Here is a good article I found. At the end he discusses the "garlic" approach" w/ another receipe that I found on this forum. Good luck.
MANAGING COMMON DISEASES IN MARINE FISH
Michael Paletta
White Spot Disease, Marine Ick and Marine Velvet, are all terms that strike fear into the hearts of even the most dedicated marine hobbyists. Unfortunately, the problem of disease in one’s fish occurs in the tanks of both experienced and new hobbyists. Fortunately over the past couple of years better methods for managing disease have been developed, even for fish in a reef tank. In addition to the methods described there have been other methods developed as well, but I will not comment on these since I have not tried them.
Before continuing I would like to stress that preventing diseases is far easier than treating them, particularly in a reef tank. For this reason, I strongly urge everyone to set up a small inexpensive quarantine tank. If you don’t quarantine your fish you are gambling every time that you add a new fish that you won’t run into the problems described below.
Even when all of the precautions and quarantine procedures are followed to limit the introduction of disease into a tank, some fish will eventually become sick. In terms of diseases the 2 most common are Marine Velvet (Amyloodinium ocellatum) often called oodinium, and Marine Ick (Cryptocaryon irritans). Marine Velvet is caused by a dinoflagellate, a type of algae, while ick is caused by a ciliated protozoan. Both of these diseases can be fatal if left untreated, however Amyloodinium infestations are usually more virulent and may even wipe out an entire tank.
Marine velvet appears as very tiny white dots (.02-1mm. in size) on the fish’s skin. The initial outbreak will usually go unnoticed as only a few of the parasites present on the skin make it hard to see. However, after a few days, these parasites will drop off the fish as cysts and go into a reproductive stage. During this 3 day period the cyst will divide so that when it ruptures it will release over 250 new pathogens called tomites. These free swimming parasites will then spend the next 2 days looking for a new host, if one is not found they will die. Unfortunately in a closed environment like an aquarium, a host is readily available. At this point the fish will appear to be covered with a very fine white dusting which resembles velvet. The fish will appear to be gasping for breath. This is the result of the parasite attacking the gill tissue which eventually lead sto respiratory arrest and death.
The cure requires removing the infected fish to a separate aquarium for treatment. This is necessary as the treatment requires the use of copper sulfate. This compound is not only toxic to the pathogen, but it is toxic to virtually all of the organisms present on the live rock as well as the animals in the gravel bed. Therefore it can not be used in the display aquarium unless there is no live rock, live sand or other invertebrates present. Due to how debilitating Amyloodinium is most of the fish infected will be too sick to put up much of a fight for removal. Unfortunately, once they reach this state it is also often too late to save them.
If the fish can not be removed it is probably destined to perish and it may infect the other fish in the tank as well. Because live rock makes capturing fish difficult, some strategies have been devised to capture a fish from tanks containing live rock. First, rather than chasing a fish with a net, large plastic tubes can be employed. Empty plastic soda bottles that have been thoroughly washed and have their bottoms cut off are a good choice. The infected fish can be directed to swim into this chamber as it lies on its side, after which it is quickly lifted out with the fish inside. To camouflage the bottle it may be necessary to put substrate on the bottom of it and place live rock around the entrance.
Failing this, it may be necessary to watch where the fish rests at night and then either lift out this piece of live rock with the fish still in it, or shine a bright flashlight on the fish to stun it and then scoop it out. If all of this fails, the last alternative is to get a large net a scoop out the fish as it feeds at the top of the tank. To do this it may be necessary to get the fish used to getting food at the middle front of the tank, while you are leaning over the tank.
Once the fish has been captured it should be acclimated to the water in the quarantine tank and then treated with copper sulfate (.8-1mg./L). The level of copper should be checked daily with a copper test kit, and the copper level adjusted accordingly to maintain the desired level. The fish should be treated for at least 2 weeks and preferably 3 to reduce the risk of re-infection. Unfortunately some fish such as Mandarins, Butterflies and Clownfish do not tolerate copper very well, it may be necessary to treat these fish at lowered doses for a longer period of time.
After the fish has been removed some steps need to be taken to reduce the presence of the disease in the tank. These steps may also need to be taken should any of the other infectious diseases occur. First, the salinity will need to be dropped to at least 1.018 and preferably 1.016 for at least 3 weeks. This should be done over 3-4 days so as to not over stress the fish.
This drop in salinity will usually be tolerated by all of the fish as well as most of the inhabitants of the live rock, but not the corals or other invertebrates. For this reason, these animals will need to be removed to a separate tank during this treatment.
Once the salinity has been lowered, ammonia testing should begin to make sure that an excessive number of the bacteria in the biological filter have not been killed off. This lowering of salinity will reduce the amount of work that the fish will need to do to remove excess salt from their bodies. This will enable them to better fight any parasites.
Once the salinity has been reduced, the substrate should be removed and given a 2 week freshwater dip. This will remove any cysts that are resting in the substrate as well as reduce resting sites for any left in the tank. To further reduce these pathogens a UV sterilizer or ozone may be used to reduce any free-swimming pathogens. All of this will greatly reduce the likelihood of the entire tank becoming infected. These steps may only need to be undertaken should several fish show signs of being infected.
