ICH....Again vs. Hyposalinity

saltyfish922 · 10-06-2004, 05:18 PM

I talked to somethingfishy today regarding the outbreak I found in my 90gal.

Could this be a problem I had a few months ago still lingering or is each outbreak different each time? I have treated with everything on the shelves before.

My salinty was at 1.026 (water evaporated) before I just changed out 5gal. tank water with water at 0.000. Did a recheck on it and it came down .002. Is this the right speed for bringing the salinity down or should it go faster or slower? Any other ideas?

I have always used garlic to soak their food in.

I don't get it. [smiley=confused1.gif]

Scotty4now · 10-11-2004, 08:03 AM

You should be safley bring down the salinity .002 every other day. If you do not have corals then it should be just fine. Atleast in my opinion I do it to my tank all the time. If you do not have any corals, drop your water level down to .017 to .020. It will help eliminate some issues with ick, and then buy stuff called quick cure. It is Not reef safe.
It will kill coral but it will cure the ick in about 2 or 3 days max. Do not use it anymore then 5 days. Then after treating your tank, get a reef friendly ick cure and add a little once every 2 weeks! It should help maintain your system and keep it steady without any more break outs.

I am sure people will have different opinions but I have only had 1 ick outbreak in 2 years now.

hoodoo · 10-11-2004, 08:51 AM

hm. I don't know, but IMO that can't work. Whatever medication you use, you won't get rid of it in 3 days. No medication can penetrade the ick while it is on the fish AFAIK. You have to get it when the Ick is "floating" in the tank. And the life cycle of ick is pretty slow and much longer than 3 days.
In freshwater you can put the temp up a little to speed the cycle up, but even then it's much longer.
If it is a bad outbreak there is not much you can do besides quaranting the fish. And that's a long process too (about 6 weeks?). By that you starve the ick in the main tank and you can medicate the fish and do very frequent water changes.

Salty: now that your fish are already sick you want to be even more careful with changing conditions. They are more sensitive and might not like the .002 all at once.
When it is just a little bit, then the fish might be able to fight it themselfes if the conditions are really good. And with the help of garlic, a UV-sterilizer and things like that.

But since you seem to have that prob for quite a while now I'm not sure what's the best thing to do...

Terry_B · 10-25-2004, 06:26 PM

Sorry, but I have to disagree with Scotty4now. Please follow this link to a five part series of articles on Ich (Cryptocaryon irritans). Here is part one:

http://www.marineaquariumadvice.com/...um_fish_1.html

HTH,
Terry B

JohnO · 10-25-2004, 06:38 PM

Terry,

With due respect and also knowing that you have a great deal of knowledge on this subject and are respected for the way that you present that knowledge, I think it would be much better if you actually posted your opinions here rather than just pointing to an article.

The reason for this is that this is a discussion board and we would all not only like to read you opinions we would also like to discuss then in detail so we can all have a better understanding.

I sincerely hope you understand my point and also my honest request.

Cheers

John

rayjay · 11-02-2004, 04:19 AM

I have no problem with following a link to read on a topic of interest, and then returning to this forum to comment on what I have read.
I can't see that there is any gain having it all on forum as long as it is somewhere we can access the information to be able to comment on it.
For my experience, I've been lowering the quarantine tank down to 1.0075 for hypo treatment and leaving the afflicted fish there for a minimum of five weeks while leaving the home tank fishless for the same period.
This method has not completely eliminated the ick problem.
After returning the s.g. to 1.026 and returning the fish to their tank, the ick had resurfaced about 8 months later. A repeat of the treatment still didn't completely erradicate it as it reappeared after a month or so.
Although I hate to treat with copper, I placed the fish in the hospital tank and treated with copper and everything has been ok to date after about 10 months. I can't say the ick won't return after this treatment, only that I'm hopeful.
After reading Terry's articles, I believe he mentioned that parasites can evolve, (like bacteria?) so that they become resistant to even hyposalinity treatment, but I did my treatments before Terry wrote those articles and didn't even suspect the ick was capable of that evolution.