First sight of Ich

[tmscott89]

Bacterial infections. Really no different that if you had an open wound on your hand, and dunked it in tank water or lake water, and left it wide open without cleaning and bandaging.

Ok, thanks. Yeah I’ve gotta find another tank with all the accessories quick. Pretty sure I spotted a few spots on one of my clowns so it’s obviously spreading..... i was thinking about just getting one of those aqueon aquarium kits at petco and hopefully someone can loan me the money for one

 

[W1ngz]

It doesn't even have to be a tank. You could do this in a rubbermaid or sterilite tote, HOB filter and a 50 or 100w heater.

 

[tmscott89]

It doesn't even have to be a tank. You could do this in a rubbermaid or sterilite tote, HOB filter and a 50 or 100w heater.

Well I don’t have anything but a tote, so again, will have to get the gear or the money for it, but yes I get what you mean. Believe me I thought my problem was solved yesterday until my LFS said otherwise

 

[W1ngz]

Find a local reef club, I'm sure someone can bail you out with some used gear. We all have stuff put away.

 

[tmscott89]

Find a local reef club, I'm sure someone can bail you out with some used gear. We all have stuff put away.

Gonna sound really ignorant here.... but how do I do that exactly?

 

[mtdaly85]

So there are two schools of thought here: Ich management vs. ich eradication.

Ich management is my preferred method. I know I have ich in my tank, but I feed my fish high quality food and keep the parameters stable. Occasionally, one of my fish will show some signs of irritation, but its been a year and I haven't lost a fish. I feed frozen, seaweed pellets, and reef chili. My fish are fat, healthy, and extremely active. Never had any issues having ich in the tank.

Ich eradication is what it sounds like you are going for. Therefore, you will need to remove ALL fish from your display tank and allow it go fallow (fishless) for 90 days. You should continue to feed your tank so that your corals and inverts don't starve. You should treat your fish in the QT with copper or use the Tank Transfer Method ("TTM"). Copper is often a preferred method because the TTM leaves little room for error (you need to REALLY dry out the drained tank to make sure there are no ich parasites living in crevices) but it can be a non-starter for those who have fish that are especially sensitive to copper. You'll need to treat the fish with copper for at least 14 days (try to go as long as you can without causing too much stress to the fish) at 0.5 ppm copper. This SHOULD kill the parasites that come with the fish to the quarantine tank.

Keep the quarantine tank at least 10 feet away from the display tank and make sure you don't cross contaminate the equipment. Feed your fish well while in QT and keep your fingers crossed!

 

[W1ngz]

0.5 ppm copper

This number only applies to cupramine.
Other copper meds the recommended level is 2.0

 

[tmscott89]

So there are two schools of thought here: Ich management vs. ich eradication.

Ich management is my preferred method. I know I have ich in my tank, but I feed my fish high quality food and keep the parameters stable. Occasionally, one of my fish will show some signs of irritation, but its been a year and I haven't lost a fish. I feed frozen, seaweed pellets, and reef chili. My fish are fat, healthy, and extremely active. Never had any issues having ich in the tank.

Ich eradication is what it sounds like you are going for. Therefore, you will need to remove ALL fish from your display tank and allow it go fallow (fishless) for 90 days. You should continue to feed your tank so that your corals and inverts don't starve. You should treat your fish in the QT with copper or use the Tank Transfer Method ("TTM"). Copper is often a preferred method because the TTM leaves little room for error (you need to REALLY dry out the drained tank to make sure there are no ich parasites living in crevices) but it can be a non-starter for those who have fish that are especially sensitive to copper. You'll need to treat the fish with copper for at least 14 days (try to go as long as you can without causing too much stress to the fish) at 0.5 ppm copper. This SHOULD kill the parasites that come with the fish to the quarantine tank.

Keep the quarantine tank at least 10 feet away from the display tank and make sure you don't cross contaminate the equipment. Feed your fish well while in QT and keep your fingers crossed!

I honestly wouldn’t mind ich management, which is what I believe my LFS is going for as well. Constant water changes as well as ich x. And if I knew the fish would be perfectly fine like that I’d be ok with that for now. He just keeps looking worse is the problem

 

[tmscott89]

Just an update on my swimmers. Unfortunately I did not get the QT up and running until two days ago so I did lose some fish
Powder brown tang
Cardinal fish
Yellow tail damsel
Two oscellaris clownfish
But thankfully at least for now after successfully removing the rest to my QT and dosing with copper from my LFS. My remaining five fish seem to be doing ok. Hopefully this is the last of the bad news. Definitely a learning experience.

 

[Terry Mattson]

It is such a hit to the gut to lose fish like that. Sorry you lost some. Since I started to quarenteen my fish before adding to DT tank I have lost zero fish. And no disease in DT. I dip all the corals prior to putting in tank. I also do not buy fish and corals from one of local fish stores. That was the source of the disaster. One sick fish that died within 48 hours and bam, ich and marine velvet. Found one lfs that writes the date the fish came in and so far every fish has been disease free. Hang in there. Let the DT go fish less for about 10 weeks build back your dream tank.

 

[tmscott89]

It is such a hit to the gut to lose fish like that. Sorry you lost some. Since I started to quarenteen my fish before adding to DT tank I have lost zero fish. And no disease in DT. I dip all the corals prior to putting in tank. I also do not buy fish and corals from one of local fish stores. That was the source of the disaster. One sick fish that died within 48 hours and bam, ich and marine velvet. Found one lfs that writes the date the fish came in and so far every fish has been disease free. Hang in there. Let the DT go fish less for about 10 weeks build back your dream tank.

