Ick Ick - help we have Ick!

[ylmaya]

Aaak - white spots everywhere.....what to do? Will the fish die?

[StellaMN]

I've heard that garlic-soaked food can help treat ick. For this reason, I soak food a couple times a week in a garlic juice formula as a "pretreatment."

Apparently the fish excrete the garlic through their skin and the parasites can't stand the garlic. Either way, the fish love garlic....it has convinced my picky, stressed flasher/fairy wrasses to eat when they were first introduced to the aquarium. After a good feeding they settled down quickly and relaxed in their new environment.

Jodi

[Harpo]

Are we talking about a reef tank or FO? In a FO. you could go with hypo salinity or copper. Also start soaking all foods in garlic oil, and vitamins. If it's a reef you may have to remove the fish to be treated . Reefs can't be copper treated. Please tell a little more about what you have, and are all your fish affected at this time?


Bill

[dheiney]

I've heard others use garlic, do you just buy jar garlic from the grocery and use the juice?

[Harpo]

No, you can buy it at your LFS, it's made by KENT MARINE and a few others, for the hobby.

[ylmaya]

The tank is a reef and now full of coral. I will do a 10G water change tomorrow just to help stabilize water conditions in case they are bad - then I will try Garlic I guess.

This is stressing ME out!!!!!

[CAT]

How many of the fish are affected?

Ick is a pita. All kinds of treatments you can try but most require that all fish are removed from the reef for 6 weeks so the parasite doesn't find a host to keep it going.

I q-tanked a royal gramma that had ick, treated it successfully and put it back in my tank. It has ick again (probably a result of the major move I just made). None of the other fish have ever been affected. Very frustrating.

I tried garlic, but it didn't work for me. I'm trying a med now that I put in the food - it's supposed to mess up the DNA of the ick so it can't reproduce. Since it doesn't kill the ick on the fish I haven't seen any results so far. I'll let you know if it works.

Good luck. Sometimes the ick goes away by itself if your tank is sable and in good shape.

[fatcat9798]

Ich is tricky. I use garlic gaurd and coral vital. Along with many water changes this has worked for me.( I had ich bad) Good luck and prevention is the best medicine.