Moving to ick eradication instead of management

[MNCYC]

Typical issue. Everything has been through quarantine and still somehow it got in.
So 2 years in to my 300 gallon FOWLR Boom ick outbreak. I thought it came in about a year ago on a purple tang and was just hoping I was wrong. Just been managing since then. A month ago it was spotted and fish were covered. Not ready to pull all these fish so I dosed the tank with chloroquine phosphate. Lost the clownfish 1st day blue hippo at about the 15 day mark and a Bannerfish at some point probably due to harassment from my emperor witch seemed unaffected through it all. And of course all the inverts perished., The rest of the group cleared up pretty quickly and had to end the treatment at 21 days due to signs of toxicity, mostly loss of appetite. On the brighter side my aquarium rocks are sparkling and the coralline is in overdrive. Moving forward about 30 days the ick is still there but mild and gave me time to get larger quarantine tanks.
As of today all are in a 55g quarantine minus the blue damsel I haven't caught yet getting fattened up in the garage and will get another round of chloroquine phosphate then into another 60g in my office to wait out the 76 day fallow.

 

[Nano_Man]

Welcome to the family at r2r someone will chime in

 

[marcinpolak]

 

[MNCYC]

Nice to meet you all.
I have read so many post about Chloroquine Phosphate I thought I would share as I have used it many times successfully. And unsuccessfully. I'm about 30 years in the hobby.

 

[907_Reefer]

Welcome to the reef! Best of luck with the ick eradication!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!!!

 

[brandon429]

do the 76 day fallow, it doesn't matter if the new trend is 45. with this much on the line, and effort, I'd do 90 days fallow not a joke at all. if this was a nano, I'd have you remove the sandbed too for this fallow time, then add back a totally clean bed not capable of housing anything in the time it was outside your tank. since you can't be that thorough, I'd for sure not aim for the day's fastest fallow options considering that some % of breakthrough still happens. go long fallow to shore up the efforts.

 

[JZ199]

Welcome!

 

[steveschuerger]

Welcome to the R2R community! Hope it works out.

 

[kevgib67]

Welcome, glad you are here!

 

[MNCYC]

do the 76 day fallow, it doesn't matter if the new trend is 45. with this much on the line, and effort, I'd do 90 days fallow not a joke at all. if this was a nano, I'd have you remove the sandbed too for this fallow time, then add back a totally clean bed not capable of housing anything in the time it was outside your tank. since you can't be that thorough, I'd for sure not aim for the day's fastest fallow options considering that some % of breakthrough still happens. go long fallow to shore up the efforts.

Agreed. I believe the 45 day is to big of a gamble for the investment I have in it.
Not a terrible thing I will still have them all in my office after the treatment pretty full 55g with all my fish in it.

 

[vetteguy53081]

 

[vetteguy53081]

Typical issue. Everything has been through quarantine and still somehow it got in.
So 2 years in to my 300 gallon FOWLR Boom ick outbreak. I thought it came in about a year ago on a purple tang and was just hoping I was wrong. Just been managing since then. A month ago it was spotted and fish were covered. Not ready to pull all these fish so I dosed the tank with chloroquine phosphate. Lost the clownfish 1st day blue hippo at about the 15 day mark and a Bannerfish at some point probably due to harassment from my emperor witch seemed unaffected through it all. And of course all the inverts perished., The rest of the group cleared up pretty quickly and had to end the treatment at 21 days due to signs of toxicity, mostly loss of appetite. On the brighter side my aquarium rocks are sparkling and the coralline is in overdrive. Moving forward about 30 days the ick is still there but mild and gave me time to get larger quarantine tanks.
As of today all are in a 55g quarantine minus the blue damsel I haven't caught yet getting fattened up in the garage and will get another round of chloroquine phosphate then into another 60g in my office to wait out the 76 day fallow.

