Ich on Blue Hippo?

[AZ_Reef]

I noticed few white dots on my blue hippo yesterday, Around 6-7 white dots. I have been soaking all food in vitamin and feed new life spectrum Thera-A (contains garlic). Can someone please tell me what these are? And what should I do? I have purple, yellow, and Kole too, but white spots are only on blue hippo body. Purple, yellow, and Kole were purchased from another reefer two weeks ago. The only new thing I added to the tank this week is clean up crew purchased from Reefcleaners.com.

 

[ca1ore]

Cannot really tell anything from the pictures. Imagine you suspect it’s ick, which is probably right. Under the right circumstances, fish can live asymptomatically with ick so it is entirely possible your trio from a local reefer brought the parasite with them. CUC is probably not the source, though it is theoretically possible. Vitamins and garlic won’t directly affect a skin parasite (and I tend to think both are mostly useless).

Assumimg it IS ick ..... you really have just two options. You can pull all your fish, treat them and fallow the tank; or you can monitor them and see if the parasite proves to be manageable. Pros and cons to each.

 

[AZ_Reef]

Cannot really tell anything from the pictures. Imagine you suspect it’s ick, which is probably right. Under the right circumstances, fish can live asymptomatically with ick so it is entirely possible your trio from a local reefer brought the parasite with them. CUC is probably not the source, though it is theoretically possible. Vitamins and garlic won’t directly affect a skin parasite.

Sorry for the bad pictures. How do you treat ick? Is there a way to treat it in the DT with harming corals and inverts?

 

[ca1ore]

Sorry for the bad pictures. How do you treat ick? Is there a way to treat it in the DT with harming corals and inverts?

I added to my post above. There’s no reef safe, effective ick treatment unfortunately. It’shard to get ick spots to show on pictures lol.

 

[AZ_Reef]

Cannot really tell anything from the pictures. Imagine you suspect it’s ick, which is probably right. Under the right circumstances, fish can live asymptomatically with ick so it is entirely possible your trio from a local reefer brought the parasite with them. CUC is probably not the source, though it is theoretically possible. Vitamins and garlic won’t directly affect a skin parasite (and I tend to think both are mostly useless).

Assumimg it IS ick ..... you really have just two options. You can pull all your fish, treat them and fallow the tank; or you can monitor them and see if the parasite proves to be manageable. Pros and cons to each.

White spots look just like a small white pimple would apper on a human

 

[AZ_Reef]

I added to my post above. There’s no reef safe, effective ick treatment unfortunately. It’shard to get ick spots to show on pictures lol.

Sounds good. I’ll monitor it for few more days. If it doesn’t get any better, I’ll put it in QT. Idk how I am going to catch the fish. He is the most activated fish in the tank, even with the white spots.

 

[ca1ore]

It probably is ick. The hippo is more susceptible to it than your other tangs, so not unusual that it would be the one to show symptoms. I’m not a big fan, frankly, of ripping tanks apart to catch and treat fish so I subscribe to the ick management approach .... but it has its downsides and is probably not what the majority of reefers would advocate. Also important to monitor behavior. If the fish is hiding or not eating then that’s a bad sign. Ick gets into the gills and can affect the fish’s ability to get oxygen (which is why infected fish sometimes swim into the power head currents).

 

[Big G]

You might want to contact the reefer and find out if the Hippo was treated with copper. There is a condition that pops up "after" some blue tangs have been treated with copper that looks similar to ich.

Your description of "pimples" is one of the descriptors of this condition. What it is in fact is a gram positive bacterial infection. Which is best treated with high quality foods + vitamins (highly recommend Beta Glucan). Antibiotics don't seem to benefit using for this condition.

 

[Reesj]

Sorry for the bad pictures. How do you treat ick? Is there a way to treat it in the DT with harming corals and inverts?

From what I have read and seen so far. DO NOT
Don't stress out the fish and feed it great. If can multiple nori per day.
Fish should be able to fend it off easily if you make it stress free with good ample food...

 

[AZ_Reef]

You might want to contact the reefer and find out if the Hippo was treated with copper. There is a condition that pops up "after" some blue tangs have been treated with copper that looks similar to ich.

Your description of "pimples" is one of the descriptors of this condition. What it is in fact is a gram positive bacterial infection. Which is best treated with high quality foods + vitamins (highly recommend Beta Glucan). Antibiotics don't seem to benefit using for this condition.

I didn’t get the blue hippo from the local reefer. Yellow, purple, and Kole were from the local reefer. Blue hippo has been in my tank for over two years.

 

[Big G]

I didn’t get the blue hippo from the local reefer. Yellow, purple, and Kole were from the local reefer. Blue hippo has been in my tank for over two years.

OK, sorry for the misunderstanding. So forget what I posted. The condition is unique apparently to blues that have previously been treated with copper. The only way to know for sure is to do a skin scrape and do a gram stain test.

 

[ca1ore]

Gary has a good point though. My hippo developed a bunch of weird white pimples about 8 years ago. Seemed too big for ick, but I never was able to reliably diagnose what they were. I ended up assuming they were ick, and they did resolve on their own. I do have ick in my system, but have been able to manage it. Good news is the pimples almost certainly are not velvet ..... which is a whole different level of problem.

 

[AZ_Reef]

Gary has a good point though. My hippo developed a bunch of weird white pimples about 8 years ago. Seemed too big for ick, but I never was able to reliably diagnose what they were. I ended up assuming they were ick, and they did resolve on their own. I do have ick in my system, but have been able to manage it.

What’s your method?

