Really really having a lot of trouble with ich

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Bill P

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jul 6, 2010
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I had an outbreak of ich in my saltwater tank (30g). So, I took my fish out of the tank, and put them in QT for 8 weeks -- a little longer, actually.

Now, as I understood it, the 8 weeks should have been enough time for ich to die off in my main tank. So, at the end of 8 weeks, I returned my fish to the main tank. Three weeks later, my lemonpeel angel fish came down with ich and died, in less than 2 days. The other fish -- Chromis, firefish -- look ok, and are eating well.

The angelfish, the chromis and the firefish were all acquired after I evacuated the main tank. There had been three damsels in the main tank, up to that point. I gave the damsels to my local fish store, and picked up the new fish, a month into the 8 weeks. They never showed any signs of ich in my QT.

I'm very clear about the times that I have mentioned above. I was painstakingly conscientious about monitoring things. I know how long I waited, I know when I bought the new fish, I know how long I QT'd them, and I know when the spots first (re)appeared. I also know how long it took for my angelfish to die.

So, my questions are:

1. How long do I actually have to keep my main tank empty, in order to kill off the ich? Three months? Six months? A year?

2. Did my fish not have ich? It looked like little, white grains of sand, and it has now killed every fish that I ever had who showed any signs; each one in no more than about a day and a half. Is there something else that it could have been?

3. Should I just empty the tank, disinfect everything, and start over again?

I'm very frustrated and discouraged with this. I'm still pretty new to the hobby, and I seem to have done ok with everything else -- Half of the fish that I have ever bought are now dead from ich, but my water tests perfect, the fish all get along, the tank looks great (when there are fish in it). What sucks is that I have now been trying to deal with ich for almost as long as I have had the tank, and the tank has actually been empty for much longer than it has had fish in it. Nothing has worked yet, and I'm looking at several more months of empty tank, before I can do anything.

Any insight, advice, blame, recriminations, exhortations or commisserations that anyone can offer would be very welcome at this point. Thanks!
 
Yes. Hyposalinity. I don't remember the decimal points, but I did a lot of research about what constitutes useful hyposalinity, and that's where I kept things. I was doing 2-3 gallon changes, every day or so, on a 10g QT, with no substrate (just PVC tubes), and monitoring the readings carefully. Salinity was always where it was supposed to be -- the much harder thing to control was ammonia and nitrites, but that's a different story, I guess...
 
Also, the fish store tells me that they use copper and hyposalinity, as a prevantative measure against ich, although who knows what that means, or if it's true.
 
Im curious if you lowered your salinity enough in treatment. There is some conflicting information out there on exactly where it should be, but the correct number is 1.009. If you didn't lower it enough you could have just kept the ich in the QT for 8 weeks.
 
As I said, I don't remember the decimal points right now, and I'm not at home, but I think 1.009 is where I had it. I saw a lot of different numbers out there, and I went with the lowest suggestion that occurred more than once, in all of the articles I was reading. Anyway, I have the readings all written down, and I can check it when I get home.

Do you have other suggestions? Is there something besides ich that I could be dealing with here? I really think that I did everything right.

At this point, I'm leaning in the direction of emptying the whole thing out, disinfecting everything, and starting over again. It seems like the cheapest solution that doesn't involve 9 or 10 or 30 weeks of empty tank, and hoping for the best, when I finally decide to add new fish. I kind of have the sense that no one actually has any clear idea how to kill ich, once it gets into your tank, and that you are mostly hosed, no matter what you do, as soon as you first begin to see spots.

I'm not saying that I couldn't possibly have made mistakes, but I was pretty diligent and careful, and I tried my best to err on the side of more-extreme measures whenever possible.
 
Bill P said:
Also, the fish store tells me that they use copper and hyposalinity, as a prevantative measure against ich, although who knows what that means, or if it's true.
Click to expand...

You do not want to use true hyposalinity (1.009) and copper meds at the same time. Copper meds are designed to be used at normal salinity levels and their toxicity (to the fish) increases at lowered salinity.

Your LFS might use some type of lowered SG (but not true hyposalinity) and copper with success - but they've probably spent a fair amount of years perfecting whatever method they use. I wouldn't necessarily try it.

