I have two cleaner shrimp. The red skunk kind... They have claimed a rock as their station to clean I guess. They have been in the tank for about a week now, maybe a few days longer. Anyway I have a Coral Beauty with a bit of Ich and now I think I can see a spot on my Metallic Fox Face! Anyway I have never seen these two shrimp clean anything except them self's! They will stroke the fish and they will all have loving pets and kisses but there never seems to be any actual work getting done. Whats the deal? Do they not all get along?
Do I need to hire a new crew???
- Thread starter lferg
- Start date
I have 2 cleaner shrimp and one of mine doesn't clean fish, the other I bought when I had some ich and the guy at the LFS put his hand in the tank to check to see if the new guy was a "good cleaner". He came right over and got on his hand and began to clean. When I got him home, he went to work right away and will clean anything that you put in the tank. So I guess they are like people, some are good workers and some just aren't.
Cleaner shrimp aren't meant to remove ich . . . . not in an enclosed small system. If that were the case, I would have my 75g tank full of fish right now instead of QT under hyposalinity for 6-8 weeks. no one would ever have ich in their tanks if it were as simple as adding cleaner shrimp.
So more bad info from LFS??? SO them how do I cure the Ich in the tank? take out the inverts and treat with copper and hope for the best with the live rock and sand???? I only have a 10g QT so that will not do for QTing all my fish for more than a few minutes at most.
NO AND NO.
Get any other QT - a rubbermaid container that is new and rinsed, anything if your 10g isn't going to work. Remove ALL fish, not just fish showing signs of ich and put them in hyposalinity conditions for 6-8 weeks and leave the tank fishless for that long. It takes a lot of monitoring of ammonia as well as salinity levels so need a refractometer. I currently am monitoring a 10g, 20g and 30g all at hyposalinity levels and doing daily water changes and topoffs to keep salinity where it needs to be.
http://home2.pacific.net.ph/~sweetyummy42/ich.html read and understand before doing anything.
There are chemicals that can be used, but it's not a method i like since I have fish that don't respond well to copper or that I deem as being sensitive. But, again, even if you use any chemical it should be done in a quarantine tank.
Copper is toxic to many things in your tank and is nearly impossible to get out of your tank once in there. Do not put copper in your main tank no matter what!
Additionally the ich is in your main system now so even if you medicate the fish in a different system you need to leave the main tank fishless for at the very least 6 weeks (longer would be safer) for the ich to run its full life cycle and die off, otherwise the fish can simply become reinfected when they return to the tank
I really think there should be a sticky with ich in the subject line. I think there's been quite a few ich threads asking for help in the last week that I've intended to write a response on a word document to cut and paste every time there is a thread about it. Not that I don't mind helping (I'm going through it right now), but perhaps could be easier to point others to that thread with all the information laid right out.