 

[ca1ore]

Nothing ‘magic’ I’m afraid. I’ve been keeping Reef tanks for almost 30 years and am pretty good at spotting problems before they become problems. There is a sticky thread here on ick treatment versus management. Give it a read .... it’s good. The key to ich management, IME, is healthy fish (and thus a thicker slime coat) and ways to reduce parasite pressures. Although I don’t bother with vitamins or garlic, I do feed my fish a lot of variety and a lot of volume. I also have a lot of SPS corals which, anecdotally at least, seem to correlate to better success managing ick. Tons of flow to try to keep as many tomonts out of the sand as possible .... and then a very large UV set to sterilization flow rates. The variable that you cannot control though is the ick strain. Some appear more virulent than others. I’ve long suspected that the strain I have is on the less virulent end of the spectrum. In part that is why the management approach is less popular. Also why I continue to QT almost all new fish .... I dont want to introduce a new strain.

 

[TrishK]

I’m having the same problem with our new Hippo Tang. She’s been in QT 3 weeks (usually it’s 4 weeks but we had done a quick cycle on the tank they were in and were having a hard time keeping the parameters stable no matter what we did-even using DT water) I was afraid dosing Amquel everyday wouldn’t be good for them...and by them it was a Kole Tang, the Hippo and a mated pair of ORA premium snowflake clownfish.

They’ve been in the DT for 2 days. Dory has been eating fine though she’s still a little nervous nelly and hides most of the time, not always, when I walk into the room. Today I noticed 3 tiny white spots on her. Very tiny like . . . Tiny maybe a little bit bigger. Surely this can’t be ich??? Wouldn’t it have shown itself the 3 weeks in QT? Wouldn’t it be more than 3 spots or is that how it starts? If it’s ich and I get her out of the DT before they leave her body why should I assume all my fish will get it if they are still in her tissue? We do have a U.V. at 100% and none of my fish have ever shown signs of ich.
I couldn’t get a very good picture as she doesn’t sit still and is still very timid when I get near the glass with a camera. She wasn’t scared in the QT after about a week but sometimes she would hide. Anyway....the arrows are pointing to flake food I put in hoping to distract her. The other white spots are bubbles. The ones circled are the ones that haven’t moved and there is another further up the black stripe...all on same side.

She slept first 2 nights flat in a corner on the sand bed but tonight she wiggles into the wedge she had been hiding inside all day...maybe scratches? She’s been eating well so I don’t know what to do.

The clowns came from Divers Den and both tangs from LA...none of them show spots at all. What do you think?

 

[ca1ore]

How do you know your display didn’t always have ick and the hippo was actually clean? I think a lot of tanks probably have ick but the reefer doesn’t know it because the resident fish are asymptomatic. Introduce a new fish and ... spots. If it were me, I’d let things play out for a few days and see.

 

[TrishK]

How do you know your display didn’t always have ick and the hippo was actually clean? I think a lot of tanks probably have ick but the reefer doesn’t know it because the resident fish are asymptomatic. Introduce a new fish and ... spots. If it were me, I’d let things play out for a few days and see.

I don’t know, I guess because I assumed the other fish that were in QT with her would have spots by now as well. We just added 4 other new fish 4 weeks prior to that and none of those got spots either. We have 3 QT’s so we’re pretty regularly adding new fish. We had had a case of velvet and ran fallow for 3 months so all our fish are relatively new fish and not really old timer residents except for one 6” yellow tang who has never had ich and a watchman goby) Plus I know having a larger tank and a U.V. helps with parasites as well. I know Hippos are notorious for ick but hoping it’s just stress and she can fight it off. I feed 2-3 times a day (because we have wrasses) a mixture of frozen foods (rods, krill, mysis, brine, plankton, sometimes blood worms and a special green type of brine) soaked with vitamins and garlic, nori, algae, algae cubes as a treat and the good protein pellets, the name escapes me now but it’s what everyone recommends. I also toss in algae flakes and hatchery diet. Our water is extremely stable and our water is very clean from the U.V./Carbon so clean we are overrun with sponges. I’m praying she doesn’t have more spots tomorrow but if she does I will pull her and treat her and any other fish that show symptoms.

 

[AZ_Reef]

I don’t know, I guess because I assumed the other fish that were in QT with her would have spots by now as well. We just added 4 other new fish 4 weeks prior to that and none of those got spots either. We have 3 QT’s so we’re pretty regularly adding new fish. We had had a case of velvet and ran fallow for 3 months so all our fish are relatively new fish and not really old timer residents except for one 6” yellow tang who has never had ich and a watchman goby) Plus I know having a larger tank and a U.V. helps with parasites as well. I know Hippos are notorious for ick but hoping it’s just stress and she can fight it off. I feed 2-3 times a day (because we have wrasses) a mixture of frozen foods (rods, krill, mysis, brine, plankton, sometimes blood worms and a special green type of brine) soaked with vitamins and garlic, nori, algae, algae cubes as a treat and the good protein pellets, the name escapes me now but it’s what everyone recommends. I also toss in algae flakes and hatchery diet. Our water is extremely stable and our water is very clean from the U.V./Carbon so clean we are overrun with sponges. I’m praying she doesn’t have more spots tomorrow but if she does I will pull her and treat her and any other fish that show symptoms.

Monitor him for couple days and see if it spreads. Feed him well. Those white patches look like scratches.

 

[Angelwolf21203]

Looks like the beginning stages of HLLE. Tangs and angels are particularly susceptible to it. I had a liutenant tang who went bald from the lateral line up and even lost his whole dorsal fin.

 

[TrishK]

Looks like the beginning stages of HLLE. Tangs and angels are particularly susceptible to it. I had a liutenant tang who went bald from the lateral line up and even lost his whole dorsal fin.

What is HHLE?