Why there is not really a cure for ich?

[BoomCorals]

Actually ... my LFS owner said an easy way to get rid of Ich is to turn up the temp to 80 degrees and overfeed your fish - but add garlic drops to defrosted mysis shrimp and let it sit for about 5 mins. I tried this and it worked like a charm. I have a 120 gallon reef tank primarily with LPS and A couple of SPS. It took about 3 days to notice a change but within a week the fish were fat and happy. Can’t explain it, but it worked.

The fish still have ich. They just are able to live with it for the time being.

 

[Centurio]

Actually ... my LFS owner said an easy way to get rid of Ich is to turn up the temp to 80 degrees and overfeed your fish - but add garlic drops to defrosted mysis shrimp and let it sit for about 5 mins. I tried this and it worked like a charm. I have a 120 gallon reef tank primarily with LPS and A couple of SPS. It took about 3 days to notice a change but within a week the fish were fat and happy. Can’t explain it, but it worked.

You're not getting rid of Ich this way. What you are doing is "feeding your fish" healthy. Kind of like fortifying them with chicen soup to strengthen them against an infection. It doesn't kill the parasite, but the fish have a betr chance of survival.

 

[Phil Lena]

The fish still have ich. They just are able to live with it for the time being.

Well, it has been over a year and they are doing really well. No signs of any disease and coral are healthy too. Just trying to help.

 

[Mindi]

Why after all this years of research and development there is not a single cure against ich or velvet? Why isn't there a medication that can be taking by the fish?

Could it be that if there is a final cure to it the fish trading market could take a huge hit from sales?

Also the ammount of snake oils ripping everyone and not getting any false advertising accusations gets me to think that enterprises benefits more from the harm than the cure.

I want to know why is your opinion on this.

You are thinking of Ich as a disease... it is not a disease, it is a colony of animals that you do not happen to want. The challenge is not to cure a disease but to selectively kill the animals (in this case a parasite) that you don't want. Fish will die from about 8-10 mg/l upwards of copper, but Ich (and other parasites) will die from 5mg/litre ..... so you dose the water with 5-6mg/litre of copper as Cupramine and you will kill the parasite Ich. Every single time, and 100% provided you do it for long enough to cover their reproductive cycle. Bad luck about any invertebrates..they died at 5mg/litre with the parasites. The 5-6mg l dose will not harm the fish....not any fish I have ever had anyway.

 

[Newb73]

Actually ... my LFS owner said an easy way to get rid of Ich is to turn up the temp to 80 degrees and overfeed your fish - but add garlic drops to defrosted mysis shrimp and let it sit for about 5 mins. I tried this and it worked like a charm. I have a 120 gallon reef tank primarily with LPS and A couple of SPS. It took about 3 days to notice a change but within a week the fish were fat and happy. Can’t explain it, but it worked.

Turn up the temp to 80?

Thats my regular temp. Ich? What's Ich?

 

[Bunnee911]

@Diesel

 

[ca1ore]

Isn't Mother Nature a *****?

I just don't think it occurred to Her that humans would want to keep fish in little glass boxes. Ich in the ocean is marginalized by the large volumes and dilution of the reefs. In our tanks, however, the techniques that allow it to survive in the ocean mean exponential proliferation that can overwhelm the fish population. No reef-safe cure, but plenty that work in QT; plus ich can be managed in many cases with good husbandry and prudent fish choices.

 

[juanmanuelsanchez]

Well even I get the point. Those point are true since the begining of the Hobbie.

Even if there are treatments that can fight one of the stages that have to be done in quarantine. Believe me I think I have ich even despite a fallow time and a quarantine procedure. So your window of opportunity is really narrow.

My critic comes to the industry where after all this years there seem to be no new proposals for this problem. Is either fallow or copper. No vaccine, no medication that can be ingested. For a problem that could be a huge profit if you get a solution I don't see anything going on....

And yes selling snake oil it's a great idea, it just needs some marketing a no research. Still can't understand why these products are not treated as fraud...

 

[Diesel]

@Diesel

LOL!!
I know why you tagged me in this

I just don't think it occurred to Her that humans would want to keep fish in little glass boxes. Ich in the ocean is marginalized by the large volumes and dilution of the reefs. In our tanks, however, the techniques that allow it to survive in the ocean mean exponential proliferation that can overwhelm the fish population. No reef-safe cure, but plenty that work in QT; plus ich can be managed in many cases with good husbandry and prudent fish choices.

^^^^^^^ this and nothing more ^^^^^^^
Well, maybe a little, let me add to the discussion.
Conspiracy................. profit..........snake oils................ you guys watching to much movies

As said before Ick is just a fact, it's more of a deadly fact when you put a bunch of fish in a glass box.
If you ever dove on a reef and ask your self how many fish in a gallon of water is there...........yes exactly !!!!
Not one glass box is big enough to tackle that.
We conquer, improvise and take the task to the hand as good as possible.
Why do public aquariums quarantine their new incoming fish for months??
Not just the 76 days as mentioned but a lot longer and they do this long before any simple hobbyist like ourselves ever thought about a quarantine period.
They feed the fish and let it grow and fatten it up before it will go into the ZOO reef or ocean and I have seen fish behind the scenes in QT for over 6 months.
My wild guess is that not more than 1% of the hobbyist quarantine adequate as we speak and that is sad, I'm telling you.... really sad.
Maybe I should train some cleaner shrimp in just attacking Ick or a special morph of garlic that I can grow, maybe we should try marihuana oil........ who knows
For now methods like copper, CP, and TTM is a helpful and proven fact, my advice stick with it till they have that million dollar cure.

