Ich / Velvet Do Nothing Treatment Thread!

[ScottB]

I am fore sure no expert here but I have to ask. Sometime I see people refer to a fishes immune system when talking about success with Ick or Velvet. I really do not see the connection. Ick and velvet are parasite just like a tick or flea would be to a mammal I believe maybe this is where I an wrong and would like to better understand. So if you put a mammal say dog , cat or person in a room with ticks or fleas the parasite attaches to the mammal gets nutrients reproduces and then the offspring attack the mammal. If I have a good immune system the parasites are still going to attack me and slowly bring me down and I do not believe that my immune system has anything to do with it. The Immune system I understand helps fight bacteria and virus that are inside of the body.
If anybody smarter than me can help me understand this please explain

So my real question is does a fishes immune system really have anything to do with surviving Ick?

I can appreciate that you are in a different spot right now -- this being a new system and all -- but I wanted you to hear the method that @jda and many others follow. At least for the long run. In a system your size, it just seems to limit the feasibility of (post infection) intervention. Qting fish before they go in is easy peasy and appropriate. Monster UV equally easy and appropriate. Fat fish. The diverse microbiome takes a little more time though.

Whatever you decide, no judgement here. Just trying to give you some diverse perspectives/alternatives. (And therefor confuse the p**p out of you.)

Hang in there.

 

[i_am_mclovin]

I don't QT or treat for these diseases... mostly. I have mature tanks with lots of microfauna. Anything that drops off of the fish that hits the rocks or sand can be eaten by a myriad of creatures looking for a meal. While I have no illusions that this is eradication, it works and has for decades. I also know that I am not going to QT every snail, macro algae, urchin (impossible, IMO), etc. so something is going to find it's way into my tank. I do have another tank with a welcoming host (nice fish that show them how to eat and come up to the top when I am there with food), to get fish non-skittish and eating well and then in they go once they are eating flake, pellet and mysis with a gusto.

If I get large angels, I do dip them for flukes if they came from LA wholesaler.

The current trend of sterile tanks with dry/dead rock and/or/ bare bottom are perfect breeding places for ich and velvet, yet nobody mentions this when they are selling you dry rock and listing the BS benefits like being pest free or the like. IMO, a 10-20 pound order of some sort of real ocean live rock from either the Gulf or Pacific, a small sand bed and a few months of time is the best thing that you can do for fish. You might get an apitasia that you have to deal with, but you are going to get those anyway and it is a lot less painful than ich, velvet, diatoms or dinos for a few years.

To each their own, but this works for me and used to work for all kinds of people in past generations/styles of reef keeping. A decade ago, the advice was to wait for 6 months for your tank to mature before you tried that hard fish... this is when the tank is ready to chow down on some ich tomonts.

I know that this is long, but I just got a group of 7 anthias that was shipped on accident. All had fin rot and a few spots on them, by they needed to get out of that LFS and they were a deal. They went into one of my observation tanks with an angelfish that was already eating well along with a Fowerli Tang and Blue Throat Trigger. The anthias also had some fin rot. It has been a little more than a week and all are eating well, the spots are gone and the fins have arrested the rot and are starting to heal. It will be a few more weeks before the fins are 100% again, so this batch will have to wait, but they are eating mysis, capelin roe and some are eating pellets and flake. The angel and tang are eating everything including flake. I did not fear for one minute that my prized Chrysurus Angelfish was in peril because of these fish with spots.

If anybody cares, I could post more on this because there are some other details that matter like maintaining a quality reef tank for those microfauna (they are sensitive to N and P), etc., but I will hold back for now since few seem to even care anymore.

Great read thank you for sharing.

 

[jda]

I took this just now, but these fish scurry over as soon as they see me. The Queen and Blue Angel have been with me about two-three weeks (after enduring a 46 hour trip due to a FexEx error) and the Hippo less than a week - it is SO great to see the hippo spot free and already happy to see me since these can sometimes take more than a week. 50 gallon lowboy is newer to me, but the rock and substrate have been with me for a long time. There is a single clownfish in here that mostly hangs in her 'nem and a pair of YT Blue Damsels. They show the new fish how to eat the flake and stuff. Yes, I keep sand and live rock in my frag and grow-out tanks... most of them, anyway.

I am also raising about two dozen peppermint shrimp in this tank - I like them to have a few molts before I throw them into the big tanks.

