Cleaning your tank during a showing of ICH

I recently had a Hippo Tang showing a few dots of ich verry mild but still concerning. I have never had ICH in the tank and am lost as to how it got there as we quarentine all incoming fish. (maybe the parasite hichiked on a coral or snail shell during is reproduction stage?)

problem number 1 is I have a 180 reef with tonnes of rock, catching one fish never mind all of them is impossible without ripping apart the entire tank. I would love to quarantine all the fish but this is a complete last resort. moving 250+ lbs of rock and coral is not my favorte past time.

I talked to I think every salt LFS in the entire city and all of them have these Miracle cures (medic, Kick Ich, ich x) I am not sayng they wont help but has anyone had success with these? have they had any effect on coral even though they say their reef safe.

Finally I had one store tell me that I should be doing 20% water changes every two day and cleaning the tank before each change, while another store told me not to clean the tank for fear of stiring up the reproducting ich, and just allow them to stay dorment and not attach to any fish so they can die off.

Should I be Cleaning the tanks? should I be doing large frequent water changes? should I look at trying a Miracle cure? any suggestions would be appreciated?

[daniella3d]

wow..that one is stupid, don't ever go there again. Ich won't go dormant, this is temperature dependant if the water is too cold (that would kill your fish). At normal temperature the ich kill will not go dormant and die there...wow, really stupid thing to say. Even if a cyst go dormant for many weeks, it will not die, it will eventualy hatch.

The more you remove the more you will control the parasites. Do you have coral and invertabrates? you would slowly, over the course of one week, lower the salinity if you don't have any coral. That kill everything though..pods and all dusters, shrimp, crabs, seastars, everything that is not fish. So this is not something possible in a reef tank, only in quarantine tank.

Those miracle cure does nothing. Generaly the ich goes away on its own. You can try soaking the hippo food in garlic and leave it in peace for a while to help reduce the stress. It may not even be ich? maybe he hit himself on the rock and got some little pimples? that hapened to my hippo when he dashed on a motipora and got a few pieces of coral incrusted in his skin for a few days.

Syphoning the sand might help, but if you further stress your tang it might get worse if it is ich and you will have to catch it and treat it. So best to not stress it too much and watch for a few days.

For anything and everything you put in the tank should be quarantined. Coral as well as shrimp. Marine velvet and ich can have cyst attached to frags or a shrimp and then be transfered in your aquarium.

I always quarantine my corals and animals for 6 weeks before I put them in my main tank. Without a host fish those 2 parasites will perish as they cannot go dormant at a normal temperature and will eventualy hatch and starve to death.

This is the only way to make sure your tank is 100% free of parasites.


The good news is that if it is ich in your tank and the fish fight it off, then after about 10 generation the ich strain will exhaust itself and die off. That is if no new strain of ich is intruduced. At least that's what I read a few times. Not sure if it is true but juging how often we see people having ich and then never again, it is possibly true.

Originally Posted by pyke

while another store told me not to clean the tank for fear of stiring up the reproducting ich, and just allow them to stay dorment and not attach to any fish so they can die off.

Should I be Cleaning the tanks? should I be doing large frequent water changes? should I look at trying a Miracle cure? any suggestions would be appreciated?

[JenniferL]

Personally I would leave things alone. Your tank has ich in it now, just make sure everyone continues to eat well and try not to stress the fish out more by fiddling with the tank every day, unless necessary. Try soaking the food in garlic and if you have a cleaner shrimp/wrasse they can add some relief to the fish by cleaning some of the parasites off although they are not a cure.

[Trabby]

At the end of September after a regular tank clean , I forgot to plug the heater back in. That was a Friday, I did not realize this until the Sunday morning when I turned lights on to see two fish completely covered in ich
without a qt tank handy I immediately bought some garlic. I soaked the food and fed 2-3 times a day. The good news was that both fish were eating.... After aproximately 2 weeks all signs of the major infestation were gone and I have not had a recurrance. Good luck..

[Aquattro]

Agree on the garlic. Without trying to start that whole debate again, my hippo got a ich a couple of weeks ago, I fed her with nori soaked in fresh squeezed garlic, ich was gone in three days. It's my treatment of choice.

We have been soaking all the food in Garlic and selcon. The biggest concern we had was not cleaning the tank was the increase in algae. We have a bare bottom tank so siphoning the bottom of the rock debris and wiping the glass down and doing a 10% change every week is our normal routine. Should I pick up the frequency of the changes?

We also have Two Cleaner Wrasse and two fire shrimp for cleaning the fish. The funny part is the fish that had the show of ich is the only fish that doesnt go to our cleaning station where the shrip and cleaner wrasse are. All the other fish let the shrimp and wrasse pick at them.

the Hippo is not scratching or twitching and is eating like a pig still.

Originally Posted by pyke

We have been soaking all the food in Garlic and selcon. The biggest concern we had was not cleaning the tank was the increase in algae. We have a bare bottom tank so siphoning the bottom of the rock debris and wiping the glass down and doing a 10% change every week is our normal routine. Should I pick up the frequency of the changes?

+1 on the soak in garlic and selcon, the amino acids help boost the amun system and give the fish extra strength to help fight the Ick attack off.

Good luck,
Bill

[Zoaelite]

Ready for a shocker? I never quarantine new fish purchases and have never had any serious problems with disease (Tanks been running for over a year now). Perhaps it's just luck *Knock on wood* but the 3 things I do to keep my fish healthy and happy include:

-Feeding an extremely varied diet soaked in a garlic supplement.
-Regular water changes and nitrate sinks to reduce water containment.
-I also employ a pair of cleaner shrimp and fire shrimp that have set up cleaning stations on either side of the tank.

Seems you are doing everything just fine, I would keep your cleaning routine the exact same and you should see the spots disappear nice and fast.

[Hawkaholic]

If your tang is eating like a champ and not scratching or rubbing then I would just leave it alone. Chances are the tang is being picked on after lights out or is a bit stressed about something. I have a PB Tang that got ich all the time. I tried pretty much everything to cure it but the few spots never went away. It turned out that after lights out my sailfin tang attacked the PB. I got rid of the sailfin and the PB has never looked better.

Another possibility may be your cleaner wrasses. If your cleaner wrasses eat prepared food chances are they are not "true" cleaner wrasses. The false cleaners have been known to bite chunks out of fish.

Now for the ich in the tank business. Some may disagree...well...probably most will but this is my opinion. It won't mean much cause I'm not as cool as the other canreefers hehe. The ich parasite is always present in a tank...I don't care who you are...its there. No amount of water changes or lowering salinity or temp. will get rid of it. It doesn't matter what a reefer does, the parasite will always be there. It may die off but it will always come back.

Placing the fish in quarantine will cause stress. Cleaning the tank and/or rocks will cause stress. Your best bet right now is to just leave it alone and keep an eye on it. Good luck