 

[Newb73]

LOL!!
I know why you tagged me in this [emoji14]



^^^^^^^ this and nothing more ^^^^^^^
Well, maybe a little, let me add to the discussion.
Conspiracy................. profit..........snake oils................ you guys watching to much movies

As said before Ick is just a fact, it's more of a deadly fact when you put a bunch of fish in a glass box.
If you ever dove on a reef and ask your self how many fish in a gallon of water is there...........yes exactly !!!!
Not one glass box is big enough to tackle that.
We conquer, improvise and take the task to the hand as good as possible.
Why do public aquariums quarantine their new incoming fish for months??
Not just the 76 days as mentioned but a lot longer and they do this long before any simple hobbyist like ourselves ever thought about a quarantine period.
They feed the fish and let it grow and fatten it up before it will go into the ZOO reef or ocean and I have seen fish behind the scenes in QT for over 6 months.
My wild guess is that not more than 1% of the hobbyist quarantine adequate as we speak and that is sad, I'm telling you.... really sad.
Maybe I should train some cleaner shrimp in just attacking Ick or a special morph of garlic that I can grow, maybe we should try marihuana oil........ who knows
For now methods like copper, CP, and TTM is a helpful and proven fact, my advice stick with it till they have that million dollar cure.

Put an $8,000 UV on a 40G breeder......

 

[TerraFerma]

Same reason that there's no cure for cancer. If there were medical facilities and Big Pharma would lose millions. Same way Vaccines don't always work -- they need to keep customers coming back to keep making money.

Oh wait! Those are silly-*** conspiracy theories with absiolutely no logic behind them or basis in fact. Thanks for adding a new one

Actually there are things in early clinical trials that having a high success rate curing certain types of cancer. Read up on CRISPR gene editing. The hold up is the government - not the technology. Same story as always.

On on Ich/velvet and the government: back in the day it was a lot easier to get medicated fish food which when combined with treatments in the water was very effective against many bacterial/fungal/parasite issues (assuming your fish are eating). But for whatever reasons its now extremely difficult to get medicated food. To accommodate I've soaked meds with grain alcohol and flake pellet food with decent results.

Velvet is tough. By the time most people notice it's already too late for the fish even in the best of hospital tank conditions.

 

[Diesel]

Put an $8,000 UV on a 40G breeder......

I gave you the like cause I have never seen a 8K UV
Even though it will not rid of the Ick 100%.

 

[Bouncingsoul39]

Ich is not a disease. It cannot be cured. It is a parasite that can be eradicated effectively with known treatments such as TTM and Copper.

 

[Bouncingsoul39]

Actually ... my LFS owner said an easy way to get rid of Ich is to turn up the temp to 80 degrees and overfeed your fish - but add garlic drops to defrosted mysis shrimp and let it sit for about 5 mins. I tried this and it worked like a charm. I have a 120 gallon reef tank primarily with LPS and A couple of SPS. It took about 3 days to notice a change but within a week the fish were fat and happy. Can’t explain it, but it worked.

Raising the temp is effective only in Freshwater strain of ich, has no known effect on saltwater ich. You've boosted your fish and given them a temp immunity possibly, chances are, if they get stressed, or just in due time, the ich will reappear on them.

 

[Newb73]

I gave you the like cause I have never seen a 8K UV
Even though it will not rid of the Ick 100%.

I don't know, that much UV wouldn't allow the cycle to continue since it would be very difficult to survive at all in the water column even for a few minutes.

Either way it helps.

 

[johnnyenv]

Why is the no cure for the common cold. Affects millions of us and we've been fighting it longer than reefers have been keeping aquariums. The end of the day nuclear radiation kills most things, the trick is targeting it to kill just one thing without harming another. It's hard enough to keep corals without having to throw in a toxic mix into the equation.

 

[ycnibrc]

As long as the fish is fat and healthy ich will not kill them. I have been keeping most of my fish for more than 5 years and once in a while my powder blue tang will have ich but its still eat and no problem at all. How ever the best method to me is fresh rodi bath for 5 min.

 

[twreefer]

There is absolutely a cure for ich. Remove fish from DT, then treat fish with copper or use TTM (tank transfer method, my preferred). Leave DT fallow for 76 days. Ich will be gone from fish and DT.

There's just no "magic" cure where you can pour in a vial of unknown substance, kick your feet up, and watch the magic happen. Remember, you're managing a whole ecosystem.

Read the long paperwork that comes with any medication for humans. The list of side effects is typically quite long. In the case of your tank with multitudes of species, microflora, and microfauna, it is more complex that trying to treat a single species as human medication does.

Look at it this way.... Imagine if you had some ailment, and to combat that you took some medicine and sprayed it in the air, hoping to get into your body and impact whatever it is targeted for. How would that affect your plants, pets, and others living there? Do you think that should be an easy medication to develop that only affects the target and leaves the others exposed unharmed?

 

[vetteguy53081]

There are some reef safe products out there, however they are weak due to reef/coral safety. Technically, they are alternatives and not solutions to parasites and such
Hyposalinity ( lowering salinity for 24 hrs to bare minimums) and high nutrition with garlic extract are safer bets for the disease battle. I freshwater dip any fish that twitch and itch and it stops generally always after a 3-5 minute dip

 

[mike werner]

I understand your point, but I haven’t added a new fish in three years because I don’t want to lose what I have. If I didn’t have to worry about that I would have a fully stocked tank.

couldn't imagine haven the same fish with no additions for three years.no offense but that's got to be boring.