I'm a little confused on your timeline during the quarantine...

You said you added new fish (I'm assuming into the quarantine tank) a month into the 8 week period. Were you still in hyposalinity treatment at that point, or were your salt levels back up to normal again? Seems possible that these new fish may have brought new ich into the QT, and they really didn't get the "full" hyposalinity treatment. Normally, if you bring something new into a quarantine tank during treatment (which isn't recommended) you need to restart your clock again for treatment.
 
Thanks, Kurt. I'll try to be clearer about the timeline:

My main tank was empty for 8 full weeks. I never changed the salinity in there, because there's live rock.

The new fish were introduced to the hyposaline QT at the 4 week mark, and remained in the hyposaline QT for 4 weeks.

After 4 weeks in my QT, I transferred the new fish (with acclimation, by slow drip) to the main tank.

Does that clarify?

Are you suggesting that 4 weeks in QT isn't enough time to be sure that asymptomatic fish are ich-free? I thought 2-3 weeks was enough time for an ich-infected fish to start showing signs of sickness. Is that not true? And even if it's not true, wouldn't the full 7 weeks that I have had these fish been more than enough time for symptoms to show? If they came from the fish store, pre-infected with new ich, I would have expected an outbreak before the last few days. Am I wrong about that?

Somewhere along the line, it seems to me as if I am dealing with something that has a longer life cycle than is supposed to be normal for ich, or is more difficult to kill off, or something.

And, just to be clear -- I did know that hyposalinity + copper is a bad idea. That's why I wondered what they mean by that claim, or whether it's even true. At any rate, just to be clear: I don't do that. But thank you for the explanation anyway.
 
Bill P said:
...

After 4 weeks in my QT, I transferred the new fish (with acclimation, by slow drip) to the main tank.

Does that clarify?

Are you suggesting that 4 weeks in QT isn't enough time to be sure that asymptomatic fish are ich-free? I thought 2-3 weeks was enough time for an ich-infected fish to start showing signs of sickness. Is that not true? And even if it's not true, wouldn't the full 7 weeks that I have had these fish been more than enough time for symptoms to show? If they came from the fish store, pre-infected with new ich, I would have expected an outbreak before the last few days. Am I wrong about that?...
Click to expand...

OK... I see what you meant. A few thoughts/opinions...

There are varying opinions on quarantine time. Some say that anything less than 4 weeks is useless. I kind of go by that. Others want longer times, and others go for shorter times. Ich is on no time schedule, so if it's present it will take its own time to do its own thing. In fact, the fish could have ich and NEVER show during a 8 week quarantine - it just depends on how bad of a case, and how strong of a fish you have.

Maybe I misunderstood, but did you take the "new" fish from a 1.009 quarantine tank into your main tank using drip acclimation? Or did you slowly - over the course of a couple weeks - bring the quarantine tank SG back up to your main tank's levels? If you went from 1.009 to 1.025 using just a drip over a few hours, then that's enough to stress a fish out (if not outright kill it) and perhaps lower its immune system enough that ich could really kick in, assuming the fish had it to start with. On the other hand, if that 4 week hyposalinity period did indeed include the time to slowly raise the SG, then I wonder if the fish was in there long enough to start with.

I guess where I'm going with all this is that I think the ich you're battling now snuck in with that new batch of fish you added. If you left the tank fishless for 8 weeks, there shouldn't have been ich in there.
 
Thanks, Kurt. I really appreciate the help.

Based on your description of ich incubation times, I kind of feel like it's pointless to try and wait this out in a QT. I might need as long as 8 weeks in QT(!), but even that could be too short a time, depending on factors that I can't evaluate (severity of infection, strength of fish), and things that it's not possible to test for (whether or not the fish had ich in the first place, or still has ich in its system at the end of the QT).

And if you are right about that (as I suspect you are), then I wonder if 8 weeks is enough time to leave a tank fishless, if you really want to ensure that there's no ich left in the tank when you introduce new fish. In fact, I have read that some ich can live for as long as 3 months (possibly more) without a fish to host it, and that even the 8 week guideline only guarantees about a 99% die-off.

I seem to be dealing with a very hardy variety of ich, and it is starting to sound to me like I will have to give it a total of at least 10 more weeks without any fish, before I give this another try.

