Best way to get rid of ick on clowns???

[dthang8]

What's the best way to get rid of ick on clowns? I've been reading and it says constant water changes and keep salinity level down.

[DustinB]

The first thing to do would be to move them to a quarantine tank. You will need to leave your main tank completely empty of fish for 6-8 weeks to ensure the lifecycle has completed and the ich infecting the tank has found no host and died.

In the quarantine tank you can either do the hyposalinity method for 6 weeks or treat with cupramine for 6 weeks. Clowns are pretty hearty fish and would tolerate cupramine pretty well. If you treat with hyposalinity you need to be dead on 1.010 measure with a refractometer and keep it that way for 6 weeks without fluctuations. Cupramine is a very popular treatment, make sure you have no rock or substrate in the quarantine tank and get a decent copper test to maintain the levels. If you do hyposalinity search google, there's some good guides on that method.

One note on cupramine. You will need to do daily to weekly water changes based on the number of fish and size of tank to keep the ammonia levels down. The ammonia badges are supposed to work well as an indicator when to change water. An easy way to keep the levels at .5 is to mix your water change water and add the cupramine to that and measure til it reaches .5. That way any water you are adding has the same copper concentration as the water you are taking out.

[wesleydnunder]

Personally, I prefer elevating the temp and using hypersalinity for siluroids. The last time I had to treat clowns for ich I put the temp at 90F and used three level teaspoons of table salt per actual volume, treated for three weeks. The salt should be added over a long time span so as not to cause osmoregularity problems for your fish. I think I took 24 hrs to get all the salt added. If changing water during treatment, make sure your new water has the salt already dissolved in it before adding it to the tank.

Mark

[DustinB]

Personally, I prefer elevating the temp and using hypersalinity for siluroids. The last time I had to treat clowns for ich I put the temp at 90F and used three level teaspoons of table salt per actual volume, treated for three weeks. The salt should be added over a long time span so as not to cause osmoregularity problems for your fish. I think I took 24 hrs to get all the salt added. If changing water during treatment, make sure your new water has the salt already dissolved in it before adding it to the tank.

Mark

Table salt??? Raising salinity? I've never heard or seen or read of anyone doing this.

There have been a few studies on marine ich. Temp has no effect on the life cycle of marine ich, there is no need to stress your fish like this. Fish can also tolerate low salinity better than high salinity. Anything over 1.030 and you're going to have some floating/sinking fish.

[wesleydnunder]

Table salt??? Raising salinity? I've never heard or seen or read of anyone doing this.

There have been a few studies on marine ich. Temp has no effect on the life cycle of marine ich, there is no need to stress your fish like this. Fish can also tolerate low salinity better than high salinity. Anything over 1.030 and you're going to have some floating/sinking fish.

OOPS!!

I never looked at the forum it was in. When he said clowns and ich I was thinking loaches and FW. Sorry dude!

LOL How stupid do I feel now?

Mark

[dthang8]

LOL. I didn't know about adding salt to FW. I was reading another forum and ppl have been saying lower the salinity. Yeah temp has no effect on it. Well I quarantined them into another tank with no other fish in them, lower salintiy and now I noticed that the spots has cleared up some. But now one of them is breathing heavily and not swimming much. I haven't added any meds as I hoped that they can raise their immune system and fight it off (from what I've been advised anyways).

[DustinB]

You could get some formula two or other food that has a lot of garlic in it, that will help to boost the immune system, if they will even eat.

Just keep the stress down, stay on top of the ammonia levels/water changes, and hope for the best. Did you gradually drop the salinity? Make sure to keep them at the lowered salinity for at least 6 weeks or you may end up with the same problem, maybe not visually.

[dthang8]

Well crap! It died this morning. Yeah, I changed the water yesterday and tried to lower the salinity with the mix. Just went out to buy some food with garlic in it plus David at CP told me to use IckAttack. Have it handy just in case the other ones in my nano come up with it. Had a pair of percula and a pair of saddleback. Now only one each. Crap...

[DustinB]

That sucks, sorry to hear that. If they were all in the same tank and one had it bad enough to die they all have it now. I would continue the hyposalinity treatment.

Someone at CP really sold you that crap? It's just a big bottle of garlic and some other stuff, take a whiff. Ich Attach will not cure any marine fish of ich, no way no how. It may help to boost the immune system, which any good food additive will do, but it will not kill ich. If it appears to work it's only because the fish's immune system was strong enough to fight off the ich, the fish is just not visibly infected. The only documented methods to get rid of ich are copper treatments, hyposalinity, and the tank change method. Hyposalinity probably being the least stressful. If you use an ich medication just get cupramine, it's chelated copper and about as safe as copper can be, just avoid any additives without researching first, especially any ammonia reducing chemical such as prime. It will raise the copper concentrations to deadly levels.

