiny salt grains would be halted from completing the life cycle.

justinl · #7 07-20-2008, 10:17 PM

+1 for christy's suggestion. while neon gobies aren't quite the parasite eating machines that cleaner wrasses are, they aren't completely dependent on parasites as food; in fact they take to prepared foods quite well. cleaner wrasses die probabl 99% of the time in captivity because they are so damn picky... and even if they do eat prepared foods (rare, but not unheard of) they still die well before their time. It seems that they can only get the right diet from a steady diet of parasites.

cleaner shrimp are sort of hit or miss (more often the latter) it seems. might just depend how well fed it is and how complying the fish feels.

I could see a sixline eating external parasites if it were hungry enough but it certainly isn't anywhere near conclusive... if i were you i wouldn't bother with that route.

Johnny Reefer · #8 07-20-2008, 11:11 PM

FWIW, I had a Cleaner Wrasse that ate small Silverside bits like they were it's last meal. Not sayin' all CW's will do this, but one could get lucky. I guess I was a lucky one. Recommend observing a store feeding. And for the record, yes the CW I had died, but that was during a crosstown move. I had the little guy for a year and a half prior to that.

HTH and cheers,

SATELLITE · #9 07-21-2008, 01:26 AM

when i noticed that my fish had ich, i used selcon and garlic guard on all food and let it soak. did this for 1 week and for me this works very well

fishoholic · #10 07-21-2008, 04:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SATELLITE

when i noticed that my fish had ich, i used selcon and garlic guard on all food and let it soak. did this for 1 week and for me this works very well

I have been using both for the last 4 months, it helped a bit but the fish still has spots.

I didn't want to get a cleaner wrasse because of their low survival rate.

A neon goby? I saw some at the LFS today maybe I'll go back.

I realize that my tank will always have ich in it and I know that the only sure fire way to get rid off it is to do what Kabong suggested. Since the other fish do not seem to be affected by the ich and since I don't have that large of a QT tank, I feel like I have three options.

1) Pull out 200 pounds of LR and corals (PITA) and catch the Lavender tang QT her and after she has healed and gotten rid of the ich sell her

2) Buy a fish to help her fight off the ich and mabye she'll heal on her own

or 3) I can do what I have been doing which is nothing (other then garlic and selcon which isn't really helping) and learn to live with the fact that after a year and 1/2 of having her (ich free) my lavender tang now has ich

So a neon goby you say....