Ich

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

Does anyone know how long the disease lasts without a host? I have all my fish out of there cuz i cant treat the tank with inverts so how long should it take for it to be clear? Ive heard a month but for freshwater its 24 hrs to die if they cant find a host so i need more opinions.

 

[bunjiweb]

You CAN treat with inverts. You can either use Melafix which is a natural medicine, or you can use garlic extract, which you mix in with the fish's food. You can also use Paragon, which is an oxygen based treatment made by Waterlife.

Ben

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

Ive heard that none of those work though.

 

[fish_keeper2]

melafix is for bacterial stuff and is fairly mild and garlic is for internal bacterial infections, parasites, worms etc..............niether is for ich............

 

[bunjiweb]

Sorry but you are WRONG!

We have used Garlic Extreme, a product from KENT Marine at work and advised it to customers with great affects. You mix it into your food once a day and the ICH is usually compltelely gone within 8-10 days. As for Melafix, not had any experience with using it myself but i heard it can be used.

Paragon can be used, but is only efficient in smaller tanks as in large tanks you have to use loads for it to work properly.

And Fish_Keeper2, ICH is a parasite.

Ben

 

[andywg]

Have to say I was on Reef Keeping and they had an article dedicated to garlic and a number of experiments have found it has no helaing properties at all. In fact all the myths about it being some kind of super ingredient to get rid of ich or internal parasites were found to have no scientific evidence behind them.

Here is the article: http/reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/sp/index.php

I only put it because I'm noticing garlic being suggested as a cure-all

 

[bunjiweb]

Never said it was a cure all, i said we have used it, and it has worked. And we have advised it to a few customers who have had the same successful results.

You can't argue with results you have seen yourself.

Its like UV is meant to be the end of all parasites in a fish system as most people will tell you, but this is rubbish, i have seen systems with UV fitted still come down with ICH problems, the most recent example i have seen is of a LFS near Gloucester that uses a centralised system having to take ALL their fish off sale because they had a case of ICH and their multiple banks of UV steralizers did nothing to help rid the parasite.

You can only go on what you have seen.

Ben

 

[steelhealr]

I read a similar article as andywg. The marine ich organism is tough to combat when it gets set in. Optimal treatment of the tank is:

1) remove the sick fish to a quarantine tank and treat with copper meds. DO NOT PUT COPPER IN THE MAIN TANK

2) Leave the main tank 'fallow' for at least a month

3) You can drop your s.g. over 24 hours to 1.015

4) if you can't get the fish out of your tank, you can lower the s.g. and add cleaner shrimp in the hopes that they will eat some of the parasites off your fish. You can do water changes

5) I wouldn't put Melafix in my tank, but, I'd try garlic but only as a voodoo last resort

JMO. SH

 

[andywg]

No disrespect Ben, but I would far rather go with fully controlled (both positive and negative) scientific experiments than someone saying "I had ich, put some garlic in and it's gone". You don't have to only go with what you have seen. That is the whole point of publishing scientific papers, to learn from what others have experienced. Otherwise why have this forum if all we went on was what we have seen?

With regards to the UV, it has to be set up right involving both flow rate and void space - not to mention regular replacement of UV tubes. I myself killed a FW ich outbreak within 4 days of installing UV where medication was ineffective for some time.

I didn't say you were saying it is a cure all, but I have noticed it being suggested frequently and there is no scientific evidence to back it up.

Andy

 

[Navarre]

All of the above methods work in varying degrees. The garlic approach is a strange one to explain or understand but it does sem to work. Ketns "Garlic Extreme" however is not garlic but man made synthetic so the fact that this still works is very curious indeed. A few things that might explain why garlic helps could be... The garlic is powerful in smell and taste which will put the fish into a feeding frenzy. If the fish are feeding well then ich usually cannot get a hold onthe fish through the slime coat it produces and thus its rendered inefective. Or... The garlic is so strong that over a short period it actually changes the taste/smell of the fish, (we all know how long garlic hangs on the breath ) The parasite seeks out a host by taste and smell and this means it simply might not recognise the fish as a target.


As for its gestation period. THis all depends on water temperature. I recently had an oodinium problem that was hard to get rid of (similar to ich but far more dangerous). I removed all the fish, lowered the salinity to 1.017 and raised the temperature to 86 degrees (to speed upthe parasites life cycle).

I left the tank in this state for 6 weeks and left the fish in a quarentine tank with copper treatment. This worked and in my experience is the only 100% way to effectively fight this parsasite.

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

Well i cant do anything like that in my main tank because of the corals and i havent been set up to quarantine more than one fish at a time so im stuck with very small space that my fish are in now and i cant get the ammonia below .25 in the tanks doing twice daily BIG water changes and it simply wont cycle with the copper.I just dont know when i should put them back in. Ive heard 14-28 days, yeah, nice precision huh. Im debating when to put them back in the main tank and figuring out when the ammonia problem will outweigh the possible ich problem all over again allowing me time to maybe convince my parents to put a larger QT in the lving room. THIS SUCKS

 

[Navarre]

not an easy choise and i fully understand the problems you face as i had to do the same thing earlier this year. What i did eventaully.. to test the water so to speak, was to take one of the hardier fish from quarentine and add it back to the tank. I watched it for a couple of days for any sign of ich. When i saw none i added another and watched this for a few days. When i saw that this too had no ich i added the rest and thankfully it workd.

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

Sounds like a good idea

 

[Donya]

Don't want to hijack, but just wanted to add about the Kent's garlic extreem, hopefully to take some of the snake oil aspects out of it and other similar products:

Active Ingredients:99% allium sativum extract (garlic juice), citric acid and asorbic acid (as preservatives).

http/www.aquariumguys.com/garlicxtreme.html - if information is indeed what is on the bottle and not messed up on the web page (although I do not have a bottle in front of me, I will check next time I go to the store), then synthetic or not the following still applies about allicin, which is the "active ingredient" of garlic as far as any garlic-based medication is concerned:

From the Meck Idex..."Allicin: a biologically active constit of freshly crushed garlic (Allium satvium) (...) Isoln and antibacterial activity."

Relatives of allicin found in other Allium species are also antifungal...so, like Melafix, it is primarily for fungal/bacterial problems. You might get lucky and it would affect some protozoans, but the chemicals are only documented as being antibacterial/antifungal. So, from a chemical standpoint, that article's assertion that garlic extract is not an absolute treatment for marine ich (protozoan) is probably correct, even if some have success while using it. Ditto for Melafix/Pimafix and their active ingredients. On the other hand, UV and copper on the other hand kill everything it seems.