I would take fish that are acting like this over fish treated with metals, hypo or meds any day. This works for me. Although these fish will stay in here for at least another month, this is what I am after.

 

[Jon!]

OK, 6 weeks after I jinxed myself by posting this and going strong.

 

[MartinM]

The H2O2 protocol on humblefish has been 100% successful for me when combined with properly used/powered UV. And for decades I thought one just had to live with it when keeping puffers or other species that aren’t tolerant to copper. This protocol has been a hobby-changer for me!

 

[Atomicus]

Humble fish protocol - 5 ml 3% peroxide per hour per 100 gallons via jebao doser along with $90 jebao pond 55 watt uv worked on velvet for me - scopas yellow nano and tomini all survived - only dead fish was the one I removed bc was picking on corals - a kleini butterfly that went into a tank without peroxide.
All corals shrimp Nem’s urchins starfish were fine except for zoa’s. They closed up so moved them To different tank. I notice that water seems fresher when I put my hand in there and clowns and starry blenny started spawning after on the regimen as well. Here is tank after three months of hourly peroxide. Acrylic 4x2x20” tall. Also use large oxydator and a ug filter/ plenum without air or pumps. Also dose ezdsr 1/2 and all for reef 1/2 recommended doses. Lights are a single orphek or2 strip and a $99 red reef strip that’s 90 watt all royal blue leds and a $70 freshwater tank light from Amazon. Skimmer was $180 Amazon seems to work fine. Acros growing fine. All live rock no dead rock from Caribbean. Came with a pistol shrimp that makes some sounds now and then and 4 large aiptasias. Kh runs 8.5 nitrate 30 phosphate .2 after the peroxide same pretty much as before

 

[Paul B]

That, in essence is "ich management". Many people use that process,

I hate the name "Ich Management" as it sounds like something foreign or not normal. But "Ich Management" is how fish in the sea have been living forever. I like the term "immune" much better because thats what they are.

I really do not see the connection. Ick and velvet are parasite just like a tick or flea would be to a mammal I believe maybe this is where I an wrong and would like to better understand. So if you put a mammal say dog , cat or person in a room with ticks or fleas the attaches to the mammal gets nutrients reproduces and then the offspring attack the mammal.

You won't see the connection with a dog, cat or mammal because those warm blooded animals are totally different from fish and don't have slime. Slime is loaded with antiparasitic properties which repel and kill parasites. Fish in the sea are in constant and close proximity to parasites because parasites swim and fish eat parasites with every meal as all fish have parasites. They are just part of the sea. The parasites fish eat are processed in the fishes kidney (called a head kidney in fish)

The kidney tells the slime producing sites what anti parasite substances to produce to repel parasites. That is why fish have slime in the first place.

I know people like to see scientific articles on this and there are quite a few as I didn't invent it. But I do have very old and immune fish.

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
(ISRN ImmunologyVolume 2012 (2012), Article ID 853470, 29 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.5402/2012/853470Review ArticleAn Overview of the Immunological Defenses in Fish SkinMaría Ángeles Esteban)
Quote: Immunity associated with the parasites depends on the inhabiting discrete sites in the host. Especially important for this paper are the ectoparasites, those habiting in or on the skin. Until recently there had been little direct evidence of innate immune mechanisms against parasites associated with mucosal epithelium [285]. The active immunological role of skin against parasitic infection has been shown recently [286–288], and now mucosal immunity against them start to be elucidated.

This resistance correlates with the presence of humoral antibodies in the sera and cutaneous mucus of immune fishes.
According to these authors "probiotic for aquaculture is a live, dead or component of a microbial cell that, when administered via the feed or to the rearing water, benefits the host by improving either disease resistance, health status, growth performance, feed utilisation, stress response or general vigour, which is achieved at least in part via improving the hosts or the environmental microbial balance."The first demonstration that probiotics can protect fishes against surface infections was against Aeromonas bestiarum and Ichthyophthirius multifiliis in rainbow trout [330]. The research on this topic is considered of high priority at present because enriched diets could be used as preventive or curative therapies for farmed fishes. End Quote

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I hate the name "Ich Management" as it sounds like something foreign or not normal. But "Ich Management" is how fish in the sea have been living forever. I like the term "immune" much better because thats what they are.

