Crypt - annoying, yet resolvable

My friend is currently dealing with Crypto, and asked for help. His powder blue tang was infected when I got to his house - it was not completely covered, just on his fins and a couple on his body. I watched him eat and he was breathing normal and eyes were not clouded – My friend asked me to nurse his fish back to health for him. I Brought him home, acclimated him and dropped him in my display tank. I always feed with Garlic so I didn’t have to adjust for that. My Wrasse and cleaner shrimp went to work on him and now 5 days later he is Cryto free and a happy little camper. He will be going back to my friends tank in a few weeks once we know he is healthy again and his home is ready for him.

I wanted to post this as I read all the time about “ich” and drastic measures like fresh water dips, quarantines and full tank treatments. Don’t get me wrong, if things are let go to a point than some of these methods become valid. In my opinion, for what its worth, Crypt on the fish is not the concern, the concern is what caused it in the first place. By placing this animal in a healthy environment, coupled with his health not being so debilitated as to give rise to a secondary infection cured the fish.

Therefore, if you have Crypto you need to treat it like a nuisance algae and go after the cause more so than result. Safety first, I always have a broad spectrum antibiotic on hand incase of a secondary infection – this is the killer.

Poor diet, poor water quality, fluctuations in water parameters, stray voltage, poorly matched tank inhabitants, excessive in-tank tinkering – these cause stress and weaken immune systems to the point of Crypto rearing its ugly head.

Anyway, like I said – just my opinion that I wanted to share.

Back to my friends tank, his issue was stray voltage. I had a cut on my finger that tingled when I put it in the water. We found his grounding probe completely coralline encrusted rendering it ineffective. A few scrapes later the stray voltage was gone. He still has two clown fish in his tank, if they stay healthy he will take his tang back in a few weeks…..a happy ending.

 

Therefore, if you have Crypto you need to treat it like a nuisance algae and go after the cause more so than result.

Good analogy.

The problem as I see is that any stress may result in an out break and as anyone knows that has been in this hobby long enough we walk a fine line between a stable healthy system and a decline in the system, it's a balancing act.

I am sure your friend appreciates the assistance and I hope the fish will do well when returned to his system. Nice you were able to help another reefer out. K+

 

Thank you, I am trying to get him to join out little community here but he doesn’t like forums, or so he says) .... I suspect he's lurking !

I like what you said, and agree. I realize there are two schools of thought on the subject one being my belief that Crypto is in our systems all the time just waiting for a stressed and weakened host. It truly is a balancing act.

 

I was going to start a thread on my thoughts about ich, but it seems you have beaten me to it, CG.

I'm always reading emergency threads on this forum about ich, and while I've only been into the saltwater side of this hobby for a little over 3 months, I've had two (possibly three) run-ins with ich, both with my hippo blue tang.

- First at introduction to the tank.
- Second when rearranging/replacing rockwork (major tank distrubance).
- Third when introducing several new livestock at once.

Each time I felt the ich was overcome by helping the fish maximize it's chances for success. To do that, one has to know what causes the ich in the first place. Like CG mentions, stress, poor water quality, overstocking, poor fish compatability, temp swings, salitity swings, etc. Boil it down, and the majority of these come down to stress.

And so I did what I could to reduce the stress level on the fish. At introduction and rearranging, I made sure there was plenty of food available for all the fish (no competition), and turned off the daylights, leaving only the blues on. Again with the introduction of the livestock, making sure there was plenty of food available, even if it caused a little extra algae that week. I tried to keep my hands out of the tank, and approach the tank very slowly whenever I needed to do something.

So many times I read posts of people chasing the fish around the tank, plopping it in QT, adding chemicals, etc, and personally feel that this could be causing more stress and harm than good. Good husbandry, monitoring water quality, knowing fish compatability... these are your greatest weapons at fighting ich.

Or, could I be wrong? Do I have an ich plague in my tank just waiting to be unleashed without notice, wreaking havoc to my livestock? Will this occur without notice, or will this happen if I neglect the tank, or something tragic happens to swing parameters wildly?