Ich still present after 80 days fallow...

[vetteguy53081]

just first saw this post and agree with Jay on the size of dots which appear to be marine ich- cryptocaryon and strong UV and daily siphoning , not copper is best remedy I know of. Hyposalinity may stress this fish out. Im afraid there may be whats known as propagule pressure where ich management may be a challenge in which you get the parasite into remission before the fish starts to refuse food and deteriorate

 

[Chrisv.]

Since you've got ich in the system now, I prefer the herd immunity plan, personally, which has worked for me.
As you know there are fish species that are resistant and those that are not. Damsels, chromis, zebrasomas are some schooling fish that I find are resistant to ich and can develop immunity within 2 exposures to that one ich strain. Acanthurus or hippos have no resistance to ich and will constantly rehatch ich over and over till ich dies out in your system. The only problem is that the fish needs to survive the 2 exposures to develop immunity, which it can if the ich load was low, but if there's a bloom, no fish can survive a coating of ich on the skin or gills. Luckily for you, with your UV set up, it's not possible to get a bloom.
What I did was introduced a school of common blue green chromis, so that it provided more skin surface area than then vulnerable species. (may be tough for you since you have such a large system). ich will infect the chromis and the acanthurus equally. After the chromis develop immunity, any new ich that lands on it will be cleared from it's skin, breaking the ich lifecycle. The acanthurus will continue the ich cycle.

So if you get my drift..., if there was 10 ich in cycle one, then 100 in cycle 2, and 1000 in cycle 3, all your non immune fish will succumb to the bloom. (assume the simply math that 1 ich produces 10 offspring)

If there was 2 equal sized fish, one chromis and one acanthurus, and the chromis was immune,
10 in cycle one, of which 5 will hit the chromis and not mature. 5 on the tang and mature.
50 in cycle 2, 25 on the chromis and not mature and 25 on the tang, and so forth.

Now if there were 5 equal sized fish, 4 chromis and 1 tang
10 in cycle 1, 8 on the chromis and 2 on the tang
20 in cycle 2, 16 on the chromis and 4 on the tang,

at this point, herd immunity is in effect and an ich bloom is not possible. all the fish will survive the ich, till the population dies out in 7 or so months. Newly added resistant fish will also survive easily and add to the ration of total herd immunity.

If you add up your fish, figure out which are resistant and which are not, then figure out the ratio and be sure to have limit the non resistant species or increase the resistant species for the 7 month duration.

There are publications (clownfish and brooklynella) describing the fish immunity against parasites and how many exposures it takes for acquired immunity. I linked one below, and seemed to have lost the original journal publication.
NOTE, immunity is temporary, and lost a few months after the parasite is removed from the system. Immunity only applies to the specific ich strain you have, and introducing a new strain will cause a new bloom.

I maintain a favorable ratio of immune fish in my system, to provide holistic resistance to ich, on the off chance it gets past my "bio security".

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-07/sp/feature/

i’ve never heard of this approach, and while…to be honest… it sounds like a dangerous idea to me, the article you posted does discuss it at length and even references a Noga article where the idea is discussed further. Huh. Very interesting. I think if one wanted to go this route, especially in a tank as large as the OPs, I’d want a small group of cleaner shrimp and maybe a cleaner wrasse. That is, if these are ich. Eager to see the results of the spot tracking via photos that jay suggested.

 

[Gus Henry]

Same thing happened to me. I had ich AND velvet but it didn't wipe out my tank. It would however, pick off a fish here and a fish there.

I was about to move apartments anyway so I caught all the remaining fish and treated them with Cupramine in a kid's paddling pool (easier to pack or get rid off later rather than a glass tank). The tank was left fallow for 3.5 months as I ran into some issues with my new place so the schedule was pushed out.

Anyway, got to my new place, re-set up the tank and added the fish. After two days, my clown tang, white tail bristletooth tang and majestic angel was showing spots. I mean, it was hard to look closely at the fish in the paddling pool but I thought over 30 days in cupramine and religiously tested with the hanna copper checker, I should be good no? Turns out, no. I was not good.

After the big move, I just didn't have the energy to do another breakdown to get the fish out again for another copper + fallow treatment. I wanted to try the peroxide dosing protocol from humblefish but as I was reading up, i came across the oxydator threads and lemme just say, this piece of no electric, clay thingimajig has been a literal godsend.

I used two model As in my 200 gallon and everyone recovered. Every. One.

I've not had an outbreak since (it's been a couple months) so I decided to throw caution to the wind and introduced a powder blue and a powder brown at the same time and guess what?

Yes, you guessed correctly. They both got ich. The powder brown was the shyer of the two and along with the clown tang being a clown tang, it was too much and he passsed.

Howeverrrrrrrrrr, the powder blue held his own and is now part of the tang gang. Spot. Free.

From what I heard, Acanthurus tangs aren't able to gain immunity to ich right? But here he is with everyone else, eating like a pig and yes, spot free.