You won't see the connection with a dog, cat or mammal because those warm blooded animals are totally different from fish and don't have slime. Slime is loaded with antiparasitic properties which repel and kill parasites. Fish in the sea are in constant and close proximity to parasites because parasites swim and fish eat parasites with every meal as all fish have parasites. They are just part of the sea. The parasites fish eat are processed in the fishes kidney (called a head kidney in fish)

The kidney tells the slime producing sites what anti parasite substances to produce to repel parasites. That is why fish have slime in the first place.

I know people like to see scientific articles on this and there are quite a few as I didn't invent it. But I do have very old and immune fish.

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
(ISRN ImmunologyVolume 2012 (2012), Article ID 853470, 29 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.5402/2012/853470Review ArticleAn Overview of the Immunological Defenses in Fish SkinMaría Ángeles Esteban)
Quote: Immunity associated with the parasites depends on the inhabiting discrete sites in the host. Especially important for this paper are the ectoparasites, those habiting in or on the skin. Until recently there had been little direct evidence of innate immune mechanisms against parasites associated with mucosal epithelium [285]. The active immunological role of skin against parasitic infection has been shown recently [286–288], and now mucosal immunity against them start to be elucidated.

This resistance correlates with the presence of humoral antibodies in the sera and cutaneous mucus of immune fishes.
According to these authors "probiotic for aquaculture is a live, dead or component of a microbial cell that, when administered via the feed or to the rearing water, benefits the host by improving either disease resistance, health status, growth performance, feed utilisation, stress response or general vigour, which is achieved at least in part via improving the hosts or the environmental microbial balance."The first demonstration that probiotics can protect fishes against surface infections was against Aeromonas bestiarum and Ichthyophthirius multifiliis in rainbow trout [330]. The research on this topic is considered of high priority at present because enriched diets could be used as preventive or curative therapies for farmed fishes. End Quote

As I've said before - immunity to Cryptocaryon has a few variables; species involved, past exposure (magnitude, time of infection), current aquarium conditions, strain of Cryptocaryon involved, plus ones we haven't identified. By far the biggest one is propagule pressure. That's why marine fish in the ocean don't die from ich (except during cold spells, or in marginal environments). A wild fish coming across a theront here or there on the reef can easily shrug off an infection, but in an aquarium, if one fish is throwing off tons of tomonts, even immune fish in the same tank are going to have difficulty overcoming the pressure placed on them by that many theronts. The theronts themselves are a stressor....

Jay

 

[Paul B]

Jay my Buddy. Good Morning. But then my tank wouldn't exist. They are shrugging off those parasites left and right and have been for 40 years. But I know many people have problems with this for some reason.

 

[Andynz2000]

Hi guys just stumbled upon this thread.
I thought I had a ich problem recently but now it looks more like velvet with how fast my smaller male clown died. He was gasping for air and other fish now have that dust on them, except a few. I’m running a oversized UV through the return. I’ve adjusted flow to achieve 280,000 as per this chart. Tank is 150 litres and I’m running 400-500 litres per hour. I’m also finishing my polyplabs aqua medic regime. Should I take all the fish out now? I don’t have a spare tank

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Hi guys just stumbled upon this thread.
I thought I had a ich problem recently but now it looks more like velvet with how fast my smaller male clown died. He was gasping for air and other fish now have that dust on them, except a few. I’m running a oversized UV through the return. I’ve adjusted flow to achieve 280,000 as per this chart. Tank is 150 litres and I’m running 400-500 litres per hour. I’m also finishing my polyplabs aqua medic regime. Should I take all the fish out now? I don’t have a spare tank

UV has a difficult time controlling velvet, it multiplies so fast the UV kill rate just doesn’t work.
My general observation is that once fish loss has begun due to velvet, it is very difficult for any treatment to work fast enough to save the remaining fish. You could try a FW dip to buy some time and then go to copper, but you would need a treatment tank for that.
Maybe your fish don’t have velvet though. Check out the link below my name and post a problem report if you would like the fish medics to review the case.
Jay Hemdal

 

[Andynz2000]

UV has a difficult time controlling velvet, it multiplies so fast the UV kill rate just doesn’t work.
My general observation is that once fish loss has begun due to velvet, it is very difficult for any treatment to work fast enough to save the remaining fish. You could try a FW dip to buy some time and then go to copper, but you would need a treatment tank for that.
Maybe your fish don’t have velvet though. Check out the link below my name and post a problem report if you would like the fish medics to review the case.
Jay Hemdal

