Resistant Ick? 3rd times the charm???

[saltandpepper]

Hello everyone!
I had a nice long letter typed up instead of this explaining my situation better but then the computer froze and I lost it so here goes the "short" of it!

After eight months of the same strand of marine ****** and two separate six week rounds of hypo, I am now about two months into a 3rd hypo salinity treatment that started off with the first three weeks being combined with the use of Kick Ick which initially made a visible improvement to the condition of my fish. I have not lost a fish yet thank God, but now I am about too if things don't change for my regal tang.
All of my fish look great except for my regal tang. I have some "ick" magnets too I.E. powder blue tang, porcupine puffer, and of course the regal.
During this round of hypo salinity there has been periodic spotting on the regal and no other fish. The spots seem to eventually vanish or "burst" within two days or so. The regal has recently taken a turn for the worse now and he no longer comes out from behind the rocks to eat and his respiratory rates are extremely high.
He has not eaten in about a week or more but he was kinda of fat so he had some meat on him. I can't tell if the visible spots of ****** (they look inactive and busted open) are the problem or the prolonged hypo is getting to him. The reason for the prolonged hypo is that the last two six week rounds did not do it and the U.S. fish and game research suggest that ****** can remain dormant up to 90 days so this was my reasoning in doing this for about 8-10 weeks if not longer. The other fish appear great, feeding actively and their color is great with normal behavior. I am wondering if I should start to bring this back out of hypo, but with the spots still on the regal I am a bit concerned and do not know which way to go. I am starting to believe Titan on the mutated ****** but I understand that others verified that this is a true possibility as well. Oh yeah, I won't use copper of course because of the puffer, but my DT is a Fowler setup so I don't have any inverts, etc. in it.
I have in the past used hypo salinity twice to rid ****** from some of my tanks so I know it can work. I use a refractometer that I got from Saltwaterfish.com and a less accurate Instant Ocean hydrometer as an extra check point. They always both read the exact same values and I do my hypo at 1.007-1.008 to make sure I am at least at 1.009 or below. Any help or suggestions would be great! Thanks for you time as well!

 

[usirchchris]

Sounds like you know what you are doing if you have had previous success. No special tips...Good luck

. Just keep at it...law of averages has to pan out sometime.

 

[gwhunter]

I've been having the same prolonged fight with ick on a powder blue tang. I tried hypo but wasn't having any sucess I decided to use copper since I've had 100% sucess in the past with copper. I had every intention of eliminating the ick from my system then removing the copper. Well, as noted in another thread I started here, this ****** seems almost un effected by the hypo or copper. I've now raised the copper levels higher than the manufacture recommends on input from folks here. The ick seems to be gone but time will tell. I had no issues with ick before adding the PBT. I did QT him before adding into my DT but with this strain of ick I'm just at a loss. I haven't lost any fish and everyones doing great but I'm waiting to add LR and corals into the dt and this is really hindering my progress. I'm going to combine several tanks together as soon as the ick is gone. I've got a pair of cleaner shrimp I'm hoping will help since the tangs seem to be so problematic. I'm starting to think that longer qt and proactive meds and dips is the only way to go. I'm lucky in that I don't plan on adding any more fish so after I'm past this ick I should be good. It almost seems as if this Ick has devolped a strong resistance to both hypo and copper.
Matt

 

[beth]

Don't drop the specific gravity below 1.009. Anything below this, can be unsafe for fish. What is your pH?
Are you sure that what you are seeing is ich?
Are you treating in a quarantine tank?

 

[saltandpepper]

Hi Beth,
I see your point on the lower S/G being a danger. I am thinking at this point of slowly bring it back out of hypo.
Just a minute ago I got a good look at the regal again and the spots no longer look like regular ****** anymore. They look like larger wart-ish looking spots but I though that maybe it was b/c of the lower S/G, but maybe not? It could be something else now I suppose but nothing has been added to the tank in the past six months and the ****** was the only problem before.
Oh yeah, I am not using my QT tank. Since my tank is completely stocked and the QT is only 30 gallons I took all the live rock and what little inverts I had and moved them to the 30 gallon tank so the DT has been used as a hospital/QT tank. P.H. is apporx. 8.2-8.3.
The thing I find amazing is that I have an emperor angelfish, powder blue tang, porcupine puffer, and an orange spined unicorn fish and non of them are infested at this time and have not been for over a month or more. It's just the regal tang. I think I will begin to raise the S/G in the morning b/c it isn't getting better for the poor regal right now at the hypo level and I have to try something else. This is frustrating!

Thanks again everyone for your help and encouragement! I have fought a good fight either way and I won't give up but I really can't say what the final outcome will be...I hope good but it isn't looking that way right now!

 

[beth]

It sounds like lymphocyctis, not ich.
Check out the Diseased Fish Thread, top of this forum.

