Ich?

Gavin1274 · Sep 21, 2019

Hello everyone, I have a powder blue I've had in my tank for a few weeks now and might possibly have ich? They are very small bubbles and I cant tell if they are white or not to be honest. And on a picture they arent apparent. And the fish acts completely normal eats like crazy and as if nothing is wrong. I have a fluval canister filter that every once in a while will go on a spurt and have a bit of micro bubbles coming out so is it possible the micro bubbles are just on the fish for a day or so or do you all think it is ich? I had this happen about 2 weeks ago as well with the exact same thing with the fish. And non of the other fish seem to have this problem except another tank I habe(they are significantly bigger than the other fish). Any info would be much appreciated. Thank you

Auquanut · Sep 21, 2019

Micro bubbles are a definite possibility. Usually if it is ich, it should be visible in a photo. Give it another try. As far as your canister spurting goes, it sounds like it is sucking air either through the inlet hose (probably where it enters the filter) or around the seal of the filter itself. You should probably investigate that. Could be a wet catastrophe in the making.

Gavin1274 · Sep 23, 2019

Auquanut said:
Micro bubbles are a definite possibility. Usually if it is ich, it should be visible in a photo. Give it another try. As far as your canister spurting goes, it sounds like it is sucking air either through the inlet hose (probably where it enters the filter) or around the seal of the filter itself. You should probably investigate that. Could be a wet catastrophe in the making.

foxt · Sep 23, 2019

It does look like ich. Powder Blues are notoriusly susceptable to ich - they are known as ich magnets. It is also more likely ich because you say it comes and goes over a couple of weeks - that is how the lifecycle of ich works. From the sounds of it, the ich may have come in on this fish when you added it a couple of weeks ago. If so, and it's been through one lifecycle, that means your tank is likely infected now.

You now need to decide what to do. What size tank, what else is in it? I can't tell for sure, but the rocks in the picture look fairly white - how long has the tank been set up?

Gavin1274 · Sep 23, 2019

foxt said:
It does look like ich. Powder Blues are notoriusly susceptable to ich - they are known as ich magnets. It is also more likely ich because you say it comes and goes over a couple of weeks - that is how the lifecycle of ich works. From the sounds of it, the ich may have come in on this fish when you added it a couple of weeks ago. If so, and it's been through one lifecycle, that means your tank is likely infected now.

You now need to decide what to do. What size tank, what else is in it? I can't tell for sure, but the rocks in the picture look fairly white - how long has the tank been set up?

The tank is a 65 gallon, and it is about 5 months old now. It first appeared a few weeks ago. This has been on him the last few days. It's just odd to me because non of the other fish seem to have any signs of it and neither does he except for how he looks. He eats regularly, and swims all around all the time. The other fish are, a chromis, 2 clowns, a fox face, a file, and another type of tang I can remember the name of. Also have a cleaner shrimp, snails and conches

LAReefer4Life · Sep 23, 2019

You can have ich and fish may not show symptoms as they have built an immunity to the parasite. However, stress can cause the parasite to take a foot hold. Keeping the fish nutrition high and keeping water quality pristine will help reduce your chances of breakouts but If you want to eradicate the parasite than you'll need to remove all fish from your DT and place them in QT for 30 days of copper treatment and run your DT fallow for 12 weeks.

Sorry you're dealing with this!! Good luck.

Gavin1274 · Sep 23, 2019

pathot984 said:
You can have ich and fish may not show symptoms as they have built an immunity to the parasite. However, stress can cause the parasite to take a foot hold. Keeping the fish nutrition high and keeping water quality pristine will help reduce your chances of breakouts but If you want to eradicate the parasite than you'll need to remove all fish from your DT and place them in QT for 30 days of copper treatment and run your DT fallow for 12 weeks.

Sorry you're dealing with this!! Good luck.

What kind of copper is best?? Can my starfish, snails, shrimp and stuff stay or do they need to go too? Thank you for the reply

LAReefer4Life · Sep 23, 2019

Cupramine in my opinion. You’ll need to get a good test kit to ensure the copper is held a therapeutic levels of .5ppm. I recommend the Hanna Checker, its the most accurate and easy to read.

Copper will kill inverts such as shrimp, snails, etc. so they need to stay in your DT. Additionally, ich is a parasite that feed off fish specifically so inverts can’t get it.