Not sure why you chose to use Chloroquine Phos opposed to copper product. The risk with Chloroquine is you want the Pharmacuetical grade as CP itself is a human anti-malaria drug and must be treated precise at 40mg per gallon.
I'd highly recommended going to a chelated copper form specific to marine life and use Coppersafe or Copper Power at therapeutic level 2.25-2.5 For a FULL 30 days (do not interrupt this 30 day period) monitored by a reliable Copper Test kit such as Hanna Brand- No API brand. Also monitor Ammonia levels while in quarantine with a reliable test kit and add aeration during treatment using an air stone.
The display tank will have to be kept fishless (FALLOW) for 6-8 weeks to assure the existing parasites go through their life cycle without a host fish and die off. 76 has been out of recommended period for quirte some time but the longer a tank is without fish, the more likely tromonts and other stages will have starved and died off

 

[MNCYC]

Thanks for the recommendations
I have copper and have used copper many times . I do have the Hanna checker (big help compared to the liquid kits) and can't deny the results. Even had pretty good luck with Flame angels in copper. The Pharmaceutical grade CP was easy enough for me to get. Pharmacist friend. I prefer the CP for the ease of use and seems pretty easy on most fish in a quarantine setting. A little unpredictable in an aquarium with biological filtration as you are just guessing on biodegradation. But was a easy quick response to save the fish and not hard to remove from the display afterward. The Phosphate levels after the fact will be very high but once the fish are out you can use lithium chloride with no worries instead of a bulk amount of phosphate remover.

 

[bnord]

Welcome and thanks for joining... I know I am an outlier - strong proponent of QT program and need to keep new bugs out of an established tank/population - but think ich eradication may be both out of reach for the average keeper, and not required for many/most systems

My first serious disease outbreak was however a velvet outbreak, which taught me all about aqua scape breakup to catch up al the fish (wrasses in the sand etc) and running 2 hospital systems, copper treatments monitoring and appropriate fallow etc etc.

that said, I know my tank (running UV sporadically) has a low level ich population but only evidenced by every 2-4 months spotting a lesion and/or flashing. But it is a healthy bunch of fish that are fat and sassy. I buy CUC from non-fish systems, and I QT all fish and coral for their own diseases but ich (specifically) is a parasite I believe you can live with as long as fish with power in their name are not on your stocking plan.

of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong - smile

 

[MNCYC]

Honestly I have been right there with you for many years. I, like most have probably tried everything under the sun at some point and ick management is not terrible and is something that can be done I think a lot of us do just that. Even with my best efforts with quarantine on this build it got through. I did buy a few fish that were supposed to be pre quarantined and I'm pretty sure that's where it came from. I should have just quarantined those as well at least for monitoring. But I didn't. My stock list always seems to include susceptible species.

 

[kevgib67]

Good luck, glad you are here!

 

[LPS Bum]

Typical issue. Everything has been through quarantine and still somehow it got in.
So 2 years in to my 300 gallon FOWLR Boom ick outbreak. I thought it came in about a year ago on a purple tang and was just hoping I was wrong. Just been managing since then. A month ago it was spotted and fish were covered. Not ready to pull all these fish so I dosed the tank with chloroquine phosphate. Lost the clownfish 1st day blue hippo at about the 15 day mark and a Bannerfish at some point probably due to harassment from my emperor witch seemed unaffected through it all. And of course all the inverts perished., The rest of the group cleared up pretty quickly and had to end the treatment at 21 days due to signs of toxicity, mostly loss of appetite. On the brighter side my aquarium rocks are sparkling and the coralline is in overdrive. Moving forward about 30 days the ick is still there but mild and gave me time to get larger quarantine tanks.
As of today all are in a 55g quarantine minus the blue damsel I haven't caught yet getting fattened up in the garage and will get another round of chloroquine phosphate then into another 60g in my office to wait out the 76 day fallow.

I feel your pain. I have a 240 gal FOWLR and I put every single one of my fish through QT. This time it was a new Maculosus Angel that went through 21 days of medicated copper, and it still brought Crypt into my system.

I can't QT all my big fish at once, so I'm forced to have to treat my DT with Cupramine. I've lost an Emperor and an Asfur Angel, but (so far) the other 13 fish seem to be doing ok. It's hard to keep the Cupramine at therapeutic levels with all that rock and sand though. I test and add more Cupramine daily.

Good luck and I hope the rest of your fish do well. The struggle is real.

 

[MNCYC]

I ran cupramine in my last display. Same daily addition due to absorption and lost a few fish. I did all my dosing at night hoping the levels would hold during the overnight hatching. Not sure if it helped. Up side is i did manage to rid the tank of the crypto until I brought it back in, had a few infections but got past it with metro and kanaplex.
i was also able to keep inverts again after a few months.
just a tough hobby sometimes.
good luck with the fight.

 

[Jimbhoy13]

Welcome to R2R