Yeah. I do appreciate that he hooked me up with a tank but considering he gave me the fish that put it in my tank I have mixed feelings. I’m assuming you have a separate tank/area for dipping corals? I couldn’t do it in my QT tank since copper is now in there.

 

[Sailfinguy21]

After losing 800$ in fish over 4 months time, trying to "manage" it i learned that is just complete bs.. I took my corals out of my tank put them in a smaller 20g tank i had and i did hyposalinity in my main tank for 2 months. ICH was gone after the first 1-2 weeks, but i did 2 months total to make sure it was all gone.. I havent had a sign of ich in my tank in the last 4-5 months now.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

After losing 800$ in fish over 4 months time, trying to "manage" it i learned that is just complete crap.. I took my corals out of my tank put them in a smaller 20g tank i had and i did hyposalinity in my main tank for 2 months. ICH was gone after the first 1-2 weeks, but i did 2 months total to make sure it was all gone.. I havent had a sign of ich in my tank in the last 4-5 months now.

It might be complete crap for YOU. Are you sure you didn’t deal with velvet? In 15 years I’ve lost fish to ich twice: relocating a tank to a new house causing instability in conjunction with a heater breaking in the middle of the winter and just after starting a new tank with dead rock.

You simply don’t lose fish to ich if there’s nothing wrong I.e instability, overstocked tank, excessive stress poor nutrition or the fish just might be very weakened when you got it.

OP, just a completely unrelated question: that sounds like a enormous amount of CuC. Are you sure that they aren’t starving and the die-of causing problems?

Best of luck!

 

[Sailfinguy21]

It might be complete crap for YOU. Are you sure you didn’t deal with velvet? In 15 years I’ve lost fish to ich twice: relocating a tank to a new house causing instability in conjunction with a heater breaking in the middle of the winter and just after starting a new tank with dead rock.

You simply don’t lose fish to ich if there’s nothing wrong I.e instability, overstocked tank, excessive stress poor nutrition or the fish just might be very weakened when you got it.

OP, just a completely unrelated question: that sounds like a enormous amount of CuC. Are you sure that they aren’t starving and the die-of causing problems?

Best of luck!

If you knew anything at all about ich and velvet youd know hyposalinity doesnt kill velvet.. only ich.. so judging how i did hypo for 2 months and ich hasnt come back in 4 months.. yea id say it was ich. Lol

 

[Viking_Reefing]

If you knew anything at all about ich and velvet youd know hyposalinity doesnt kill velvet.. only ich.. so judging how i did hypo for 2 months and ich hasnt come back in 4 months.. yea id say it was ich. Lol

I didn’t say anything about hypo killing velvet now did I? Just because the fishes are asymptomatic doesn’t mean it’s gone. Fish can live fine with velvet present even though it’s less likely.

The reason I asked was that it sounded like a heck of a lot of losses to something so easily managed as ich.

 

[Terry Mattson]

Yeah. I do appreciate that he hooked me up with a tank but considering he gave me the fish that put it in my tank I have mixed feelings. I’m assuming you have a separate tank/area for dipping corals? I couldn’t do it in my QT tank since copper is now in there.

I have a small Tupperware container that I use to dip coral in. The product is coral rx. I remove a gallion of water from DT and add coral rx to 1/2 gallon per instructions then dip. Use the other 1/2 to rince. I then place in DT usually on a frag rack and observe for a week then place coral. Before I did this dip I indeed introduced pest. The zoa eating nudibranch. Picked them off fir awhile but it was then I got the dip and did. 5 of them came off. In the end dipped twice two weeks apart due to eggs. So I do not quarenteen corals but dip them. So far never lost a coral due to dipping or fish due to quarenteen. Coral rx is used by many on this r2r. Hope that helps. Oh, there are some things you do not dip, like clams ..

 

[tmscott89]

I have a small Tupperware container that I use to dip coral in. The product is coral rx. I remove a gallion of water from DT and add coral rx to 1/2 gallon per instructions then dip. Use the other 1/2 to rince. I then place in DT usually on a frag rack and observe for a week then place coral. Before I did this dip I indeed introduced pest. The zoa eating nudibranch. Picked them off fir awhile but it was then I got the dip and did. 5 of them came off. In the end dipped twice two weeks apart due to eggs. So I do not quarenteen corals but dip them. So far never lost a coral due to dipping or fish due to quarenteen. Coral rx is used by many on this r2r. Hope that helps. Oh, there are some things you do not dip, like clams ..

Thanks for the info. I’ll look into it after I get all of this mess taken care of

 

[tmscott89]

It might be complete crap for YOU. Are you sure you didn’t deal with velvet? In 15 years I’ve lost fish to ich twice: relocating a tank to a new house causing instability in conjunction with a heater breaking in the middle of the winter and just after starting a new tank with dead rock.

You simply don’t lose fish to ich if there’s nothing wrong I.e instability, overstocked tank, excessive stress poor nutrition or the fish just might be very weakened when you got it.

OP, just a completely unrelated question: that sounds like a enormous amount of CuC. Are you sure that they aren’t starving and the die-of causing problems?

Best of luck!

I mean it certainly looked a lot more like ich from pictures that I’ve seen. It didn’t resemble velvet at all. Having said that. I let them go about a little over a week untreated at all and another week before I got them to the QT tank. Except for the new tang the same 10 fish have been in the tank for 6 months or longer, and yes I would say I fed them quite often. The cardinal and clownfish that I lost were the first fish I got for the tank almost a year ago and they always ate great. The only fish that died in the actual hospital tank was one of my clownfish and that was the next morning (already covered in ich)