Ich medicine

[adamRS80]

Well it looks like my new yellow tang has ich. It's got lots of small white bumps on it's sides/fins and it looks like there may be some on it's eyes. Assuming this is ich, is there any kind of medication that you guys could recommend? The tank was set up just a few weeks ago, only has some green stars, few zoanthids, and a frogspawn. What can I ue to cure the fish and not damage the tank. I've had tangs for 4 years and never had ich before. This will be an SPS tank as soon as I get my light built just in case that makes any difference in the types of products that could be recommended. I read the other thread about ich, and I don't have a neon goby, or cleaner shrimp. Assuming I can't get either one of those what should I do? There are 2 damsels in the tank as well but otherwise it's just the tang for now.

[matt]

You have a couple of choices. One, you can keep the tank parameters as good as possible, make sure the fish is eating well (try soaking some food in garlic oil) and hope for the best. Another is you can catch the fish, put it in a quarantine tank, and treat with copper. There is no reef-safe parasite treatment that I know of. Products come out every so often claiming to be effective against fish parasites and reef-safe, but typically they don't really work. Good luck!

[GaryP]

Matt,

I see to recall reading somewhere that copper only works on the free swimming stage of the Ich life cycle. As I'm sure you are aware it goes through several stages including the parasitic, cyst, free swimming, and sessile stages. The reason that substrate is never reommended in a QT tank is to prevent a place for the sessile stage. Stopping the life cycle at any stage should prevent reinfection of the host. I guess my question is whether copper treatment provides any immediate benefit for the parasitic stage. I would appreciate your feed back. I think I will pull out one of my reference books and do some reading on the topic.

Gary

[GaryP]

My reference book recommends using chloramin T in a QT/hospital tank. I have no experience with this but maybe someone else does.

Gary

[Instar]

I had a school of yellow tangs with ick when I first got them. I raised the temp of the tank to 84 and kept is stabile there, and added Mark Wiess's Reef Vital DNA Premium, an amino acid - stimulant - vitamin complex. The ick dissappeared in about a month. I've had these tangs for years now and they are the most beautiful yellow tangs you will ever see. I had polyps, sponges, bivalves, feather dusters, crabs, shrimp, snails and millipora corals in the tank, temp increase was over several days gradually and I had no ill effects at all with anything. I may have had a cleaner shrimp in there at that time. I think I did and that was one of the things I lost during the flood/power failure here a couple years ago. Cleaner shrimp and neon gobies are reported to help fish with ick.

[DeletedAccount]

If you can find cleaner shrimp or neon gobies (CB had both a few days ago) do not expct a quick miracle. These are effective means IF the fish allows them to clean him. Also, they are slow and steady. If you have a pretty major case it will take a while to clear up. The cleaner shrimp and neon gobies are, in my opinion, something that everyone should have in the tanks as a preventative. They are extremely effective in wiping ICH out before it becomes a problem.

[GaryP]

Thank you for that Misti. I just started a new thread that says something along the same lines but I'm glad you made that point.

Gary

[samz]

I have found that increasing your Alkalinity to 14 will take care of Ick very quickly. Kent Buffer worked for me.

[Bbristow]

Tetra used to put out a medicated flake, NOT the sticks you can still find. It worked pretty good in a reef situation if you could stop feeding everything else and just use the flakes. The problem is they quit making the flakes. But you may still be able to find some cans on the self in some stores. I was lucky enough to find some at Darby's on I-35 a while back, but I bought the last 3 cans they had. It might be worth a large group like this to send a request to Tetra to get it back on the market because the stuff is really helpful. :grin:

[matt]

Copper probably does only work on the free swimming stage, but I believe it also kills parasites on the fish. Typically fish are treated with copper for a few weeks, ensuring that all the parasites go through the swimming stage and are killed. But, I've read that copper is also pretty toxic to marine fish; especially tangs, where it attacks microbes that they need for digestion. And it kills bacteria necessary for biofiltration. So, it's a pretty drastic step, but it definitely will kill the parasites. It works best if you have a big quarantine system that has copper running continuosly, like they have at some high quality fish stores. In those systems, apparently the biofiltration can adjust to the presence of copper somewhat, and the size of the system helps to keep waste products like ammonia from building up. But, if you're going to take a couple of sizable fish out of your reef and put them in a bare 10 gallon, then treat with copper, you can expect a quick ammonia spike, which means lots of water changes and constant adding/testing for copper levels. Ideally, then you would continue quarantining the fish without copper, maybe with some ozone or UV sterilization, to allow them full recovery from the stress of being subjected to high levels of copper. My guess is that this is what the best fish retailers do with all their incoming wild-caught stock.

The moral of the story is, suport fish stores that sell healthy fish, and then take the steps needed to keep your fish healthy enough to resist the effects of parasites.