Is there a reason why I shouldn't move my live rock into a fishless QT for that period of time, return my chromis and firefish to the fish store, clean the whole tank, and just start over again? At least that way, I could have a shot at a FISH tank, at some point before Christmas. Given the amount of supplies that I will expend on daily water changes and ongoing maintenance of a QT over the course of 10 weeks or more, this approach is almost certainly cheaper, as well.

I can't think of a reason not to do this. If you agree that I'm making any sense at all, can you help me think through how to disinfect my stuff, to exterminate the ich completely, before re-starting the aquarium?

And on the acclimation from hyposalinity to regular salinity question, two things:

1. I was at the salinity level that you mentioned above. I had the fish in there for 34 days, with daily partial water changes of about 50% (missed 3 changes, not consecutively). The salinity was above 1.009 once, on the 23rd day (not sure why I didn't fix that).

2. I did not raise the salinity in the QT, before transferring the fish to the main tank. Didn't realize that was something I would need to do. Will certainly make a change on that point next time.
 
X -- I have a hydrometer. Undoubtedly, you are going to tell me that using a hydrometer to measure salinity is like trying to do brain surgery with a bag of hammers. Yes? How much is a refractomoeter going to set me back?
 
Not even using the hammers, but just swinging the whole bag around, yes.
Don't pay more then 35 for one, not worth it. You can buy em from hong kong for real cheap.
 
Yup... I would guess that is what Mr X will say.

I'm going to change my opinion on where the ich came from now. My guess is you were never at 1.009 at all, so you never killed it. You really really really need a refractometer if you're doing hyposalinity. You can pick one up for $50 - really cheap when you consider the true cost of your tank over time.

I'm really surprised your fish didn't die on the spot when you went from the supposed 1.009 to 1.02? in one shot. You really need to spend two weeks or so to gradually bring the QT back up to normal salinity, like .001 per day. Fish can tolerate a quick decrease in salinity, but not a quick increase.

I will send you a link I think is the best for hypo when I get home to my other PC. Not sure what the best thing for you to do is at this point - totally a personal decision. But whatever you do, get a refractometer.
 
Jimbo7 said:
...
Don't pay more then 35 for one, not worth it. You can buy em from hong kong for real cheap.
Click to expand...

Well... if you get "real cheap", then you might as well go back to that bag of hammers!

The other thing regarding a refractometer is to make sure you get some Pinpoint brand (or equal) 53.0 mS conductivity calibration fluid. When you use this, your refractometer should read 35 ppt - if not, adjust the calibration.
 
OK. Good information. Thanks, guys.

I continue to feel like there is really no effective way to guard against -- or treat, or recover from -- an outbreak of ich. Nevertheless, I will do what I can to move forward from here.

I'm now strongly inclined to start over again (with a moderately priced refractometer, natch). It just isn't any fun to have an empty tank sitting in your living room, for months and months at a time.
 
Kurt_Nelson said:
Well... if you get "real cheap", then you might as well go back to that bag of hammers!

The other thing regarding a refractometer is to make sure you get some Pinpoint brand (or equal) 53.0 mS conductivity calibration fluid. When you use this, your refractometer should read 35 ppt - if not, adjust the calibration.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying go buy a cardboard tube with a piece of glass on the end lol.

But the ones coming out of hong kong are, as usual, just exact clones of the nicer ones that retail here for around $50-70. I support American made things every chance I get, but that includes the giant tuition bill I currently have, so i'm ok with some clones :p
 
Bill P said:
OK. Good information. Thanks, guys.

I continue to feel like there is really no effective way to guard against -- or treat, or recover from -- an outbreak of ich. Nevertheless, I will do what I can to move forward from here.

I'm now strongly inclined to start over again (with a moderately priced refractometer, natch). It just isn't any fun to have an empty tank sitting in your living room, for months and months at a time.
Click to expand...

We all get that way at some point. I had the nastiest, cut throat, devious, take-your-mother-out-to-dinner-and-never-call-her-again hair algae in my frag tank. It pained me to even look at the thing, but eventually it all settles out and you can sit back and enjoy everything.
Hang in there man!
 
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