isn't it true that ick can come anytime,if a fish is stressed or for whatever reason

[3bavboys]

ick gets generated even after a fish has been qt'd for 2 weeks ?

 

[92protruck]

That is the great debate! I myself don't understand why there is so little agreement among experts on what appears to be a fairly simple and most popular parasite! Most experts would say your statement is false. The bug has a life cycle of approx. 2 weeks. If the tank is free of ick (brand new or left fallow for a month) and the fish are free of ich (hypo or copper treatment), it cannot just get "generated" because of a stress event. Stress can not cause ich to be born. Others say that your tank and fish are never free of ich, that it is always present in the water or fish in some small amount and that if your fish are healthy their immune system keeps the ich in check. A stress event may then cause the immune system to weaken and the ich to spread. The first group would say it is not possible to always be there, you would see it on the fish at some point and that a strain will die out in one year on its own.

 

[tim_12]

Ick cant just appear out of nowhere. It has to be present in your system for an outbreak to occur. IMO, if its in your system, you fish will be able to fight it off in which case it will die off, or you'll see it on your fish within a few weeks. The fish cant exactly swim away from the parasite once it leaves them. Ick will just keep reproducing until theres so much of it in your tank that it will kill your fish. The only way to avoid it is to quarantine for at least 2 weeks then treat it appropriatly if you see it.

 

[sinner's girl]

I've heard both ways, on here mainly that it's not always there, qt and you'll be fine. but everywhere else that ich is always there and comes out when a fish is stressed. How else could a tank/pond get ich when no new fish have been added? I've never had ich (knock on wood), but I know my mom's fish pond and the other ponds have, and ich would appear when fish hadn't been added in a long time.

 

[sharkbait9]

“ick” is a parasite. Any fish can be a host and NOT BE effected. Even after time in quarantine tank and the HOST gets “cleared” to be placed in general population the parasite can drop from the host and becomes the “free floating parasite” thus corrupting your tank. If you were to take new fish and place it in a QT tank and do a copper or hypo salinity Qt then yeah you would be killing or ridding the “host” of the parasite. From what I hear most people will place a newly aquired fish in a Qt for a week or so to monitor the fish’s health and signs of an “ick attack” The “you can never get rid of ick theory” is/was old school thinking. If you had and out break of “ick” One could remove all fish “host” or “meal ticket” turn the heat up and let the parasite go thru it’s cycle and starve. After two to three weeks of not having a host or meal, the parasite would die. You can not see the parasite on a host until it actually started to “corrupt” its host, seeing the tiny “sugar” “salt” looking parasite. A reason cleaner shrimp/fish attach or clean other fish other then just routine cleaning is a parasite is attached to a fish but not able to break thru the “slime/stress coat” but the fish can feel an “itch” and goes to the local fish wash to get rid of the itch.

 

[promisetbg]

Ich does'nt want to really kill it's host..that would be self defeating. It is sometimes present in our tanks and just goes unnoticed. It can be introduced on anything..even corals, if they were in a system that also had ich. There are different stages to it's life, including one where it stays on surfaces such as rock or substrate. You could theoretically wipe it out..keeping the tank fallow,hypo-ing all the fish..and then never adding another thing to the tank...no new corals,inverts...etc. Ich outbreaks happen when fish become stressed and loses their slime coat.

 

[clown52]

OK
So it sounds like ich will break out on a fish once it gets stressed if the fish or another in the tank already had it present.
The best way to protect yourself from this it seems is to QT all new fish and to treat them for ich even if you do not see visable signs. Would this be correct?
Thanks

 

[saltn00b]

thats pretty much right clown, but i have read instances of the parasite being introduced into a clean system after adding nothing but LS / LR / Coral. these things may contain the parasite in one of its life cycle stages, and if conditions are right, propagate. however this is rare, and if the fish are not stressed, happy and healthy, then a little bif of it would simply die off.

 

[sleasia]

Is it then plausible to rid the main tank of ich by removing all the fish and letting the tank go for 1 month or so with no fish in it? I've heard that if there are no fish in the tank it breaks the cycle of ich and it dies out. True? not true? Then from there if you qt everyone for a month, there should be no ich introduced again?

 

[clown52]

That sounds like it may work, but when you take out the fish you would need to go ahead and treat them for ich while in the QT even if you don't have any visable signs of Ich. Just in case one of them is acting as a host.

 

[saltn00b]

yes, other things you may want to do is raise the temperature to about 80 degress. this will shorten the life cycle of the parasite to about 3 weeks. however always wait 4 weeks, never be hasty. you can also (slowly) lower the salinity to 1.018. this does not affect the fish and its about borderline low for inverts and LR. i would not reccommend that for reef systems however. most people contain vast amounts of cavernous LR. this makes it near impossible to catch certain species of fish. you will end up making the water quality very bad and stress the fish out even more. once its in your display, your best bet is to catch what fish you can easily and put them in QT, where you can do Hypo. then apply an ich additive to your display such as kick-ick, ick-attack etc. and hope for the best. remove carbon and perform a large water change when done. avoid copper like the plague!