I know velvet multiplies fast but I noticed I only need about 100,000 to kill them referencing that chart. If I increased flow would it be enough? The 25w is great for my small system

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I know velvet multiplies fast but I noticed I only need about 100,000 to kill them referencing that chart. If I increased flow would it be enough? The 25w is great for my small system

There is some pretty compelling evidence that velvet does not have to leave the fish to complete its life cycle 100% of the time. Some of the tomonts can remain lodged in the gills. Those then don’t get exposed to the UV, so the infection can continue.
Jay

 

[mfollen]

Fish will not live with velvet, they can with ich. Even if they do, one stressful event or issue will all be that’s needed to trigger the end.

 

[Tamberav]

Jay my Buddy. Good Morning. But then my tank wouldn't exist. They are shrugging off those parasites left and right and have been for 40 years. But I know many people have problems with this for some reason.

Didn’t you do a test on your tank for bacteria and parasites and none were found?

Seems your tank doesn’t have a overload of parasites. It probably never gets a foothold to overwhelm fish with enough numbers regardless of new fish you add. Probably due to age of tank, organisms, low stress, foods, and hiding spots.

I guess I am saying Jay is saying that immune fish can get overwhelmed if there is enough parasite load but your tank never reaches that state and your last test showed no disease.

 

[N.Sreefer]

There is some pretty compelling evidence that velvet does not have to leave the fish to complete its life cycle 100% of the time. Some of the tomonts can remain lodged in the gills. Those then don’t get exposed to the UV, so the infection can continue.
Jay

In your experience what is the best course of treatment for freshwater ich? I keep african cichlids in a 75 gallon long (peacocks, yellow labs, kenyii) and I used the recommended level of salt to treat and I have one fish that continues to show symptoms while the rest of my tank never developed them. Is it a case of an immunocompromised fish if only one has developed symptoms? Seems like ime I deal with freshwater ich more than sw ich.

 

[Miami Reef]

I am a Paul B fan. I purchased and read his book.

He says that new tanks should have quarantined fish and once your fish are in optimal breeding conditions you can add some natural matter to get fish immune.

Paul does not suggest purposefully infecting stressed fish with parasites.

@Paul B correct me if I’m wrong.

 

[Paul B]

Didn’t you do a test on your tank for bacteria and parasites and none were found?

Tamberav, that is correct. But I have added fish with parasites for decades so if current wisdom would prevail, my tank wouldn't exist. There has to be some parasites in my tank, just none found in those few drops of water that they tested. They would never get to epidemic proportions in my tank because of what I have stated hundreds of times.

My fish repel or kill them. There is no other explanation. Many people will say "well, if you have a stressful event my tank will crash and I am playing Russian Roulette"

I am tired of hearing that and it may be true in a 5 or 6 year old tank. Here on Long Island in the last 50 years my tank has gone through 7 or 8 hurricanes, some where I lost power for days and the temp dropped into the high 60s. Sometimes my water was so fresh I could keep bull frogs and blue gouramies. Many times my heaters broke and before GFCI's I got thrown across my living room. etc.

So forget luck and Russian Roulette. That is just stupid. There are no old quarantined or medicated tanks. None. At least I have not found any so far. (Home tanks, not public aquaria which are different) Think about that. The hobby started here in the US in 1971 and I was here. Where are any old, fully quarantined or medicated tanks?

It is not magic and I am not the God of fish. I am a retired electrician with a fish tank.

Probably due to age of tank, organisms, low stress, foods, and hiding spots.

I guess I am saying Jay is saying that immune fish can get overwhelmed if there is enough parasite load but your tank never reaches that state and your last test showed no disease.

I have a lot of respect for Jay and Humblefish. (even though he may think I just like to argue) But remember Jay is a chemist and I am an electrician. Neither of us is an expert in fish care even though we have both been keeping fish for ever. We just have different, albeit successful ways to do it.

There is the (What I feel) is the artificial method where you rely on eliminating diseases through quarantine or medication and my method which I call "the natural method" where I found a long time ago a way to use parasites to my advantage. Using parasites to our advantage is the same as vaccines where we expose ourselves to weak diseases to get immunity. Our fish are already exposed to parasites so we don't have to do that.

This immunity doesn't last forever so if we kill all the parasites, the immunity in fish, or us will be lost which is why we get booster shots. It's common sense, I didn't invent it, maybe it was Copernicus, Archimedes or Hippocrates, Yeah, probably him.

