Marine Ich Cure

[surbas]

I bought a Coral Beauty from petco a few weeks back and he started to get white spots on him. I gave him a freshwater dip 2 times the spots still seem to come back usually more visible at night. Now my clown is starting to get them and I just lost a royal gamma. What's a good med or treatment that works? I have some stuff called RX-P by Kent Marine but I'm not sure that is going to do the trick. Any help would be appreciated.

Scott

 

[Lynden]

Sadly, curing marine ich is much more difficult than preventing it. I once lost an entire tank of fish to it (barring a chromis).

I like to buy cleaner animals that can directly treat the fish. Cryptocarion (marine "ich") is very easily picked off by a Labroides (avoid that genus unless you find a specimen that is very clearly accepting food), Lysmata, or Gobiosoma. Unfortunately these animals cannot not stop all disease; their services are limited to the removal of relatively large external parasites such as Cryptocarion irritans and small Lymphocystis.

I am sad to say that you may be better off not taking my advice as I recently lost four of my fish to an array of diseases, including one that I cannot identify and have never seen anything like. The other diseases the fish got I could loosely identify, but were far more virulent and acute than I have ever seen them. Three of my fish may not be out of the woods yet. Worst of all, none of these were ich or any other disease my Wrasse or Shrimp were adept at removing.

The moral of the story is to prevent disease by feeding Spirulina (or other immune-booster), having a UV sterilizer (with a new bulb), keeping upkeep, and having plenty of "doctors". Not to say that you did anything wrong, 'cause you didn't.

-Lynden

P.S.
Freshwater baths are a good way to save a fish that may be doomed otherwise; chemical treatments are (to me) a last resort.

 

[andywg]

I would recommend a thorough read of this two part article:

Part One
Part Two

As with many things, research is the first step.

 

[chrissaysyes]

I too recently lost almost an entire tank to ich...there are several methods to "kick the ich"...curing ich...personally the best method is this....

Theyre all going to die anyway...so if theyre worth saving to you, be prepared to put them through fishie chemo. Bare bottomed hospital tank, filter, air stone (ich clogs the gills and makes it pretty hard for the fish to breathe), and treat with either copper, or some formalin/green malachite treatment. I go with this pretty cheap formalin/green malachite solution (like $5 a bottle) that works ok. I think it recommends treating them for 3 days. Water changes are important and it's vital to illiminate as much stress as possible. I keep mine on low lighting. While the fish are in the hospital, the next step is prevention...the key to prevention is killing ich while it's not on the fish. While the fish are in the hospital, run your display through a coral safe ich treatment...I use stuff called kick ich..it's about $26 for a 75 gallon treatment. Make sure to keep the tank being treated clear of fish for about a month (enough time to let the parasites run their life cycle)..also it's almost safe to say you could just keep fish out of the display for a little over a month and not even treat it, as the ich will die off with no fish to help it propogate...let the fish heal in the hospital and let the tank cycle all of the meds out with water changes and such...that way you're not getting any formalin or copper in your display...which as I'm sure you know is deadly to most inverts and corals. It's a huge pain in the butt and you're probably going to lose a fish or two. BEST OF LUCK TO YOU! It happens to the best of us.

 

[shafty]

Iam currently having a problem with ich, my best recomendation is to setup a hospital tank and use a copper based med. for 3 weeks, I have my clown in the hospital and he is completely free of the white spots, I also tried the FW dips but the spots always came back. Not a big fan of using any chemicals in my reef...even if they say reef safe.

goodluck

 

[surbas]

Thanks my friends, my tank was fine until one of the kids killed one of my clowns, the tank has been going downhill ever since. I've tried the freshwater dip on Coral Beuaty and the Clown 2 times but the spots came back. I then tried Kent Marine RX-P, did not work well (although I only tried it once). My local saltwater expert told me to try hyposalinity (SPg = 1.010 or less 1.000) for 3 days at a temp of 82 deg and he said the ich will die, it can't live in those conditions I guess. Problem is after one day the Beauty seems more stressed as does the Clownfish so I bumped up the salinity to about 1.017 to help calm them down. I'll get back up to 1.022 within the next 2 days. I just picked up some Rid Ich formalin treatment, anyone have any luck with that or the Kent Marine RX-P?

 

[Eversurf]

When I first setup my tank I got ich. I lost two clows to the problem and my tang was covered too. I tried all sorts of things. I have read somewhere that the fish are stressed out and they develop ich. I just hadded new lights to my setup and my blue hippo tang exploded in ich. I did nothing, good feeding,good water, low stress event and after 6 to 8 days he fine it was all gone.


That was my experience with ich