ich again!!!

[saltysteven]

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i just medicated my brown tang for two weeks or so and he was fine then i put him back into the tank and ich again! what gives? and what do i do?

[taillonjohn]

ich stays in the main tank for at least 28 days. the tank needs to e fishless for a month. if the ich paraste cannot find a fish host in that time, it will die. Otherwise, the parasite will stick to everything inside your tank (corals, inverts, glass, rocks, etc... but only fish get ich), and any fish introduced may get the ich. Take your fish out, deal with it in a QT tank, and leave your main tank fishless for a month

[Aquarist007]

if it was in the main tank with ich then you put him right back in contact with ich again.
you have to have no signs of ich for 6 weeks in the main tank to assure that it is ich free

qt tank with hyposalination for 4 weeks is one of the best ways to control ich

what you have to do now is put the fish back in the qt tank and hyposalinate for 6 weeks.
what for any other fish that get the ich in that time in the main tank--if some due then treat them the same way--but the clock doesn't starts over again for the six weeks

[Aquarist007]

two good reads--one on ich and one on hyposalinity

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/marineich.html

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.php

[tmz]

4to 6 weeks fishless will likely give all the parasite cysts time to hatch and starve while searching for a host. However, some cysts have been remained viable for as long as 72 days. So if you wan't to go the extra mile for safety on this parasite it takes 72 fishless days.

[cs reef]

Whenever I have ich, I have typically kept the fish in the main tank and just did numerous water changes as well as lowering the salinity a bit. Is effective as long as you do not have a full blown reef tank.

[trdofwrkin]

I have been told that you you raise the tempof your tank to 86. This speeds up thelife cycle of the ich and they die off faster. Is that true???? has anyone heard of this ????

[SeanySean]

My old fish used to get ich in the morning sometimes when the tank was new... I raised the ozone and it went v quickly and never came back

[Aquarist007]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11980050#post11980050 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by trdofwrkin
I have been told that you you raise the tempof your tank to 86. This speeds up thelife cycle of the ich and they die off faster. Is that true???? has anyone heard of this ????

I believe that only works with freshwater ich

The most proven way is with hyposalination

If you have inverts in the main tank then you don't want to hyposalinate

[Aquarist007]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11980023#post11980023 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by cs reef
Whenever I have ich, I have typically kept the fish in the main tank and just did numerous water changes as well as lowering the salinity a bit. Is effective as long as you do not have a full blown reef tank.

the salinity has to be lowered to 1.009 for 4 weeks to be effective at curing ich --at this level the bacteria on your live rock are going to take a hit plus all your inverts

[tmz]

A few thoughts:

Hyposalintiy or copper? I prefer well managed copper treatment. In my experience it's faster and more consisitantly lethal to cryptocaryon and other parasites. Many prefer hyposalinity. In my experience, hypo has slowed down ich and then when salinity is increased it has reemmerged. Many have ,however,reported consistent sucess with hyposalinity.

Temperature increases tend to raise the metabolism of cold blooded animals including parasites. This results in increased activity and it is thought a faster life cycle. Since the ich parasites are only susceptible to the effects of the medication(copper or hypo slainiity) during the freee swimming phase of the life cycle ,moving the life cycle along at a quickened pace should expose them sooner.However, the increased metabolism will also effect any fish you have in the tank and will likely add to their stress and susceptibility to reinfestation from the eneregized parasites.

Regarding morning ich. Yes, most usuallly see "ich" on the fish in the morning. What you are actually seeing are exit wounds whence the parasite exited the fish. They do this at night and settle on the substrate near where the fish rests and then mulitply into cysts,which "hatch" within a few days to reinfest the fish or swim out into the water column in search of another fish host. If they don't find one wihtin a few days they perish. I have not heard of ozone as an effective medication for ich.

[kevin2000]

Read the ich sticky post on the disease forum.

[tmz]

Well,I did reread that sticky per your suggestion. The only reference I found was to an arguably inconclusive study from 1969,which claimed to fend off ich for 21 days.. I must have missed that since I was in the army at that time.Do you have more current information with any degree of detail which might be helpful. How for example will ozone dosing erradicate ich? Are only some of the free swimmers affected as in a uv? How much ozone does it take to achieve an effective kill? Will this harm your reef?

[Aquarist007]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11983513#post11983513 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by tmz
Well,I did reread that sticky per your suggestion. The only reference I found was to an arguably inconclusive study from 1969,which claimed to fend off ich for 21 days.. I must have missed that since I was in the army at that time.Do you have more current information with any degree of detail which might be helpful. How for example will ozone dosing erradicate ich? Are only some of the free swimmers affected as in a uv? How much ozone does it take to achieve an effective kill? Will this harm your reef?

I too would be interested in reading that---any up to date reading here focusses on copper or hyposalinatiion as being 100 per cent effective