Risk Management! How do you know when Ich is gone?

[Balanje]

I recently purchased a very young Hippo Tang and 3 Bartlett Anthias.

The good news is that I was a good little reefer and quarantined these guys before introducing to my DT. The bad news is that the little blue guy has developed two obvious white spots (one on the head and the other on the fin). I'm pretty sure it's Ich.

I've raised the temp in the QT to 85 to speed up the Ich lifecycle and an treating with Cupramine at a concentration of between 0.4 and 0.5. I plan to keep all four fish in quarantine for at least 6 weeks after the spots disappear.

My question is, how do you know when the Ich is eradicated? I'm questioning if I should ever introduce these fish into my DT... Is there a way to know when the disease is gone and not just dormant?

Thanks for any help on this subject!

- Jeff

 

[NoobReeefer]

according to the bottle cupramine therapeutic level is 0.5 so anytime it goes below that you gotta start over. ive used cupramine in the past and never had a problem but the bottle says 0.5 -0.6 and don't go over 0.8 that's a pretty small window and increases the chances for error. after reading this forum more deeper ive decided to start using copper power since its easier on the fish and you have a bigger therapeutic window.
i haven't read all the studies and what not so im not as informed as other folks on here but 14 days in therapeutic copper levels then transferring a fish to a sterile tank and observing for another couple weeks seems to be par for the course. you will have to leave your display tank fishes for 76 days to starve out the life cycle and even then there is a recent study that says somthin along the lines of ich can lay dormant deep in the sand bed for longer than that. But 14 days of copper and a 76 day fishless display should be good 99% of the time if you take out the human error factor.

 

[drstardust]

I recently purchased a very young Hippo Tang and 3 Bartlett Anthias.

The good news is that I was a good little reefer and quarantined these guys before introducing to my DT. The bad news is that the little blue guy has developed two obvious white spots (one on the head and the other on the fin). I'm pretty sure it's Ich.

I've raised the temp in the QT to 85 to speed up the Ich lifecycle and an treating with Cupramine at a concentration of between 0.4 and 0.5. I plan to keep all four fish in quarantine for at least 6 weeks after the spots disappear.

My question is, how do you know when the Ich is eradicated? I'm questioning if I should ever introduce these fish into my DT... Is there a way to know when the disease is gone and not just dormant?

Thanks for any help on this subject!

- Jeff

How did you quarantine them the first time around? Prior to adding these fish after quarantine, what was in your tank? Did you leave it fallow for 76 days after the last non-fish "wet" thing you introduced? If you don't wait the full fallow period this time around, the fish could get re-infected when you put them back in the tank. Of course, this all depends on your tolerance of risk; *most* strains of ich *probably* die off after being denied a fish host for 6 weeks...but why try your luck? Wait a few more weeks and get some peace of mind.

 

[Balanje]

How did you quarantine them the first time around? Prior to adding these fish after quarantine, what was in your tank? Did you leave it fallow for 76 days after the last non-fish "wet" thing you introduced? If you don't wait the full fallow period this time around, the fish could get re-infected when you put them back in the tank. Of course, this all depends on your tolerance of risk; *most* strains of ich *probably* die off after being denied a fish host for 6 weeks...but why try your luck? Wait a few more weeks and get some peace of mind.

I never introduced the fish into the DT. I am still in the original QT and the ich spots showed up about a week into QT.

So it sounds like if I keep him in copper for two weeks, if the spots disappear I can run carbon to remove the copper and watch for another 3 or 4 weeks to ensure it doesn’t come back.

The QT is a 30 gal with no rock and no sandbed

 

[Pbh-reef]

with copper you have 2 basic options:

30 days of copper treatment at therapeutic level
or
14 days of copper at therapeutic level followed by a transfer to a different tank that doesn't have any ich in it.

Usually if people do the 14 days in copper they transfer to a separate qt set up rather than the display tank in order to observe for ich that made it through (probably due to user error) and treat for other diseases like flukes and intestinal worms.

The first post in this thread explains the qt protocol I'm outlining: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-current-qt-process.483371/

 

[Pbh-reef]

oh also be careful with raising the temp - make sure the tank has lots of surface agitation to increase O2 levels in the tank - bother copper (any any medicine) and higher temps decrease the O2 levels of water