Fish Are Dying

[rogerthmyers]

What is the best way to treat ick with saltwater fish?


3 of my fish have died in the last week, the other 3 are getting white spots, the only thing I can think of is Ick?

[rogerthmyers]

Also I just looked at my Yellow Tang, he's color is faded to white and he has tiny little black or dark dots on him, someone please help quick, I need to go and get what ever it is I need to get to try and save them before they all die?

[tkjeffrey]

What people will probably tell you is to put the fish in a hospital tank and treat them there with a salt ick treatment since you dont want to medicate your main tank. I had this a month ago and thats the feedback I got. They all died since I had no money for another tank

[bikethief]

I have a small 2.5 gallon quarantine tank that I've only used once. I used ick medication made for FW tanks that has green malachite in it. My FW tanks get the occassional ICH attack and this green stuff has been proven to safely solve the problem. It cleared the fish (a tomato clown) of the white spot in a few days. Only problem is, my damsels took a chunk out of him a few hours after i put him back in the display! You can also try lowering your tank temp a few degrees so the ich can't complete its cycle. Pretty dangerous though if you have corrals. Also try lowering your salinity a bit. I do this but only in my quarantine. I got this from one of the threads here I think. Hope this helps!

P.S. I know this is common knowledge but just in case, green malachite is harmful to scaleless tankmates. A quarantine tank is your best bet. Plus the green stuff will foul up your skimmer pretty fast!

[jvslim]

yes bikethief is correct...

[Pirate]

I'm sure that you've heard this before, but just in case... the best thing for ich is quality water. The only other thing I have ever found necessary is some garlic soaked food. It's easy to get, go to GNC and buy a bottle of "Kyolic". Do you use Selcon ? If not it may help next time. Best of luck. Do an archive search, get some info from the more knowledgable.

[salt creepette]

lowering the water temp will only slow the life cycle of ich, not stop it. if it is ich, you could do a freshwater dip, where you get a bucket and fill it with dechlorinated fresh water, adjust the temp to be the same or slightly warmer (not cooler) than your tank temp. also, adjust the ph to 8.0 with baking soda. get some methylene blue at your fish store. add a few drops (enough to make the water a dark royal blue.) put the fish in the bucket for a few minutes, watching it carefully. (If it starts to freak out or keel over, put it back in the salt water.) usually a good length of time is between 2 to 10 minutes. the fresh water will cause the ich parasites to explode. however, this doesnt solve the problem of the parasites still in the tank. this is why a quarantine tank is important to have set up, although not everyone does (I dont at the time but I have an extra saltwater tank set up that I could use in a pinch). anyway, the idea is to put your fish in QT and treat them in QT, letting your main tank go without fish for about 6 weeks. the ich wont have a host to attach to and will die out. there are myths about ich 'going dormant' but i have read by someone (cant remember who, but he was a phd who did his thesis on ich) that it is impossible for ich to survive or go dormant without a host, so take that for what it's worth.
if your tank is fish only and you dont want corals or invertibrates in your tank in the future and you are desperate, you could treat your main tank using copper that you can get from your marine supply store. good luck.

[Toadfish]

Sounds to me more like oodinium. Either that or you have some major stressors going on in the tank. I would reccomend netting the rest of the fish out, putting them into a QT, and pulling them out daily for a dip in a formula known as hydroplex. What kind of fish are "the other 3"? And are they shedding their slime coat? I'm, pretty sure it's oodinium or marine velvet b/c cryptocarren irritans (Ich) does not kill that quickly, unless the water quality is very poor.

[rogerthmyers]

The other 3 fish were a Wrasse, a clown and a puffer, now the 4th fish has died, it was striped ****sel...all of them were fine then they started dieing off about 3 days apart, they all looked fine acted fine, up until about 24hrs before they died. Everything in my tank tests fine. Then abour 24hrs before they die they get the white spots. Now the large yellow tang is faded and has tiny, very tiny black spots....I don't know what the hell is going on.

[Toadfish]

You have two choices basically...Watch the remaining fish die...or remove all of them and place them into a QT with intermitent dips, of up to 1 hr. with hydroplex, or paragard (there are other dips available, but I've had the best luck and least stress with thesee). Keep the tank fishless for approximatly 8 weeks. In the mean time, read up on fish disease and the parasitic lifecycle. Here is a link below. Pay particular attention to oodinium and cryptocarren irritans. Good luck and keep us posted.




http://www.fishvet.com/pages/articles.tmpl

[TerryB10]

I know more than a little on the subject so I will put my two cent in. Hyposalinity is by far THE best treatment for ich. You need a LAB GRADE hydrometer or refractometer and you can't use hypo with inverts. You will have to move them to quarantine for treatment. I suggest that you quarantine all fish for 3 weeks+ from now on before you place them into the display to prevent repeating the mess you are in.
Ich is actually very easy to cure. The problem is that there is a lot of bad information going around and people advise others to use treatments that are not very effective. A good example of this is freshwater dips. It has been proven in a scientific trail that freshwater dips do not cure ich. IMO they are very stressful to. If you would like a reference to the scientific journal that reported on FW dips I will be happy to supply it. Do an Internet search and read up on hyposalinity.
Terry B

[tdwyatt]

Although I concur with Terry on the carte blanc fw dip treatment for ICH, your little black spots on the Yellow tang are most likely a type of parasitic organism that will require a FW dip to rid the fish of these little blood suckers. Biggest problem here is that the parasites may be prevalent in your tank (often true, especially if you have recent new Live rock). Spanks may have a better suggestion for treatment, but my experience with this parasite has been that FW and removal from the system for 4 weeks is a good cure. To make this a positive diagnosis, get some good, very close pix or use a magnifying glass to ID the black spots. These are prevalent with some sources of wild caught specimens, and may have to do with the holding facility as an infective source.

On the issue of Hospital tanks and the expense of setting them up, the best quarantine tanks are those set up just for the quarantine, then taken down immediately after use and cleaned/sterilized and allowed to dry. Glass tanks are actually not good candidates for this, but large Rubbermaid containers, either barrels or rectangular boxes, are more than adequate. They are cheap to acquire, cheap to operate, and will do best for repeated use with SW and dry storage. I put all the equipment (powerhead and the sponge filter apparatus, airstone, air pump, cheapo homemade skimmer, heater and thermometer) inside the container and put a lid on it (after it is clean and dry) and store it in the fishroom storage for use when needed. I think I might have $30 total in this tank, and it will hold 30 gal comfortably. Might even consider doing this for corals when you bring them in if you put a cheap PC hood on it.

BTW, if you use a sponge filter for your quarantine tank, make sure to keep several of the clean sponges in your main system sumps. These become colonized with nitrogen-mineralizing bacteria that will allow you to use them to biologically filter your quarantine tank. Keep in mind also that if you treat your quarantine with antibiotics, the treatment will render the sponge filter useless as a biological filter, although it will still filter out particulates. If you keep several in reserve in the sump, the filter in the quarantine tank can be replaced every day to supply new bacteria for biological filtration. Treatments with copper meds will prevent you from recharging the sponges in your sump to replace the bacteria, and unless they are sterilized with a chlorine treatment, will have the potential to introduce pathogens into your main system when placed back into the main sump (to recolonize).

HTH, sorry to hear about this disaster for your systems.

[TerryB10]

If you are seeing black ich on the fish then you should probably treat them differently although hypo will work sometimes with black ich as well.
I prefer formalin dips over freshwater dips. Here is a link to an article that I wrote about using formaldehyde.
http://216.168.47.67/cis-fishnet/seascope/99SS1601.htm
Have fun,
Terry B