So is he immune? Is the oxydator keeping the trophonts weak and barely detectable? We may never know but whatever it is, it's working.

Sorry for the rambling long post but yes, I highly recommend trying the oxydator. For what it is, it really does pack a punch.

 

[Squidward]

Same thing happened to me. I had ich AND velvet but it didn't wipe out my tank. It would however, pick off a fish here and a fish there.

I was about to move apartments anyway so I caught all the remaining fish and treated them with Cupramine in a kid's paddling pool (easier to pack or get rid off later rather than a glass tank). The tank was left fallow for 3.5 months as I ran into some issues with my new place so the schedule was pushed out.

Anyway, got to my new place, re-set up the tank and added the fish. After two days, my clown tang, white tail bristletooth tang and majestic angel was showing spots. I mean, it was hard to look closely at the fish in the paddling pool but I thought over 30 days in cupramine and religiously tested with the hanna copper checker, I should be good no? Turns out, no. I was not good.

After the big move, I just didn't have the energy to do another breakdown to get the fish out again for another copper + fallow treatment. I wanted to try the peroxide dosing protocol from humblefish but as I was reading up, i came across the oxydator threads and lemme just say, this piece of no electric, clay thingimajig has been a literal godsend.

I used two model As in my 200 gallon and everyone recovered. Every. One.

I've not had an outbreak since (it's been a couple months) so I decided to throw caution to the wind and introduced a powder blue and a powder brown at the same time and guess what?

Yes, you guessed correctly. They both got ich. The powder brown was the shyer of the two and along with the clown tang being a clown tang, it was too much and he passsed.

Howeverrrrrrrrrr, the powder blue held his own and is now part of the tang gang. Spot. Free.

From what I heard, Acanthurus tangs aren't able to gain immunity to ich right? But here he is with everyone else, eating like a pig and yes, spot free.

So is he immune? Is the oxydator keeping the trophonts weak and barely detectable? We may never know but whatever it is, it's working.

Sorry for the rambling long post but yes, I highly recommend trying the oxydator. For what it is, it really does pack a punch.

Skip copper next time and try TTM. Works much more efficiently. Never had ich since I did TTM.

 

[Medmondsii]

another vid of the achillie tang..

ich or mucus plugs?

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

this is an interesting post.

So are anthias lyretail have resistance to ich bloom? Cause i do have 3 females in QT now.

Right now.. Im dosing 3% h2o2 im on the first week now.

Its seem the smaller achillies always has it the worst. but i do understand your here. Put more ich resistance fish in front of the more vulnerable fish (tangs).

And this will help b

i dont know what the difference between mucus plugs and ich. but i will do some investigation into this.

Although I can see spots on the fins in this latest video, I would still urge you to map out the spots as I described. You need to rule out the mucus plugs.

Jay

 

[jkobel]

Sorry to hear.

There was no doubt, a biosecurity failure, but a properly done fallow period of that time frame wouldn’t be it. 75 days, under experimental conditions (low water quality, xeric culture) is the maximum time ever demonstrated.
Common biosecurity failures include leaving fish in a fallow tank or adding inverts from another system, contamination via wet items (nets, hands, etc.) A failed copper treatment could also be a cause, what copper product did you use and at what concentration?
Jay

I unwittingly transferred Ich from my sons tank to my tank by sharing a net in an emergency

 

[Om84]

Interesting thread and discussion.

I have a 260 gallon and am dealing with ich. I have a variety of tangs including achilles, yellow, blue, scopas, convict. Also have wrasses and a blue jaw trigger. I have done hyposalinity twice. The first time I used a regular BRS refractometer. It failed and the Achilles had ich as soon as I completed the 30 days hyposalinity treatment. I did another month of hyposalinity this time using industry grade refractometer. Once again hyposalinity suppressed ich until I reached sea water salinity. The only fish that displays ich is the achilles. The blue tang shows spots here and there but I think they are mucus plugs on the blue tang as Jay described. I am also using a UV and who knows how much it is helping.

The Achilles has remained active and eats like a pig. There was a period he stopped eating for a week but he is back to being a pig. I do worry for him. I love these fish but they truly are ich magnets. I'm not sure what strain of ich I am dealing with here that does not die with hyposalinity.

At this point I am deciding between going for copper treatment on all tank inhabitants and going fallow for 76 days. Reading your thread makes me very concerned as I hate the fact there is a possibility even that could fail. Right now all tank inhabitants seem happy and fat and putting them through the misery of QT with the possibility of it not working does not seem like an attractive option. Putting this many fish through TTM seems like a more difficult endeavor as I need multiple tanks with similar settings.

I would love to hear more about peroxide and oxydator methods discussed above. I don't have any corals so I'm willing to try anything. OP, keep us updated as this is a very interesting and informative thread.

Thanks

 

[nereefpat]

I'm not convinced that 30 day treatments in a display are long enough, since the fish aren't transferred to a 'sterile' tank afterword. Tomonts (cysts) can last and hatch after 30 days. That's why longer fallow periods are now recommended.