 

[gwhunter]

Beth, I mean no disrespect when I say this. But why do you doubt it's ick? Lympho really doesn't look like ick. Maybe in the beginning but not over the course of a few weeks? The owner of my lfs runs his sg really low all the time as do the wholesalers he buys from. He still will have issues with ick. He has told me about these resistant strains of ick. I've also read plenty of account of these strains eleswhere . It's simple evolution, maybe we need to find a new way to treat this parasite. I clearly get that you don't like copper as treatment for ick. Your opinion is also well founded, copper does have it's downsides. But if one follows the guidelines and good practices ie Qt all fish for 6 weeks treating any issues that arrive in qt and buying from quality dist.
What more can we do? This website is really helpful and you seem to be reguarded as the resident diease expert but it's frustrating to share experiances here and solicite advise to have it dismisses as improper diagnosis and treatment.
Matt

 

[beth]

Originally Posted by GWhunter
http:///forum/post/3150611
Beth, I mean no disrespect when I say this. But why do you doubt it's ick? Lympho really doesn't look like ick. Maybe in the beginning but not over the course of a few weeks?
Salt has treated for ich using hyposalinity 3 times over the past several months. All fish are fine except one tang, who has spots that "look like larger wart-ish looking spots".
A clear photo will be very helpful to resolve the issue, but we don't have that and all we have to go on is the details provided by Salt about what he sees, and what has been done.
When trying to give hobbyists advise on forums, there is a lot of guesswork involved based on the various info that we have. The more information we have, the better the chances to get a good diagnoses. Larger wart like blemishes that does not respond to good conventional treatment usually means lymphocyctis.
Usually the problems hobbyists have with fish diseases is a lot simpler then they think; like errors in treatment or even diagnosis, rather than "resistant ich". Ich can certainly become resistant, especially if treatment has not been appropriately administered and the same treatment is used over and over.
Salt will need to look at what we have available and assess if it is lympho or not.

 

[oceandude]

Originally Posted by Saltandpepper
http:///forum/post/3150485
..................... I have fought a good fight either way and I won't give up but I really can't say what the final outcome will be...I hope good but it isn't looking that way right now!

Hey "salt", hope it goes well for you, sorry to hear this.

 

[saltandpepper]

Hello everyone!
Thanks to all of you for your advice and suggestions. I should have tried to get a picture of the regal tang up on here and I was in the process of doing so, but sadly the regal is no longer with me. He died two days ago and I just now found my way back to here.

I know for sure that early on in the process I was battling marine ******, but like Beth suggested it could have become an entirely different issue/disease all together with this last illness. Beth I will take a look at the disease list and let you guys know which one I think it may have been. I don't want to confuse anyone else that may have a similar problem.
I saw the demise of the regal tang a mile away and I tried everything to rectify it with no success. The other fish still look great and act natural so I am hoping that non of them face the same problem and that it has been isolated to the one fish. I am now out of hypo salinity with no signs of "ick" but it is early at only two days in and I don't want to get my hopes up. As an extra precautionary tool I am treating the tank with a anti-protozoan medication for the coming weak since I can not use copper due to my puffer fish, plus I am not a big fan of copper to be honest anyways. I will not re-stock that fish b/c I want to maintain the numbers at below capacity levels for water quality issues, etc.
On a side note, I have been using two different U.V. sterilizer units on this tank simultaneously and one is an expensive 25 watt Current gamma and the other a 9 watt model. I am still amazed at the struggles I have faced over the past eight months considering the combination of medicines and hypo salinity. This last round with the regal may have been something else, the rest were undeniably marine "ick" ****** and the tangs had it written all over them, but I am one who use to think that fighting marine "Ick" was generally easy...I won't make that assumption or mistake ever again after all of this!

Got to QT the fish and the live rock!

My original contamination came in from some quarantined live rock! Stupid me!

 

[saltandpepper]

I looked over the various pictures of fish diseases and I would still have to say that it was likely ******.
I described the spots as wart-ish like, and they were indeed, but they were still more so like ****** than anything else I could find.
When the spots showed back up under hypo salinic conditions they were somewhat fuzzy and more "fat" than the standard "ick" of old that I was seeing at regular S/G. These spots over the course of a week or so then became more wart-ish like but they still maintained a darker white color and were concentrated around the fish's body and head rather than his fins which may be of little importance. When I removed the dead regal on Saturday the spots had disappeared but the areas where they had been was "pitted" and the skin was damaged where the parasite had previously been attached.
The biggest factor that may have killed the regal tang was likely him not eating for two weeks b/c he got so "weak" that he would just lay in the rocks all day and night and never come out to eat and his coloration was very washed out too. I tried to pretty much hand feed him but he would not take in any food. I had this fish for at least six months so this really stinks!

Thanks again everyone and I hope you NEVER have to deal with ****** like I have the past eight months!

GOOD LUCK!