Hi everyone,

I recently changed from my 24g nanocube to a custom built 60g with sump.
The whole system was running great for about 3 months with great growth on all my corals.
Then i added a tang which i didn't quarantine and from then on everything went downhill.
After a day he started to show first signs of ich and i though the skunk cleaner shrimp would take care of it, which they didn't.
Within a week the poor thing was covered in hundreds of white spots. By that time 2 other fish had already died. And yesterday it died
I have a lot of coral so i can't treat with copper, and i've been adding ICH ATTACK for 3 weeks now....no signs of the ich problem getting better.
What can i do? Really want to save the 2 remaining fish (pair of clowns that i've had for 3 years).
Good advice is appreciated.
Thanks

PS. have a chiller attached and a g1 skimmer in the sump. water quality's exellent so it can't be that

you have a couple of options , take the remaining fish out and do hyposalinity treatment or raise the tank temperature slowly , to about 90 degrees in which ich will die , i would quit adding chemical as they may harm your corals. there is a few pages on here on how to do each treatment metioned above , just do a search...or someone will chime in iam sure...

But if i raise the temp to 90 degrees the sps will bleach as well, right? doesn't that kill everything in the tank as well?

i did FW dips with no salt at all for about five minutes at a time with my clown fish. he didnt like it much, but the ich is gone and he is alive. i kept the tank at 83 as well. it went away in two weeks with two dips a week.

the clowns seem to be fine for now but the ich will stay in the tank anyway, right?
did the high temp harm any of your corals?
how long did you have it at 83 degrees?

two weeks. 83 really isnt THAT high, its high, but not like fatal. just dont let it go from 83 in the day time to 75 in the night time. thats where probs come in. ich is always in your tank. its your fishes shocked immune system that allows it to effect them.

Raising the temp to 90 is foolish. It won't kill the crypt either, just your corals. You need to take the fish out and give them a nice freshwater dip maybe with formalin. Try to keep them in the dip for up to 20 minutes. Keep an eye on them the whole time. When you dump them into the quaranting tank, they may be stunned for a few moments but they'll snap out of it. You need to keep them in quarantine.....for a month, watch them and re-treat if necessary.

The reason the temp is raised in this instance is because it causes the crypt lifecycle to speed up. AND you only raise it up to about 82-84 degrees. You need to keep the tank fallow (fishless) for at least 6 weeks.

Please read the facts presented here or go to www.wetwebmedia.com

BTW - Ich is the freshwater term for this protozoa and Cryptocaryon (sp) is the marine version.

i had the same problem. except i did the opposite and turned my temp down because my LFS told me ich cant survive in low temps..75 degrees did the trick for me and i used NO-ICH treatment for the week. But then again i dont have a lot of sps so i'm not sure how it would effect them. best of luck though

freshwater dips helped alot too

ich does the best in low temps... thats weird advice.

i know i couldnt believe it either..but it worked somehow

The other problem is, that i don't have a quarantine tank. 20 mins of pure freshwater doesn't kill the poor fish?
I just put them into same temp RO water? How do they usually react to that?

do you have a QT tank?

no i don't. i know i should...
any other options ?

Do the clowns have ich yet? If they don't, chances are they won't get it. Fish build an immunity once they've been exposed.

that sounds good!
If they have the immunity, what do i have to do in order to prevent new fish(when i get them) to get infected?

Keep your tanks' water in as pristine as you can. Good water quality goes a long way to the health of fish. How often do you change your water?

i change 10 a week of my 60g tank. The water quality is as good as can be. The tank is dominated by sps corals, mainly acropora, so i have to take extra caution anyway.

I think (and you may want to research this yourself- wetwebmedia and other sites are good places to start) that if you raise the temp to 82-84 for a week or so, it speeds the life cycle of the protozoan and eradicates the ich. I'm not 100% sure if that's true or not, maybe someone who knows better will pipe in.

From what I've read, you never really eradicate ich once you have it in your tank. It can remain dormant until a stressed or weakened fish contracts it again.

FWIW, I have used a product in the past with success called Kick Ich. I'm like you in that I don't have a QT tank and I didn't want to put any undue stress on the fish, corals and inverts. This treatment is a 7 to 10 day treatment, depending on the severity of ich.

Here is more info on it:

http://www.marinedepot.com/Ruby_Reef_Kick_...-FIMEPS-vi.html

no they dont...they carry ick all their lives... its just if they dont ever get stressed again they will never show signs of it again... but expose them to a stressful situation and believe you me... they will get ick again.

(oops didn't notice Basser posted that above) +1 to Basser!

I would second the thought on not treating till you see signs. I have had very good luck kicking ich in the past by simply keeping paramaters stable with a slightly elevated temp that you bring up slowly (not talking 90 here, just bring the tank up to around 82-83 or so). This shortens the lifespan as others stated, and the key with ich is keeping stress low on the fish.

what i would do is take out any fish in your tank and put them in a QT tank where you can do hyposalinity treatment. bring it to around 1.009sg and leave them in there for 4-6 weeks. in the mean time do not add any more fish into the tank. ick needs a host to survive, without one they will eventually die out. dont rise the temp of the tank, although it will speed things up, it doesnt help if you have corals in there.

after a month or so, reintroduce the fish tank into the tank and QT your fish from now on

Hey TC - You can create a great little quarantine tank by using a 10 gallon Rubbermaid or some such container. I had a 27 gallon Tuffy with 5 fish and a mess of corals in it for almost a year till I had my custom acrylic 60G made. You can use a little AC 70 or similar filter. You should go barebottom first and do a daily water change - that's why i go with a smaller tank, but that depends on how many fish you've got packed in there. Get your ammonia test kit out and test daily.

Yes, you can dip clownfish in RO water temp equal to or a little warmer (fish don't like to be dunked in cold water and it can make them sicker) than the main tank. You have to keep them in there for at least 10 minutes or so. I try for twenty. that's when they start laying down. Anything shorter that that is useless and you're stressing your fish for nothing. I usually drop a towel over the container to keep them calm and peek under it every minute or so. Use a timer. The thing with using just RO water and no medication is that there is no evidence that crypt can be eradicated with a freshwater dip alone. Some of those protozoas have dug deep down into the flesh. You must use a poison like methylin blue or formalin. Even long term low salinity at 1.010 has been shown not to entirely get rid of it. Unfortunately, crypt can live a long time in your main display tank, and I agree with those above that its always there. The only way to combat it is to keep your fish healthy and feed them the best food you can find like Rod's food and suppliment that with garlic and selcon. Brightwell has just come out with a great product I really like called AminOmega. Its packed with essential fatty acids and vitamins. I never feed the fish without a few drops of this added in.

I don't know what other kinds of fish you do have but research the use of formalin on all of them before you use it. I killed a green clown goby in 5 minutes because of my ignorance.

Thanks for the great advice everyone. I'm a little confused but I'm sure I'll get over that nasty infestation.
What a mean parasite...Can you imagine there were leaches that attached to your lungs and suffocate you?
Disgusting