ich

[eddie]

My tang came down with ich last week and it appeared he was doing better. I just got home from lunch and both of his eyes are now hazy. Any thoughts?

[emilbus]

does he seem to be eating more and is he starting to hang up posters from pink floyd and bob marley?

[Enigma13]

Feed, feed, feed. If you can keep him eaten hopefully he will pull through. My Regal Tang broke out in ich when I first added him (even though he had been in a friend's tank for over two years), but he eventually got over it. I soak all of my food in Extreme Garlic.

[safeuerwehr]

ok ive read several threads which mention the use of garlic for food...what is this all about and how is it done.....

[SaltyJim]

ok ive read several threads which mention the use of garlic for food...what is this all about and how is it done.....

Garlic extract...it's a liquid. Soak food in it for best effect. All it does is stimulate the feeding response, so if they are hungry, fish will attempt to eat the food soaked in garlic more readily.

I think you can find extract of garlic at HEB, or the pricey stuff at a LFS.

[eddie]

he was eating good until today. I have been feed him more the last couple of days.

[reefer_guy]

Hypo-salinity in a QT.

[GaryP]

Hypo will make it look like you have killed the parasaite, but in reality the parasite is buried down in the fish's tissue and is not exposed to the low salinity. Hypo is good for some ecto parasites, such as flukes and isopods, but not Ich. Richard from CB Pets did a good talk about this at one of our meetings. He's my go to guy when it comes to fish disease. IME, hypo causes more stress on the fish then it does good.

Stress is the real cause of Ich in most cases, especially Tangs. Shipping stress, the stress of dealing with new tank mates, and high temperature or wide swings in temp. are all causes. We are coming into the time of year when our AC is running less. This means that the humidity inside the house goes up and evaporative cooling is reduced as well. I've always had a harder time controlling tank temp. this time of year then in the heat of summer. I upgradede my cooling fans to high CFM fans and may cut back on how long I run my lights this time of year to help compensate. The only big outbreak of Ich I have ever had was in the fall when my tank temp. got up into the mid 80's. Lessons learned. I've also noticed that these types of threads seem to increase at this time of year.

[caferacermike]

I agree 100% with what Gary just said. I bought a chiller last spring because my temp kept inching towards 83F even though the house was only 76 but with no AC on. The weirdest thing happened as the end of may began, my tanks temp began to drop. My Ac was running more but it was set to 78F. My tank stayed at 77F all summer long with 2 halides over it. However in the last week I noticed my temp creeping back up to 80F. My house is still cool but the AC doesn't run anymore.

If you can isolate the fish in a seperate tank or if you don't keep a reef, you can always try raising the temp if the tank above 85F. The ich creature (I don't say virus or anything as I've seen to many battles over what ich actually is) dies off and the resulting larva will also die upon hatching. My friend Kyle was battling ich using meds and trying to cool his tank to 74F for some reason. I m entioned to him to raise the temps up, FOWLR, and within 4 days his fish appeared clean and after 2 weeks lowered the temps and all is well.

[reefer_guy]

Hypo is not intended to kill the attached parasite. There is nothing that will do that without killing the fish as well. The free swimming ich is what you will kill with hypo.

[reefer_guy]

By the way caferacermike, ich is a parasite...an invert.

Temp doesn't cause the ich to die, it just speeds up the life cycle so that it can be treated more quickly.

[reefer_guy]

http://saltaquarium.about.com/library/blank/blichcycle.htm

Here is a down and dirty on the cryptocaryon (saltwater ich) life cycle.

[GaryP]

So you are talking about dropping the salinity for the whole tank, not just doing a dip. OK, I see now. As long as there is nothing else in the tank that the hypo is going to kill. For example, most crustaceans. Hypo is OK in a quarantine tank, but I can't see how it is practical in a display tank, especially a reef tank. Besides, there are always going to be some dormant cysts so even hypo is not going to permanently kill Ich from a system.

Ich is fairly rare in the wild. Its mainly an opportunistic parasite that exists in fish at a non-pathological stage (disease causing). Most fish are "carriers" (especially tangs and clowns). The opportunity that it is waiting for is stress. By minimizing stress (nutritional, physical, & social) you will also minimize Ich outbreaks. Stress causes their immune natural response to be lower (just like in humans). Some stress is unavoidable though, such as shipping stress. Even there, you can do some things. For example, instead of carrying that fish home that just came out of a bag from the wholesaler, pay for it and get the LFS to hang on to it for a while and let it acclimate and make sure its feeding. Sometimes its better to go ahead and take it straight home in the wholesaler bag then let it go through the bagging and shipping process twice. Obviously, holding a fish in quarantine is one way that you can reduce stress while at the same time allowing you to use things like hypo and copper to minimize outbreaks.

[reefer_guy]

Absolutely, you cannot subject your inverts (clams, corals, shrimp, crabs) to hypo. It is only practical in a QT and only for a display of FISH ONLY. I don't agree that there will be dormant cysts. They live out their life cycle just as any other organism, although they can live in/on a fish and never explode because of the immune system of their host. As a matter of fact, if they have no host they will eventually all die off. It is new fish and water that continually brings them into your system.

I would rather quarantine the fish myself. LFS handle too many fish, too fast. They keep their systems connected and ich is rampant within their systems.

I will agree that outbreaks of ich are not usually seen in the wild, but ich is not rare there. It is just that when a fish gets sick it is usually eaten, if not by a predator then it is killed by its own kind.