Treating ICH in a FOWLR system?

[Mr Cob]

I'm thinking about making my entire breeding program parasite free...or at least ICH free.

I lost a black ice male today to ICH and his female snowflake is also showing signs. Serious bummer and I really cannot afford to go through this too many times.

Fortunately I have all of my pairs spread out across 4 systems...so really praying my casualties are minimal.

So...if I treat all of my systems directly what product would you suggest? The systems will not have coral and i will do my best at removing snails and inverts. They will have fish, deep sand beds and macro algae...pretty much reef thanks with reef parameters but without the coral.

Looking for suggestions from those that have treated systems directly. I have a lot of clowns to treat across 4 systems and do not wish to set up quarantine. Once all systems have been treated I will set up a quarantine tank for any new fish.

Thanks for the help.

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[BBQHILLBILLY]

I havent seen your system but the parasite lives in the sand and LR. Removing that and speeding up the life cycle by raising the temp may help. just my thoughts
I must say ask a profesional those are expensive fish. I tried to treat a tang with copper and was the worst thing. Killed ick for sure and fish too.

[reefreak]

I got a uv if you need a temporary thing to help.

[reefreak]

Also this is what I used when my tank became full of ick and cleared it up with in a matter of days it's a 36w

[Mr Cob]

Thanks Jeremy, but UV doesn't do much other than slow things down a bit. I'm looking to speed things up and go ICH free.

My main concern with treating the tanks as is will be the aftermath of copper in the sand and live rock...no problem if I dont want micro fauna in the deep sand bed or inverts such as snails...but I do.


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[Mr Cob]

I havent seen your system but the parasite lives in the sand and LR. Removing that and speeding up the life cycle by raising the temp may help. just my thoughts
I must say ask a profesional those are expensive fish. I tried to treat a tang with copper and was the worst thing. Killed ick for sure and fish too.

I'm considering setting up my second breeder system that is not set up yet and will have 4 stalls...and using it as a quarantine to treat. Then keeping the current breeder tank (also 4 stalls) fishless for 10 weeks....once treated 4 pairs are clean then they would be added to the breeder system that has been fishless...and slowly doing the same to all tanks.

So...this gets me to the end goal of running an ICH free breeding program...but I still have to keep the fish alive until then.

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[i3oosted]

Seachems Cupramine - It is copper and not reef/invert safe but it comes with an organic binder that can allow you to use carbon or another seachem product of carbon to take out the cupramine you put in so your tank can again house inverts/reef. It doesn't kill your biofilter but it might slow it down but it is harsh on fish

Quinine Sulphate - A product having good success in dealing with resistant strains of ich. It may harm or stall your biofiltration BUT Prime or Amquel can be used in conjunction without ill effect UNLIKE copper. This product kills ich in more than 1 stage of life and has a massively shorter dosage time. It has very little ill effect on fish, does not quell appetite. Avoid strong light as this degrades the treatment. If you have a lot of sand and rock, some will be absorbed and thus hard to keep at a therapeutic level since there isn't a way to measure the amount in tank.

Another is Chloroquine Phosphate which has had probably the best results and is similar to Quinine Sulphate but is is quite expensive

If you do Hypo or Copper, I would definitely borrow that UV light as it does help tremendously.

[Mr Cob]

Not sure what I'm going to do yet.

i3oosted, thx for the info... and I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but who are you? I mean you have 2 posts, joined about 2 weeks ago and you are offering some heavy advice. I would just like to know a little more about you before I take your advice on products is all, especially regarding copper based products. Again, not trying to offend you..would just like to know what experience you have reefing and with ich and its treatment.

I really hate to stall my breeding project another 2 months and chancing losing it all. BUT I do like the idea of running everything with the ability to say "ich free" and prevent another outbreak when I have more at risk...such as 200 baby designer clownfish.

A good read I found:
http://ichfishick.com/How_to_cure_Ich.php

It also mentions the "ich myths" such as UV, garlic and raising temps.

[Richard]

I can tell you from experience that there are strains of cryptocaryon that are resistant to hyposalinity so I would not mess with hypo if ich free is your goal. Although it might be useful as a treatment if you currently have fish that are heavily infected now.

IMO, the only way to be completely ich free is copper treatment for 4 weeks in qt and you would need to keep your main tank fallow for 6 weeks (8 weeks would be even better).

I prefer to use ionic copper (copper sulfate solution) over the chelated copper products (cupramine, copper safe, etc.. You can't use it on tanks with liverock or live sand, or snails/inverts. I have used it on tanks with sand and then switched those tanks to reef systems without replacing the sand and I never had any issues although that is generally not recommended by everyone else. It would be best to use a bb qt tank as it is a bit easier to maintain the copper level in a bb tank.

Using free copper is a bit labor intensive. You must keep the free copper level above 15ppm and particularly for the first 3-4 days the copper level will be very unstable so it requires testing & dosing at least 3 times per day until you get a stable level. Some say it will affect the biofilter although I've never seen any effect. You'd probably want to monitor ammonia/nitrite just to be safe.

If you decide to go the copper route let me know. I still have copper sulfate and can mix up the solution for you. And somewhere I have an excel spreadsheet for calculating the dosage easily I can send to you. I also have a Lamonte copper colorimeter I can loan you although the reagents are quite old so you'd want to test if they are still good or order some new reagent.

