Why there is not really a cure for ich?

[juanmanuelsanchez]

Why after all this years of research and development there is not a single cure against ich or velvet? Why isn't there a medication that can be taking by the fish?

Could it be that if there is a final cure to it the fish trading market could take a huge hit from sales?

Also the ammount of snake oils ripping everyone and not getting any false advertising accusations gets me to think that enterprises benefits more from the harm than the cure.

I want to know why is your opinion on this.

 

[WWIII]

I don't really know all the technicalities of this specific subject, but I think the actual life cycle of ich makes it very difficult to implement a cure. If it stayed on or in the fish or died right away, then we may be closer to a cure. Also seems difficult to directly treat fish through ingestion, that may make it more difficult to implement cures to these diseases.

Ok that's my thoughts, now for the experts to chime in as I'm interested as well!

 

[Instigate]

The cure is copper or CP.
??

 

[BoomCorals]

I’m assuming you mean a reef safe cure. Since we have many cures that work for fish in QT. I think as stated the answer is because of the ich life cycle. A reef safe treatment would be needed that can kill ich in at least one of the cycles (most likely the free swimming stage where it’s most vulnerable) but would have to not affect the nitrifying bacteria and other marine life. So far no such thing exists.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

There is currently no Fromtline , or Advantage for ick like there is for dogs and cats fleas.
Why? dunno.

Fwiw, I don’t belive you can cure a pest, you have to remove and prevent them.

 

[Reef Stu]

Who is benefiting from diseased Fish?? Wholesalers don’t want to lose Fish... Pet stores don’t want to lose Fish... we don’t. I would argue that more people would buy fish if they were assured they would survive. No conspiracy

 

[juanmanuelsanchez]

Who is benefiting from diseased Fish?? Wholesalers don’t want to lose Fish... Pet stores don’t want to lose Fish... we don’t. I would argue that more people would buy fish if they were assured they would survive. No conspiracy

Not really... If you have to buy 2 or 3 times the same fish because it dies for different reasons. Believe me there is a lot of profit for it.

I can't believe that at this point there is no medicine that can be digested or treated in the tank targeted to ich without killing everything else.

 

[Reef Stu]

I understand your point, but I haven’t added a new fish in three years because I don’t want to lose what I have. If I didn’t have to worry about that I would have a fully stocked tank.

 

[juanmanuelsanchez]

I understand your point, but I haven’t added a new fish in three years because I don’t want to lose what I have. If I didn’t have to worry about that I would have a fully stocked tank.

That's why I have my doubts. The risk is way to high. But no one seems to be taking the problem seriously at least from the big companies.

Which is the last time you saw a paper or a research from a big company?

 

[BoomCorals]

That's why I have my doubts. The risk is way to high. But no one seems to be taking the problem seriously at least from the big companies.

Which is the last time you saw a paper or a research from a big company?

I don’t think you’re understanding the complexity of the problem. Reef Safe AND effective to kill ich, which is a tricky parasite, is not so simple. There is no conspiracy here, because an ich treatment that fit the above would be worth millions at least.

 

[cmcoker]

There is currently no Fromtline , or Advantage for ick like there is for dogs and cats fleas.
Why? dunno.

Fwiw, I don’t belive you can cure a pest, you have to remove and prevent them.

Could you imagine trying to apply a topical monthly?! [emoji23]My dog and cat are enough of a pain already! switched the dog to oral..

 

[Reef Stu]

I don’t think you’re understanding the complexity of the problem. Reef Safe AND effective to kill ich, which is a tricky parasite, is not so simple. There is no conspiracy here, because an ich treatment that fit the above would be worth millions at least.

A velvet cure certainty would be. Imagine you had thousands of dollars of fish in your tank. What would you pay to save them??

 

[Pmj]

I'll grant that businesses would rather put out snake oils bc they sell well bc people don't want to qt. Why do any research when you can just say it cures all kinds of things (and never does) and still make money?

Look at all the snake oils for humans that we allow.