Don't take any shortcuts, if you have coral in the infected tank leave it without fish for a minimum of 6 weeks. Move any other fish that may have been exposed to a treatment tank and complete 6 weeks of hyposalinity or copper treatment. Bring things back to normal in the treatment tank and add filtration. Probably observe the fish for 2 weeks before adding back to the main tank, which would give you a full 8 weeks without fish in the main tank, even better.

[tang-chaser]

I agree with dutinb Just let the tank mellow for a while be4 getting anything new. I think everyone in saltwater gets at least one ich outbreak, its like a right of passage or something. I lost all my fish except for a scooter blenny when a yellow tang brought it into my system. THERE IS NO HERBAL OR REEF SAFE CURE FOR ICH!!!!! I have talked to several people about additives like herbtanna and such and its all the same, and not a cure. The best ways to not bring it into your system is to watch fish at store for week or so b4 purchasing, make sure they are eating at store, make sure theres no sign of illness on any fish in the same system. Tangs are the worst about contracting ich, so be extremely care full when purchasing. Keep a quarantine tank for adding new fish. And keep fish healthy and maintain good temps and parameters to keep fish immune system up. I also recommend buying some cleaner shrimp, now they might not help with an ich outbreak, they do seem to keep fish clean, healthy, and happy. After my tank had ich and all my fish died i waited about 2 months b4 putting in a new fish, and everything seemed to be just fine after that. Now i have 2 tangs and 1 angel that are very susceptible to ich but have never shown any signs of it. So just take things slow and easy and everything will hopefully work out great.

[tang-chaser]

ohh also be aware that more fish come in with ich around spring and fall due to temperature changes. And the more livestock you have in the tank the greater the chances are of having a major outbreak when a fish is sick.

[seminoleranch]

Follow what Tang Chaser says, he has helped me a lot along the way. This is a product that is said to be Reef Safe called Kick Ick. I will tell you now it cost a lot of money and done nothing for my tank what so ever. It could have just been me but I will use it again.

[tang-chaser]

ha ha thanks. Ich is just one of those things that we all probably deal with it at least once. Then we never want it again so we learn to be more aware of the fish we buy and the measures to take not to have to deal with it again. There is a lot of ich information out there and there is a lot of misinformation too. What I learned from all my research is there is no easy miracle cure. Also when researching look for information or data posted by a dr or some one with a degree that has done conclusive test. If you look at the life cycle of Ich you can understand why some measures are taken. When doing water changes you are lowering the cell counts in the water giving your fish a better chance at rebounding. Also raising your temp will increase the speed of the life cycle. Increasing the speed of the life cycle works great when your treating the fish in a hospital tank because copper only effects ich when its free from the fish. Lowering salinity has an effect on ich as well as other parasites in a saltwater tank. The over all best solution that i have read over and over again is to move fish into a hospital tank and begin copper treatment. and still this treatment is not 100% effective and safe. But keeping your main tank free of fish for a while is a good way to rid it from that tank. A parasite cant live with out a host so this is your best bet for your main tanks future health.

[DustinB]

Just to reiterate on this, raising temperature has shown no effects on hastening the life cycle of marine ich. This has only been shown to work with freshwater ich. Both copper and hyposalinity have a near 100% success rate if done right and for long enough. Copper levels at a constant .5, hyposalinity at a constant 1.010, for at least 8 weeks. Can be cured in less, 8 weeks is an almost sure bet.

Where people screw up is not having the concentrations/levels right at just the wrong time, allowing the parasite to find a new host and encyst. That coupled with a less than 8 week treatment period may allow that parasite to complete it's cycle and reproduce. The idea is to give it a couple cycles worth of time in case you have a slow cycle or something get's through one of them.

[tang-chaser]

see thats another thing i was going to say. Is that freshwater and marine are two differnt things that get confused. Do you have the link where its been studied that temp does not effect life cycle?

http://www.fishchannel.com/fish-health/saltwater-conditions/marine-ich.aspx

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa164

This is why i talk about misinformation. Im not trying to say your wrong cause i dont know. There might be some new study that has been done to prove your theroy, i just may have not read it yet. Thats why i say look for information that has been posted by some one with a phd, and not just a post on another website forum.

as for your 100% sucess rate it just not posible. i see to may veriables just from the fish to conclude that its 100% efective. fish condition, fish species, slime coat production and what not. Im not saying your wrong im just saying you need to show your info.