I discovered the same thing with nusience algae. I don't want to eliminate it, I just want it to grow on my algae skimmer because I realize algae is a good thing and if there is no algae in your system, it is not healthy as it grows on every healthy reef in the sea just like there are parasites in every gallon of sea water and on every fish.

I have been having this "discussion" about Russian Roulette since the 70s on here and in paper magazines. All of those people are out of the hobby, but I am still playing Russian Roulette.

We know to much about the life cycle of a parasite. Who cares. We also know how a gun works but we figured out that if we don't stand in front of it, it won't kill us.

In the future, many of us will learn how to keep our fish healthy through natural methods like they do in the sea. My tank is not a scientific study, but any scientist that says my system doesn't work, after 50 years should call the college he went to and try to get his money back.

99% of people don't feed their fish with food containing living bacteria as I suggest. They are playing Russian Roulette. 90% of people don't have their tank set up to eliminate stress. They are playing roulette.

85% of people used dry dead, white rock. Roulette. Way to many people quarantine in a bare tank with stark white Home Depot PVC elbows. Big Russian Roulette thing there and the main reason for a disease thread.

Just read it, medicate for some disease and they get something else. I wonder why?

Have a great day,sorry for the rant.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

In your experience what is the best course of treatment for freshwater ich? I keep african cichlids in a 75 gallon long (peacocks, yellow labs, kenyii) and I used the recommended level of salt to treat and I have one fish that continues to show symptoms while the rest of my tank never developed them. Is it a case of an immunocompromised fish if only one has developed symptoms? Seems like ime I deal with freshwater ich more than sw ich.

It's pretty rare for one fish to have FW ich and none of the other fish being affected. I can't tell 100% from just pictures, but that does look like FW ich. What salt level are you at? For African cichlids, salt at 2 ppt works well, you might also consider malachite green + formalin (common in many FW ich treatments).

Jay

 

[Kmst80]

I don't QT or treat for these diseases... mostly. I have mature tanks with lots of microfauna. Anything that drops off of the fish that hits the rocks or sand can be eaten by a myriad of creatures looking for a meal. While I have no illusions that this is eradication, it works and has for decades. I also know that I am not going to QT every snail, macro algae, urchin (impossible, IMO), etc. so something is going to find it's way into my tank. I do have another tank with a welcoming host (nice fish that show them how to eat and come up to the top when I am there with food), to get fish non-skittish and eating well and then in they go once they are eating flake, pellet and mysis with a gusto.

If I get large angels, I do dip them for flukes if they came from LA wholesaler.

The current trend of sterile tanks with dry/dead rock and/or/ bare bottom are perfect breeding places for ich and velvet, yet nobody mentions this when they are selling you dry rock and listing the BS benefits like being pest free or the like. IMO, a 10-20 pound order of some sort of real ocean live rock from either the Gulf or Pacific, a small sand bed and a few months of time is the best thing that you can do for fish. You might get an apitasia that you have to deal with, but you are going to get those anyway and it is a lot less painful than ich, velvet, diatoms or dinos for a few years.

To each their own, but this works for me and used to work for all kinds of people in past generations/styles of reef keeping. A decade ago, the advice was to wait for 6 months for your tank to mature before you tried that hard fish... this is when the tank is ready to chow down on some ich tomonts.

I know that this is long, but I just got a group of 7 anthias that was shipped on accident. All had fin rot and a few spots on them, by they needed to get out of that LFS and they were a deal. They went into one of my observation tanks with an angelfish that was already eating well along with a Fowerli Tang and Blue Throat Trigger. The anthias also had some fin rot. It has been a little more than a week and all are eating well, the spots are gone and the fins have arrested the rot and are starting to heal. It will be a few more weeks before the fins are 100% again, so this batch will have to wait, but they are eating mysis, capelin roe and some are eating pellets and flake. The angel and tang are eating everything including flake. I did not fear for one minute that my prized Chrysurus Angelfish was in peril because of these fish with spots.

If anybody cares, I could post more on this because there are some other details that matter like maintaining a quality reef tank for those microfauna (they are sensitive to N and P), etc., but I will hold back for now since few seem to even care anymore.

Hey JDA,

i do care and i am sure so do many others. I always love to see all sides of a story, so if you don't mind i'd love to read about other details .