ICH Advice

[LeadHead83]

Noticed my blue tang scratching for last few days shortly after introducing a new fish that looked to be in perfect health I've since noticed one tiny white spot on the on Bicoloured Angel and one on my clown my wrasse has started to scratch a bit today

Conundrum time do i

a.) Leave for few days and let fishes immune system deal with it. All the fish all seam health and eating apart from my wrasse noticed he not happy and has decided to stay under sand this afternoon.

b.) Move all the fish the QT and dose Copper based medication (trying to avoid as herd it can mess fishes liver up and shorten life span of the fish)

c.) On Monday have some Polyp Labs Medic coming in post as LFS doesn't stock it. Is good idea to leave everything till then and dose this for 20days and see if it cures it without causing more stress and having to tear tank down to fish all live stock out moving it to QT for copper dosing

I have just installed a UV on a closed loop in the sump need to lower flow a bit to get longer contact time as its churning away at 291gph at moment planning on putting tap on return to sump so can slow to flow down and increase contact time going aim for about 50GPH

I have a QT setup and some NTlabs Anti Parasite i just need to move water from display tank to QT and its ready to go.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO ???????

 

[Nburg's Reef]

How long have you had all the fish, how big is your DT vs hospital tank and how old is the system?

You will get a lot of peoplethat will say 100% pull the fish and treat and observe for 72 days. Which I too would recommend most of the time.

If it were me, and I was sure the fish were super healthy, the tank was mature and clean (low # of fish stressors), eating great and a low level of scratching and visual discomfort, I may decide to live with ich and try to manage it thru promoting healthy fish.

I would watch very closely tho. Any sign of things getting bad, worse or laborer breathing or if the system isnt very old, I’d probably treat them and run theDT fallow for 72 days.

 

[LAReefer4Life]

Sorry to hear about this. Polyp lab is no good. Wont eradicate ich unfortunately. Copper is best and if administered properly it shouldn't do ling term harm. The fallow period is 76 days, call it 12 weeks to be safe.

If the fish builds up immunity it can still strike when something is of balance in your aquarium. It will only take once stressful situation for it to rear its ugly head again. It will also prevent new additions from thriving if you plan on adding any fish down the road. You also will most likely have some casualties waiting it out.

I suggest you pull them out and QT. I did it and I am so glad I did. All fish are happy and healthy. Good-luck!

 

[arking_mark]

There are two schools of thought with ich. 1) Ich management through promotion of healthy fish and UV to minimize outbreaks; 2) treat the Ich

I was faced with this issue recently. Despite my best efforts, I somehow cross contaminated my DT with ich from new fish in my observation tank. As I only buy quarantined fish, I don't maintain a quarantine tank. (These new fish were a special project for me: Orange Spotted Filefish) As I'm prepping for a new DT in October, I decided to sell my fish locally to those willing to QT and treat the ich and go fallow. (Mated pair of Clown, Gold Nugget Clown, Hippo, Bullet Goby, Mandarin, and Royal Gramma) I chose only to keep the Orange Spotted Filefish (OSF) and one picaso clown. I list these because while none of the fish are expensive, only the weaned OSFs are very hard to come by and can't easily be replaced. I kept the clown, because they are bomb proof and will be my starter fish for new tank.

For the fish, I'm using the tank transfer method to treat the fish as OSFs don't do well with copper. Of the two OSF, only one successfully made it through (the larger male stopped eating and was not playing nice with the female...I ultimately had to euthanized the male or both would have not survived). I'm going to be putting the clown through TTM shortly. For TTM, I'm using 5 gal tanks which can only support 1-2 fish at a time.

The point of sharing my experience is to provide you with my thought process and decisions.
1. I wanted to be ich free as I had been for years and the only way to do that was to go fallow. There are no in-tank treatments that work.
2. My fish were mostly replaceable and I didn't want to go through all the work to treat them so I sold them.
3. I treated my special fish using the TTM because copper would most likely end up killing the fish

I hope this helps.

 

[Anthony Scholfield]

If you pull the fish i strongly suggest using the Tank Transfer Method to treat fish and not copper. Copper is not bullet proof for this sort of thing, does it/can it work? Yes, but you need the right copper and need to be very accurate.

Is the TTM a bit more involved? Maybe. Is there accuracy involved? Yes, but I believe and is my experience that it works without doubts because it targets the life cycle of Ich.