Ich or not ich?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Drzy

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Aug 26, 2005
Messages
31
Location
San Antonio, TX
Hi all. I'm hoping someone might know what's wrong with a friend's tank. We originally thought it was ich, but now it seems like it may be something else.

It may have started after the purchase of a bunch of live rock from a LFS, taken from various tanks in the store. Not long after, little salt grain-sized white specks started appearing on the fish. The fishies would scratch themselves along the rock, showing all the classic signs of ich. And thus, the ich treatment began:

The fish were moved to a quarantine tank, leaving behind a choc. chip starfish, two snails, two crabs, and the live rock. The QT tank was given hyposalininity treatment for 7 weeks. After this time, no ich was visible in either the main tank or in the quarantine tank on the fishies.

Within 3 days of moving the QT'ed fish bank to the main tank, the white specks are now starting to reappear. It seems like the ich should have died out with the hyposalinity treatment. Does this sound like the ich have hung around, or could this be something else? Any ideas?

:?
 
It very well may be, hard to tell without a pic.

I had the same problem a year or so ago and it was very frustrating.
How were you measuring your SPG? With a swing arm hydrometer, or a refractometer? The refractometer is much more accurate, the swing arms are notoriously inaccurate and you SPG may not have been low enough.
A longer fallow time for the main may be in order. Seems that 6, 7 even 8 weeks is not always long enough.
 
Sounds like ich to me, sorry to here that. It can be frustrating as quarrtshark said. I also had success with garlic extreme as a treatment in addition to a food suplement.
 
If you are not very specific about you salinity or measure it accurately and it rises a little the hypo will not be successful. It will only "stun" the ich
 
Thanks for the replies!

He is using a refractometer, calibrated with distilled water. Salinity in the QT tank was kept at 1.009, and he said it may have gotten up to 1.010 but doubtful it went much higher.

The ich (assuming that's what it is) didn't reappear except for on the butterfly fish, when it was placed in the main tank. I suppose that means the ich is only in the main tank. Could it have survived in the main that long? Is it possible it was hosting on one of the animals in there (starfish, hermit crabs, snails)? We're not sure how it would have survived without any hosts, we thought it was like a parasite and couldn't survive without fish.
 
ich can survive up to a max of 8 weeks without a host. It can not survive without fish. Starfish, crabs etc do not host it.
 
I have never heard of it hostin on inverts. Before you pull everything back out I would try the garlic extreme. Soak all food in it per directions. Assume butterfly eats nori/seaweed.

Also, treat the main with it. I think it is 1 drop per 10gallons (check directions). This along with a cleaner shrimp cleaned up my PBT and has kept it out.

Now if all the fish start to present syptoms again then resume other treatments again. If you follow the directiosn the garlic is harmless to other occupants and may save your friend a lot of trouble.

Good Luck,
 
I had it survive in my main after a 12 week fallow time. I had to treat my main with hypo to get rid of it for good. Struggled with it for almost a year.
Ich can ride in on inverts if they come from an infected tank. My tank contracted ich after purchasing some live sand on ebay.
 
The Heck with Hypo why didn't you treat with copper while you had them in QT. Main tank fallow QT copper treatment at around .17 for 3-4 weeks. I don't trust the hypo method with ich. There are to many ways for the parasite to beat it when you get a false reading of SG.
 
From what is explained above, it appears that the problem is in the main. I would say the fallow time was not long enough. Curing the fish is the easy part.
 
Before anything else, you might want to (a) learn more about the stages of c. irritans, (b) ambiant temperature-calibrate your refractometer, (c) DO NOT USE COPPER, (d) re-do your hypo, and (e) see if you can donate your inverts to the LFS.

Garlic doesn't treat ich. It's not even considered a part of a treatment. It is fallacy to assume that the blood-sucking ich are vampires who will die at the presence of garlic. There are no empirical scientific evidence that the parasite is affected by garlic.

Garlic may help boost the immune system of the host fish; thereby making the host resilliant to other secondary health problems caused by ich. But that will do nothing to the water itself.

Copper is a dangerous remedy to deal with because it is not easy to remove traces of copper in a tank. In case later on you start to gain interest in anemone, corals, and such Copper is a bad idea.

There are stages of c. irritans that can react to certain treatments and won't react to others.

I had a bad case of c.irritans that made me hypo the display (not encouraged to others, of course). I lost snails and a few fish. But my target specimen (Blue Hippo Tang) survived with flying colors.

Raising the temp only helps to speed up the cycle of c. irritans. This is effective in making the c. irritans fall off of the fish quicker. But it's still all over the tank.

Starving them of host is a good plan of yours which may take at least two months.

Hypo will work if it is done right. It took me from Sept 2005 to Jan 2006 for the treatment.

Remember, even after a month that you don't see symptoms on the fish anymore, it doesn't mean you erradicated the c. irritans. Be patient. That is the key.

Read these:

http://www.marineaquariumadvice.com/aquarium_fish_1.html

It's a five part "bible" on treatment. If you have the patience to read this, you can have the patience to actually perform hyposalinity accurately and effectively.

In terms of inverts not hosting (snails especially), hosting means that the c. irritans is able to bury itself into the host, feed off of the host, and lay eggs. It may not host snails, but it may be there stagnant on the invert. It is scientifically possible.

So good luck and I do hope you can erradicate c. irritans from your hobby. Once that happens, you won't have problems for a looong time with c. irritans. Ofcourse, QT-ing is the key. For LRs, recure them in your house for 6 weeks. This will also help make sure there are no c. irritans sitting on the crevices.
 
If it is infact Ich, Qt the fish again and treat for the ich. The main tank also needs to be erradicated of it. Like Amanq77 stated the ich has a life cycle, typically 2 weeks but has know to be longer in some cases, I have read up to 8 weeks, this may have been your problem. Follow the post above, good advice.

Do not put copper in your main tank!

Good Luck,
Brian
 
Back
Top Bottom