best way to treat ich

[i have crabs]

i think people should start treating ich like having lice either you have it or you dont and if you do have it you can either leave it alone and hope your frends dont see it or you can treat it properly and end the madness.

do you have lice? i dont

[fishoholic]

Originally Posted by i have crabs

i think people should start treating ich like having lice either you have it or you dont and if you do have it you can either leave it alone and hope your frends dont see it or you can treat it properly and end the madness.

do you have lice? i dont

Lice and ich aren't really alike and while I've never had lice, I work in a daycare, were in the past children who have gone there have gotten it. Trust me if I ever got lice I would do the treatment for it, lice won't just go away on it's own without ever showing any signs or symptoms again, whereas ich can.

Much easier to do a lice treatment then to set up a 500g (in my case it would have to be 500g to accommodate all my fish from both 230g tanks) QT tank. Then chance the risk of loosing fish to ammonia spikes and the hypo treatment during the 5-6 weeks the fish would be in QT for, only to find out you went through all that and it didn't work. Not worth the PITA it would be to do that. GSP tried the hypo and full QT a few times I believe and still had ich problems.

Again I have to say I swear by cleaner wrasses and garlic/selcon soaked food to help ich lay dormant in a tank.

[i have crabs]

Originally Posted by fishoholic

Lice and ich aren't really alike and while I've never had lice, I work in a daycare, were in the past children who have gone there have gotten it. Trust me if I ever got lice I would do the treatment for it, lice won't just go away on it's own without ever showing any signs or symptoms again, whereas ich can.

Much easier to do a lice treatment then to set up a 500g (in my case it would have to be 500g to accommodate all my fish from both 230g tanks) QT tank. Then chance the risk of loosing fish to ammonia spikes and the hypo treatment during the 5-6 weeks the fish would be in QT for, only to find out you went through all that and it didn't work. Not worth the PITA it would be to do that. GSP tried the hypo and full QT a few times I believe and still had ich problems.

Again I have to say I swear by cleaner wrasses and garlic/selcon soaked food to help ich lay dormant in a tank.

ofcource they arnt the same but if you qt'ed the kids in daycare the rest of them wouldnt get it in the first place. i think its a big mistake not to qt fish on the way in so that you can try to keep the display from having a population of ich if id does get in there and its not possible to remove the fish and treat it properly then you have no choice but to hope secondary things like shrimp and cleaner wrasses plus the fishes imune system can keep it at bay.. it wont go away and its a bit of a pet peeve of mine when i hear recommendations not to take steps to make shure your tank stays healthy.

without aiming anything i say at anyone, i think alot of people need to do some reading on this subject no professional that i know of recommends the add garlic buy a cleaner shrimp garbage that circulates the internet and fishstores way too often

[VFX]

I just went through an ich infestation recently.

I had people telling me to use garlic, buy cleaner wrasses, do nothing, rip my tank apart, use UV (I already was using UV), pray to Neptune, do a rain dance, etc .etc. most of the advice I was given was based on circumstantial and anecdotal evidence, not based on hard scientific fact.

For every one person that says you HAVE to remove your fish & QT immediately, there's a another saying garlic will cure everything & also improve your chances on the stock market too. Others say that cleaner wrasses will rid your tank of ich & may or may not improve your fertility. UV will kill ich & may also harm your neighbour's annoying pet llama!

So who do you listen to? Well, personally I tried to turn to science.

The evidence I found that was based on science suggested the following:

Using Cleaner Wrasse, Cleaner Shrimp etc. & 'Letting it run it's course' will take almost a year to eliminate ich if you don't add any other potential new source of ich during that time.

Leaving your tank fish free (not an option for many) your tank should be 99.9% ich free within 60 days. 72 days being the longest time ich can survive without a host (fish).

I bought a large tank to QT my fish & treated them with copper & formaldehyde based treatments. They showed no signs of ich after 2 weeks of treatment.

I kept them in QT for around 10 weeks & my main reef tank was fish free during that time.

I'll always make sure I QT everything before it goes near my reef in the future.

One link that was sent to me by Dave (WickedFags) put most of the scientific evidence in one easy to read webpage.

Marine Ich

.

[fishoholic]

QT a fish that is showing signs of ich in the first place is a good idea before adding to the display.

However if you already have ich in your display (like I did) I found that my cleaner wrasse got rid of all the signs of ich on my fish in three weeks, and a year later my cleaner is still keeping my fish ich free.

[0sprey]

I'm a bit concerned about the length of time this tank may have been running...
You said the clowns were added 3 weeks ago, and the tang 1.5 weeks ago?
How long ago did the tank finish cycling?
What are the water parameters?
Did you quarantine?
Usually a severe ich outbreak is as much related to stress as anything else. Healthy fish in healthy living conditions don't normally have any trouble fighting it off on their own.