Much better ROI then research something other smart scientists have already researched and doesn't look to be an easy fix.

 

[juanmanuelsanchez]

I don't think there is a conspiracy per se... But I think the industry it's in a confort zone. Again the data for treatment its at least 20 years old. With no prove that there is anything new in development.

I wonder how much snake oils and false hopes represent in the industry.

 

[EmdeReef]

There are cures, just not reef safe. There's also quite a bit of research - if you do a google scholar search or NCBI you can find research as recent as late last year and perhaps even stuff published this year.
Ich is a big issue in commercial aquaculture/fish farms where it can cause millions in damage and potentially wipe out the whole operation, and there are efforts underway to develop a vaccine but it's a lengthy and expensive process.

There's no conspiracy here, we're dealing with a pretty complex pathogen with highly distinct stages of lifecycle, all of which respond differently to various potentially reef or human safe medicines. Keep in mind that it's an organism that's been around for tens of millions of years if not longer and has had a lot of time to perfect its survival techniques.

 

[User1]

There's no conspiracy here, we're dealing with a pretty complex pathogen with highly distinct stages of lifecycle, all of which respond differently to various potentially reef or human safe medicines. Keep in mind that it's an organism that's been around for tens of millions of years if not longer and has had a lot of time to perfect its survival techniques.

Isn't Mother Nature a *****? I actually agree with you. I'm also a little bit of an odd man out in that I believe if you have a healthy reef and fish population it works itself out. The healthier our systems are their immune systems are able to fight off attacks such as these. There are things in place people put in play to prevent or isolate such as QT and UV not to mention various dosing of this and baths of that. To me that adds more stress to an already stressed creature one of which I try to avoid. Just how I see it.

 

[saltyhog]

I also think it's somewhat economic, but not in a negative way. Developing and testing a completely new drug is not just complicated it's very expensive. The market for that new drug would be a tiny percent of what most veterinary drugs have and infinitely smaller than human drugs. Why spend millions to develop a drug for the aquarium trade when you can do it much more profitably for dogs/cats/humans.

Usually when you develop a drug you only have to be concerned with toxicity to one species but a reef safe cure? You have be able to kill the nasty's without harming organisms not in different species but in multiple phyla. That's a pretty tall order.

 

[Mindi]

Copper works every time but is not safe for inverts...but it DOES kill Ich

 

[Centurio]

Why after all this years of research and development there is not a single cure against ich or velvet? Why isn't there a medication that can be taking by the fish?

Could it be that if there is a final cure to it the fish trading market could take a huge hit from sales?

Also the ammount of snake oils ripping everyone and not getting any false advertising accusations gets me to think that enterprises benefits more from the harm than the cure.

I want to know why is your opinion on this.

Same reason that there's no cure for cancer. If there were medical facilities and Big Pharma would lose millions. Same way Vaccines don't always work -- they need to keep customers coming back to keep making money.

Oh wait! Those are silly-butt conspiracy theories with absiolutely no logic behind them or basis in fact. Thanks for adding a new one

 

[Phil Lena]

I also think it's somewhat economic, but not in a negative way. Developing and testing a completely new drug is not just complicated it's very expensive. The market for that new drug would be a tiny percent of what most veterinary drugs have and infinitely smaller than human drugs. Why spend millions to develop a drug for the aquarium trade when you can do it much more profitably for dogs/cats/humans.

Usually when you develop a drug you only have to be concerned with toxicity to one species but a reef safe cure? You have be able to kill the nasty's without harming organisms not in different species but in multiple phyla. That's a pretty tall order.

Actually ... my LFS owner said an easy way to get rid of Ich is to turn up the temp to 80 degrees and overfeed your fish - but add garlic drops to defrosted mysis shrimp and let it sit for about 5 mins. I tried this and it worked like a charm. I have a 120 gallon reef tank primarily with LPS and A couple of SPS. It took about 3 days to notice a change but within a week the fish were fat and happy. Can’t explain it, but it worked.