 

[lion_crazz]

To answer the original question, ich can still show up if you only QT for 2 weeks because this is not a long enough QT. However, if you QT for 3 to 4, you have a much better chance of keeping an ich free tank. Ich needs to be brought into yoru tank for your fish to come down with it. If you QT and hypo all of your fish, the chances of you getting ich in your main tank is extremely slim to none. I say slim because anything can happen, but general speaking, hypo and QTing all of your fish is the best way to ensure an ich free display tank. Picking healthy specimens is a very good way as well. If you watch a fish eat the the LFS, your chances of that fish being healthy and disease-free are much better than if you don't watch it eat before you take it home.
Raising your temperature to 80 degrees will not really do anything as far as ich. To speed up the life cycle of ich, the temp has to go to about 85 or 86 degrees at least. This is not very healthy for fish. Furthermore, it is best to avoid fluctuating your water temp and salinity when possible. This only further stressed the fish.
Next, lowering the salinity to 1.018 is not a good idea either. This too will not really kill ich, and will have a drastic effect on your inverts, and eventually on your fish as well. This is way too low for inverts. Usually, 1.021 is too low for inverts. 1.018 is very bad for them. Fish that are kept at lower than natural salinities also live a shorter life as well. This has been proven.
Also, if you cannot catch all the fish in your tank and you have a bad outbreak of ich that you need to get rid of, QTing some of them will not do the trick. You need to get all of them out and QT all of them, or else you will not rid the display tank of the parasite. In ridding the display tank of ich, you need to hypo all fish that the parasite could possibly live off of, and then let your display run fallow for 4 to 6 weeks. QTing the ones you can catch and medicating the others with a reef safe med like Kick Ich is pointless. It is a lot of work for nothing if you ask me. If you are just going to do that, you might as well leave all the fish in the tank. Using a product like Kick Ich does not guarantee that ich is going to be killed.
I do agree to avoid copper though.

 

[murph]

Its not likely that the parasite is fully understood by science or even identified and given scientific names in all its forms. Healthy fish can ward off the parasite. I have seen many tanks where one stressed specimen has succumb to the parasite and the other established fish not even show the first sign of infection.

 

[maeistero]

:notsure: here's a doozy of a question,
i aquired a fish a couple months ago that had ich. i've had him quarantined with only lsand and i thought he kicked it (the ich) as he was getting really lively and looked healthy enough for a bigger tank. then he randomly died yesterday. so now i'm wondering if the entire tank is contaminated? that tank has started a new cycle (hopefully mini) and also will that kill all of the ich?
this whole thing deserves a doctorate thesis

 

[lion_crazz]

Well, when you QTed the fish, did you hypo him for 3 weeks?

 

[saltn00b]

i apologize for 'wrong' info. the 80degrees / 1.018 sal is what i was told to do during my last outbreak a year ago. i was able to save most of my fish except for 2.
as far as taking some fish out, i was just speculating worst case scenario, because you can probably save any you get by placing them in the qt and doing hypo...possibly keeping them alive until your tank is clean... but yea those display additives generally do suck. i have seen some work with some fish and not others, some kill inverts even when they say they dont, and i think they really should be a last line of defense.
so lion are you suggesting that everytime you get a new fish and QT him for 4 weeks you always do hypo to it as well ? i have just been QTing in a normal parameter tank and keeping an eye out for any outbreaks, at which point i would begin the hypo process (have not had to yet), and keep them in there for an extended period of time (4 weeks from the 1st sighting)

 

[clown52]

Is there anything wrong with useing copper in a QT tank if there are no inverts? Would it hurt LR?
Thanks

 

[saltn00b]

yes copper will kill the LR as well. you shouldnt have any LR in the QT anyway.
the thing with copper is that a) it does not necassarily kill the ich off
b) it wreaks havoc on the fish, possibly weakening it further and killing it. think of it like radiology cancer treatment.
c) once its in the tank you can basically never get it out, and you can never safely house inverts or LR in that tank ever again.

 

[ryand5]

ok but i got a question, if you have a new tank let it cycle and stuff if the LR or LS has is during the cycle would it die or would it be able to feed off of the cycle, because whats the point of QT the fish if the tank natually has it

 

[saltn00b]

i dont really understand your question. you can use LR to cycle a new QT tank. it is just not reccommended to keep in there once cycled. without fish, the ich parasite will die.
hope that answers your question. you may want to proof read your posts before htting the button