Getting ich free is pretty straight forward, staying ich free is harder. You'll need to follow strict qt on everything you add to your systems or eventually you'll reintroduce it.

[Joe31]

I used copper for my tank and worked great with water changes also.

[Mr Cob]

I can tell you from experience that there are strains of cryptocaryon that are resistant to hyposalinity so I would not mess with hypo if ich free is your goal. Although it might be useful as a treatment if you currently have fish that are heavily infected now.

IMO, the only way to be completely ich free is copper treatment for 4 weeks in qt and you would need to keep your main tank fallow for 6 weeks (8 weeks would be even better).

I prefer to use ionic copper (copper sulfate solution) over the chelated copper products (cupramine, copper safe, etc.. You can't use it on tanks with liverock or live sand, or snails/inverts. I have used it on tanks with sand and then switched those tanks to reef systems without replacing the sand and I never had any issues although that is generally not recommended by everyone else. It would be best to use a bb qt tank as it is a bit easier to maintain the copper level in a bb tank.

Using free copper is a bit labor intensive. You must keep the free copper level above 15ppm and particularly for the first 3-4 days the copper level will be very unstable so it requires testing & dosing at least 3 times per day until you get a stable level. Some say it will affect the biofilter although I've never seen any effect. You'd probably want to monitor ammonia/nitrite just to be safe.

If you decide to go the copper route let me know. I still have copper sulfate and can mix up the solution for you. And somewhere I have an excel spreadsheet for calculating the dosage easily I can send to you. I also have a Lamonte copper colorimeter I can loan you although the reagents are quite old so you'd want to test if they are still good or order some new reagent.

Getting ich free is pretty straight forward, staying ich free is harder. You'll need to follow strict qt on everything you add to your systems or eventually you'll reintroduce it.

Thanks for the info Richard! I would prefer to either go Ich free or not mess with it all and keep the fish happy and hope for the best. I don't want to mess with treatments unless the end result is ich free. I do not have heavily infected fish. I had a black ice that couldn't keep up and his female snowflake has light signs of it.

[Richard]

After saying all that I should say if it were me I would just go the uv route. I don't know the details of your system but I wouldn't go with some little turbo twist type aquarium uv. Get yourself a nice emporer aquatics 80-120watt uv (or whatever wattage is more than enough for your system/flow rate) and you'll clear it up. UV probably can't completely eliminate cryptocaryon from your system in and of itself but it can keep it from being a problem (i.e. you won't see it on the fish). Then if you follow good qt practices cryptocaryon will eventually run it's course and you'll be free of it. I'll never find it now but the was an article talking about how when they grow cryptocaryon in the lab for research cryptocaryon always crashes after x number of life cycles and they have to start over with new cultures. The same probably occurs in an aquarium.

Edit - I was typing while you posted

[Mr Cob]

did you just tell me to get a $700 UV? lol

[Mr Cob]

there are far too many options with addressing this ich parasite.. pretty discouraging.

I don't mind quarantining future incoming stock...because if I'm breeding fish I shouldn't have a lot of fish coming in anyways. I just want to do nothing and ride it out or put the time and effort into going completely ich-less.

Once my systems are stable I should not have to worry about ich too much anyways...I mean they are damselfish. Typically they are pretty hardy but I'm in the infancy stages of setting things up, have unstable systems and moving fish around to make pairs I'm sure is causing a lot of stress.

[Richard]

did you just tell me to get a $700 UV? lol

LOL I guess I did. I was assuming you have fairly large breeding system. Really I was just trying to make the point that you have to have a uv with enough juice to kill protozoans with a good flow rate for your system. Putting a little 15 watt hang on uv on a big aquarium might clear up green water but it won't do much for protozoans.

[Mr Cob]

I used copper for my tank and worked great with water changes also.

what did you use?

[Mr Cob]

LOL I guess I did. I was assuming you have fairly large breeding system. Really I was just trying to make the point that you have to have a uv with enough juice to kill protozoans with a good flow rate for your system. Putting a little 15 watt hang on uv on a big aquarium might clear up green water but it won't do much for protozoans.

Got you... thx for the feedback. I have 2 bare bottom 40g breeder systems with 4 breeder stalls in each and with sump, DSB, LR and macro algae. Also with skimmer. One system I just set up, the other is still in build.

I also have a 40g breeder system set up like a fuge sectioned off with 3 pairs, a 29g biocube with a pair and a 30g NUVO with a pair.

A bit of a mess and so many options on juggling things around. I'll figure something out though...really just wanted people to post their experience as you have done. Thank you.

[Richard]

Another option that works and might be simpler for you is formalin baths. They may not get your system completely ich free but they help as far as clearing up your fish right now. Here's a good article on it...
http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/f15/formalin-treatment-marine-fishes-38818/

[Joe31]

Its made by seachem.

[Mr Cob]

Thanks Joe.

I picked up a uv lastnight. 24w. I did a 20% water change and added some vitamins to tank.

I then dosed with Maracide. Dosing is on day 1, 3 and 5.

I'm just going to keep on trucking. After all the reviews I honestly do not believe i can be 100% ich free or that any system can be from what I have read and from all the replies to this thread here, on ARC and Reef2Reef...and if I can't be 100% free of the pest then what's the point of going through all of that trouble...?



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[Mr Cob]

all of my tanks got vitamins: Marine-Max "Disease Prevention & Life Extensions.

The 40g breeder system was treated for ich with Maracide and the UV was added to this system.