Its back. Dam ick.

[claymore66]

I have a 65 Gal. reef tank and had a ick break out. I cured it and it is back. I noticed it on my purple tang when I got home from work tonight. I know there is a lot of people that say garlic will work and hypoing the tank. I have done all this,but is there a way to kill this crap once and for all. I have a U.V. sterilezer and feed the fish garlic and have even tryed the reef safe meds, and it will not go away. Will water changes help? Right now I change about 25% every month. Is this to little or to much. What am I doing wrong? please help.

 

[claymore66]

I have a regal tang,purple tang, flame hawk,cleaner wrasse,and scotts fairy wrasse. As far as corals,3 brains,and a few frags.As far as inverts,snails,and crabs,two starfish and cucumber. As far as hypoing I took out all the corals and inverts and rock and sand.used a pin point monitor to drop the salinity. Changed the water with r/o water from my r/o filter.I droped it down to 1.09 and left it there for about 2 weeks after I saw no sighs of spots on fish.Brought the salinity back up and put every thing back. I started seeing a few spots starting to show on the regal and started to add no ick. It helped and that was a few days ago. Like I said I came home last night and the purple is ate up with it. I added some more no ick and checked him a few minutes ago, He looks a little better. I just feed them and as usual They were pigs. Man I am tired of fighting this crap. It was a pain in the but to hypo and I dont want to try it again, I think it was pretty hard on the little guys to. If you have any suggestions on how to beat this crap and keeping it beat other than what if have tryed please let me know thanks.

 

[jdl/dayton]

Way to fast on the Hypo. Don't be impatient about bringing it back up. Leave it in Hypo for at least 2 weeks after your last sighting of ICH. So long as your fish are not showing signs of stress I would let it go even longer. Could not hurt!!
About your UV. How many watts is it? What is the flow rate going through it? How old is the bulb?
If the bulb is older than 6 months (constant use) I would replace it. Make sure the flow is appropriate for the wattage. Too much flow and parasites will not be killed.

 

[claymore66]

hay jdi, as far as my u.v. It is brand new.hooked it up about a week ago.I guess I am going to have to set up a temp tank again for all the corals and inverts a put it in hypo again and leave it there. Question, how long should I leave it there after the spots are gone? Thanks for the advise and help

 

[beth]

You didn't mention LR, do you have it? Isn't it easier to put the fish in a hospital tank than to remove everything from the tank? Do you have a DSB?
Ed, she's using pinpoint to test salinity...which, as you know, I'm not exactly happy with at the moment. In fact, I'm likely going to return it this weekend.
The specific gravity is lowered to 1.009, I'm assuming that that is what you meant, right? You must, must, must leave the fish in the hyposaline treatment for at least 3 weeks AFTER all signs of the parasite have disappeared from your fish. Frankly, I’d leave them for 4 wks…. Following this, you gradually increase the specific gravity to within normal parameters over the course of 4-5 days.
I can’t imagine how you removed your sand wo stressing the gills off your fish! If you are going to leave your fish in the tank for the procedure, then I’d leave the sand in tank. Hyposalinity will no adversely effect the nitrifying/denitrifying bacteria of your sandbed, but, if you have a DSB, then those organisms [worms, mirco crustaceans, etc.] will likely be adversely effected by the treatment.
Since you removed all of the coral, etc., what was left in the tank besides the fish?

 

[ocellaris_keeper]

ick can survive in it's gestation state for up to 60 days. your tank must be treated constantly for the desease to finally be irradicated.

 

[claymore66]

Hay Beth: Can you just put the fish in a hypo tank and not your display tank. I thought you had to hypo your display tank to cure it. It sure would be less of a pain to just put the fish in my spare tank than takeing everything out of it. The last time I did it I put all the live sand and rock in a rubber maid . I put my fish and my corals in my spare before doing this. after everything was out I put the fish back in and hypoed my display. Do I have to do all this again or can I just put the fish in my spare and hypo it? It sure would save me a lot time and hard work. If you can, could you let me know a step by step on how to just hypo my spare. Thanks for any info. The only fish that are showing sighs are my purple tang and my yellow butterfly. I am surprized my regal tang is not showing. Can I just put them in or is it a good idea to put all of them in. I sure would like to see six fish in a 20 gal tank. I would like to see the amonia and nitrites in there.

 

[jdl/dayton]

No you do not have to Hypo your display tank. To break the cycle of ICH you need to keep the host (Fish) and parasites separate.
If you can not hypo your tank due to LR or Reef set ups you need to remove ALL fish from the tank for at least 60 days. The ich can remain dormant for a very long time. Eventually they will starve given enough time without a host. Getting impatient and adding a fish back to the tank too soon could mean you will have to go through an ich outbreak all over again.
Once you break the cycle in your display tank I would make sure to use a Q/T tank for every new fish to avoid future problems.

 

[doubledown]

I have a year old tank and recently got ick as well and have lost 3 fish in the last 10 days
I have been doing the garlic and lowered the salinity to 1.018 but have a lot of corals and with a 140 gallon tank a lot of live rock and cant get the fish out until they die. I bought an Ozonizer and that seems to have accelerated the death of the fish or maybe just coincidence. I need advice, I dont want anymore fish to die.
Thanks!

 

[doubledown]

Hi Ed,
My brain coral was looking a little ragged so that makes sense.. I'll get the salinity up. I am dosing the ozonizer through my protein skimmer and have the controller and probe. It is reading about 310 and started at 160 2 weeks ago. Will that help with the ick problem?
I assume the best thing to do is get my fish out ..am I right and what is the easiet way to do that with over 200 pounds of live rock that they hide in?

 

[doubledown]

Hi,
Is anyone else out there that can help me?
Please see my last post.
Thanks!

 

[doubledown]

I have a 140 gallon dutch aquarium with the built in protein skimmer and that passed the water through a carbon pad before it comes out. I noticed once I hooked up the ozone that the bubbles in my protein skimmer wouldn;t get to the top of the cup. in otherwords it seems the ozone decreased the efficiency of my protein skimmer. Does ozone really help with ick and was it a good investment?

 

[doubledown]

I do have a 10 gallon quarantine tank and plan on draining my tank enough tonight that I can get the fish out. I assume that is what I need to do to treat my Ick problem?
I have a sailfin tang, 3 damsels, 2 perculas, and 2 goby's.
Is that too many to put in a 10 gallon quarantine? I can buy a larger one? Should I do copper or hypo?
Also, since I lowered the salinty to 1.018 in my display tank my brain coral is infected in about 25%.. will it regenerate that tissue after I get the salinty back up?
As far as the protein skimmer .. arn't the bubbles supposed to hit the top of the collection cup? After I hooked up the ozone it seems like the air flow decreased and the bubbles dropped about 3 inches and I am not getting the gunk collected in the skimmer?
Thanks for all your help!!

 

[ddaddy]

I keep having troubles with ich on my PBT also. He's the only fish of mine in a 75 gallon fish only tank. I have treated him in almost every way I can imagine and he still gets ich. The parasite never gets out of control and seriously jeopardizes his health but yet it always comes and goes. I'm beginning to think it's chronic. Right now he's in quarantine w/ copper (cupramine) and I plan on having him in there for two weeks like I always do. The display tank is currently uninhabited and I threw in a triple dose of No-Ich. I know that No-Ich is pretty useless as a parasite treatment on fish, but I figured since it's harmless once filtered out I could use it to make sure the ich is killed in the tank. Now the question is will it finally work? Is there anything else I can do? I was planning on putting the tang back after 4 weeks in copper treatment. Should that do the trick?