A disease which looks similar to marine velvet, but which fortunately is less infectious and less virulent is marine ick (Cryptocaryon irritans). As with velvet the fish looks irritated and is constantly trying to scratch itself. The parasite is easier to see at the early stages as it is the size of a pin head and appears as grains of salt on the fish’s body. As with velvet the method of treatment is to remove the fish to the quarantine tank and treat with copper sulfate. However, since these fish are normally not as sick as those infected with velvet they may be more difficult to remove. Fortunately lowering the salinity as described above and doing more frequent water changes and feeding medicated foods along with vitamin supplements may be enough to limit problems from this pathogen as long as the fish are not stressed and no new fish are added.
Several types of fish are very prone to these diseases, in particular Tangs and Angelfish. This is due to these fish having only a thin layer of body mucous, which is easily removed during the rigors of shipping and handling.
In addition to the copper method of treatment I have tried several other methods for treating infected fish that are probably not in the main stream. These methods have produced varying degrees of success and if nothing else produce a lot of discussion.
The first method consisted of hanging a small white terry cloth towel in the tank. The idea being that the parasites would be attracted to the brightly colored towel and once on it would become enmeshed in the towel’s fibers. The towel was removed twice per day and soaked in freshwater. Using this method the ick I was treating never worsened in the tank however it was never totally eradicated and lingered as small outbreaks for a long time.
A completely different approach produced a similar result. In this method the salinity was lowered down to 1.017. While this lowered salinity tended to reduce the disease outbreak dramatically at first, the result was similar to that seen above in that the disease lingered. This was probably because the salinity was not low enough. In a reef tank I have found that a salinity of 1.017-1.018 is about as low as many corals or invertebrates will tolerate and some can’t even take it this low. Therefore I continued my search for disease treatment methods that would work in a reef tank.
The next method I tried was to use a quinine derived compound. Not only did this method not kill either the ick or Oodinium, but it also resulted in the death of many of the corals as well. On the first dose there did not seem to be any negative impact of this treatment on the invertebrates. However, after the second and third treatments all of the mushroom anemones, Xenias, SPS corals and star polyps either began to shrink, or they retracted their polyps. Also, all of the large polyped stony corals refused to come out of their skeletons. Then on the fourth day after treatment all of these corals with the exception of the mushroom anemones died. In addition, the condition of the fish in the tank worsened as well. The only animals unaffected were the Leather corals and the Sinularia. Because of this experience I would strongly advise against using any quinine based product in a reef tank.
On a more positive note, I have come across a method for treating these maladies that has not only worked in my tanks, but in several others as well. This method, developed and tested by Kelly Jedlicki entails soaking dried food in garlic oil and then feeding the food to the infected fish. Once enough garlic oil has been ingested, it accumulates in the fish’s skin. At which point the parasites will no longer attach to the skin. This method was derived from Kelly’s finding that horses and dogs fed garlic oil were no longer bothered by flies or mosquitoes.
I have used freeze dried plankton, krill, gammarus, blood worms and mosquito larvae as a carrier and have had this method cure ick in about 80% of the cases that I have treated. These fish were all in reef tanks, and once they were cured they were kept parasite free by simply giving the treated food once per month.
The process itself is simple in that all you need to do is place the food in garlic oil, which can be purchased at WalMart or health food stores, and allow the food to soak in the oil for an hour. After this the food is fed to the tank containing the infected fish. This needs to be done daily for a week and then weekly until all of the fish are cured. The only drawbacks are that this stuff smells terrible and only fish that are eating will be able to be treated. Also your skimmer and any probes will become coated with he oil.
I have now used this method in 2 of my tanks and in 3 other tanks, all containing newly purchased Blue Hippo Tangs, and it has worked in every instance. Because of this I am now able to place Blue Tangs in the tanks I help set up without fearing that the tangs will die from ick and then infect the other fish as well.
Despite my success I still prefer to prevent disease than to have to treat it. Even though the garlic oil seems to be the ticket, particularly for ick, these diseases are still obstacles in the path to success and better remedies still need to be found.
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Garlic-Infused Live Brine Shrimp:
-Take some live brine shrimp and rinse them out with freshwater (You'll allways want to do this, as Brinies often carry parasites).
-Disgard the old freshwater and place the brinies a a small amount of new freshwater (i.e. 1 OZ of brine shrimp to a few teaspoons of water).
-Add a healthy portion of water-soluble garlic extract in with the shrimp (I'm not a scientist, so I don't know how much I add... usually about 1/6 the water volume)
-Let the shrimp soak in their freshwater-garlic solution for a while (I've let them sit for over 1/2 hr. with no apparent ill effects... don't know how long they'll last?)
-Feed the shrimp to your fish in small increments (i.e. ensure that your fish eat the shrimp, before they've shed the garlic)
-Watch the ich fall off and stay off
I usually feed my fish this recipe whenever I add a new fish to one of my tanks, or whenever there's been a major disruption (i.e. power outage)
F&C
You listed the website from which this article came from. The website you mentioned cannot be posted at SWF.com because of the competitor policy of this site, so that is all that I edited...the website name.
[ June 09, 2001: Message edited by: Beth ]
