Help with treating Ick

[amf82380]

I have a problem my yellow tang which I have had only about 2 wks has developed what seems to be ick my tank included 2 yellow tail damsels a percula clown and the tang along with a blue legged hermitt crab I was wondering if it would be safe to treat them with copper sulfate or not I know thats not the only thing out there to treat him with but I have a bottle laying around that I had gotten for my fresh water tank when I had it.
:help:

[Crown Royal]

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.php

The copper would quickly kill the hermit and any other invertebrate in there. It would also render any live rock you have useless for future reef use.

Copper, in any form, is nasty stuff. I wouldn't dose any of it without specific instructions from the manufacturer.

[edikpok]

I would first add food with garlic. I know that many will disagree with me here but from personal experience I know that when my fish had Ick, I added food with garlic (the prepared formulas) along with copper safe (organic) anti-ick solution and it helped!

[sinder255248]

I too used Garlic in combination with esha's oodinex which is reef safe.

[Pineapple]

Things like bacteria live with the fish in harmony, but once immunity is lowered they become more susceptible to environmental disease; bacterial, fungal. This can lead to death. That is why stress is frequently talked about with Cryptocaryon irritants. The only sure way to beat Cryptocaryon is to quarantine all fish before introduction since aquarium life can lower resistance, or leave the fish tank fallow.

Give your fish a good diet along with excellent water quality and your fish should be fine. They will have full or "partial immunity" to the parasitic ciliate. Have a quarantine ready incase it fails. One day aquarist will have a Vaccination for C.irritants.

[Gealcath]

Problem is if you dont treate the whole aquarium with copper you wont kill the parasites. What you have to do is move the tang for a seperate aquarium and treate it with copper. Then let the infected aquarium run without any fish for 3-4 weeks (ick wont infect inverts).

[amf82380]

I have moved the tang and clown fish out of the tank for treatment with copper and formiln and they are doing much better now but I left the two yellow tail blue damsels in there because I was reading and talking with LFS in my area and they all said that they are pretty resitant to ich but by anyone I have talked with they all said the same thing not to put the copper in the main tank because of the hermitt crab and the live rock and crushed coarl because they absorb the copper and leach it back into the water over time which renders them usless for further use if I decided to get corals or any other types of inverts.

[Pineapple]

You have to move all fish to quarantine. The fish you leave may only have partial or harbor low levels of the parasite to keep the protozoans alive. Without a microscope you can’t tell if a fish has full immunity.

[lendef]

I agree. Any fish are carriers even if they don't appear to be affected. I had a problem and I tried a number of things that were supposedly reef and invert safe and wound up loosing three skunk cleaners. The fish who seem to have the biggest problem was my hippo tang. They are known for it. I took him out. Quarantined him. Cleaned him up and put him back. He is one of my favorites but the only thing I wound up doing was stressing him. I wound up, with advice from a marine biologist at my LFS, raising the temperature between 85-90 for 3 days only and then lowering the temp. During this time I left my tank lights off for 4 weeks. The fish would migrate toward the sunlight during the day. The net result is it worked. Of course I was doing water changes weekly. The temperature rise is supposed to actually speed up the ich life cycle. The lights off apparently ich is less likely to find a host in the dark. I also highly recommend buying a garlic additive which I use every day with the frozen food. The garlic is supposed to repel the ich and helps the fishes metabolism. I als use melafix and nothing else. It helps the healing. I was told the optimum thing to do was to leave the tank empty of fish for 6 weeks but I couldn't do that because some of the fish were too big(the hippo tang). Hope this helps. Use the garlic and maybe some vitamin drops. it works.

[Fishieness]

dont use copper. the reason why your fish have ick is because they are stressed and have a lowered immune system so a parasite like ick that is present in the water can take over. put your fish in QT and use hyposalinity. over a periode of 48 hours, by doing a series of water changes with fresh water, lower your salinity down to about 1.010. jsut make sure you do it very slowly. leave them in there for 6 weeks. that will make sure the bacteria and copepods and such located in your main tank doesnt die from treatment, but the ick life cycle is 6 weeks. with no fish to feed on, they will die out. Then acclimate your fish back to your main tank.

[Ms.Bubbles]

Try:
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39759

[Pineapple]

After you treat Ich administer hypo before fish addition. While the fish are in hypo do water changes every day. Wash your hands before touching your main tank.

Don’t add water from your LFS or you may introduce Ich again.

[Crown Royal]

Try:
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39759

This thread deals with FRESHwater ich (Ichthyophthirius multifilius). SALTwater ich (Cryptocaryon irritans) is an entirely separate species which just happens to manifest the same symptoms.

One cannot apply the treatment of FW ich to SW ich or vice-versa. This is why I don't think the whole "raise the tank temperature" thing can be applied to SW ich.

According to scientific literature, any "cures" involving garlic are purely anecdotal. It's very difficult to be sure if ich is still present because it may simply be that your fish aren't showing any visual symptoms. Low level infections that "pop-up" is not proof that ich is always present, but rather that the infection was never fully eradicated in the first place.

The only sure ways to kill ich in a tank is either hyposalinity or copper.

I fought an epic multi-month battle with ich on my hippo tang. Had I not quarantined him (and everything else) to begin with, I surely would have been in big trouble.

In the end, only copper medication finally eradicated the parasite.