Ich treatment

[carbasaurus]

Looking at your system, I think hyposalinity is your best option. Any medications added will likely cause collateral damage and kill beneficial “bystanders”.

Copper is brutal to inverts and some fish won’t tolerate it either.

Many medications just won’t work. Ich is caused by a Protozoa. Most antibiotics will be ineffective as they target bacteria. Bacteria are prokaryotic organisms whereas Protozoa are eukaryotic organisms (for the record, humans are eukaryotic as well). The difference is critical as prokaryotes and eukaryotes have fundamentally different forms of metabolism. Antibiotics in general take advantage of the differences enabling us to kill off infections without killing ourselves in the process.

In medicine, eukaryotic infections ( malaria, fungal infections, leishmaniasis, etc) are much more difficult to treat as the medicine will more greatly impact the patient as well.

So back to ich (you can add brooklynella to this as well). If you choose an antimicrobial medicine, choose one that is used in medicine to treat protozoan infections. Chloroquine may work (in humans, it is used to treat malaria). Metronidazole may work as it has activity against trichomonal infections (another Protozoa). You will still probably damage beneficial microbes during treatment but may at least have a chance of success treating the infection.

Lastly, you could try to impregnate the food with the medication and feed the medicine directly to the fish. You may then be able to use a total lower dose and avoid some collateral damage, but the fish may not eat the food due to the taste of the medicine

In conclusion: for a FOWLR system, I think hyposalinity is your best bet

 

[Mini Pearl]

We always keep cleaner wrasse in our tanks. Not sure if they eat ich and I'm sure we have gotten fish with it at some time or another, but the wrasse helps keep our fish looking clean and healthy. There has been a time or two that we thought a spot showed up on a fish, but it would be gone in couple days, never have had anything spread, and we attribute it to the wrasse. Just thought I would throw this out there as we have never had to use any chemo in our display tank for any fish diseases. We've had tanks for over 4 years now.

 

[Seanb1]

Tank transfer for sure, it always works and is easy on all the fish.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Just seeing this thread - hyposalinity would be my choice as well. That said, the longer you delay, the greater the chance that it won’t work in time.

Tank transfer won’t work unless you have an ich free tank to move the fish into for the fallow period your DT would need to go through (45 to 60 days).

Jay

 

[MnFish1]

The fish will be fine that low.
This method is researched by one of the top experts we have on fish disease.

Correct - the immune system does not 'die off' despite some posts you may have read here. Hyposalinity for a Fowlr tank is actually a good compromise between medication and nothing