[lecram]

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum and have been in the hobby for about 6 months now. Here is my dilemna.....

I have a 55 gallon FOWLR tan that has been running for about 5 months now, I have 2 ocellaris clowns, 1 yellow tang, 1 pajama cardinal, 1 hermit crab/w anemone, 8 turbo snails, 1 coral banded shrimp, 1 CC star.

My readings are as follows. AMM =0, Nitrite=0, Nitrate=2.0, PH=8.2, dKH=7.5, Salinity 1.023, Temp 79.

Recently my tang had come down with ich, I gave him a freshwater dip and treated the tank with pimafix, melafix, and para guard, in combination and as per directions on the bottle for 2 weeks. Anyway my tang was cured almost overnight but I continued the treatment to kill off what I couldnt see. After treatment, water change, carbon and full skimming.

About 3 weeks ago. one of my clowns acquired ich, I was like how in the hell is this possible. I took him out and gave him a freshwater dip (30 min) and by this time I was extremely frustrated by this disease...........I started experiminting. For 2 weeks now, I have been treating the tank with an arsenal of crap in unison to try to get rid of this parasite. I have been using "Everyday" melafix and pimafix 5 teaspoons each every morning, AND 1 teqaspoon pure garlic extract, 5 teaspoons para guard, and 5 teaspoons kent RxP every night for 12 days now, in fact I have been dosing more of everything than what the bottle says. Crab, snails, and star are all well and tolerating it. My tang has not had another outbreak, but my clown it comes and goes, one day he is free of the grains, next morning........covered again. My pajama also has one spot on his tail, one day gone.....next morn it is their again.

Quite literally, I do not see how this parasite is still living after all the garbage I have added to the tank......I dont know how my fish and inverts are tolerating it either, but I can tell that they are not happy with all the crap in their by their actions.

I have been avoiding copper based meds for the fact that they contain well, copper! I have also avoided Hypo as I dont want to harm my fish or my LR.

Anyways, I am upset, and quite literally humbled by this little parasite, any info would be greatly appreciated. Time for another water change, the fish arent too happy with the water conditions.........I might continue treating for another couple weeks, couldnt hurt, and since Ich's lifespan can vary it might help, again any info greatly appreciated!

[Reefland]

Hi lecram, Welcome to Reefland!

I am going to start out by posting a couple of links for you first. These links contain lots of information and links to offsite articles that detail all the ends and outs of C. irritans.
White Spot feedback
Oh God ROUND 2 DING DING
Copper Treatment Question

[Arctic Fox]

From my understanding of how saltwater ich works you're going to have to set up a separate hospital tank for your fishes and treat it and then leave your main tank completely void of anything that can catch ick for at least 6 weeks. Treat the hospital tank and make sure all your fishes are clean and free of the parasite before returning them to the main tank, that is after this 6 weeks of course.

[MarinePig]

Originally Posted by Arctic Fox

From my understanding of how saltwater ich works you're going to have to set up a separate hospital tank for your fishes and treat it and then leave your main tank completely void of anything that can catch ick for at least 6 weeks. Treat the hospital tank and make sure all your fishes are clean and free of the parasite before returning them to the main tank, that is after this 6 weeks of course.

I had a blue tang (better know as an ick magnet) and I bought two cleaner shrimp to help. Once the shrimp and the tang got aquanted, the shrimp went to town on the tang. One even was "walking" on it and making its way around the tangs body cleaning it. The ick is MUCH better now. Plus we just fixed our UV sterilizer and are adding garlic to help. I think this natural approach (shrimp, UV, and Garlic) has worked well so far. Just my 2 cents.

[szwedo]

welcome to reefland lecram!

I recently lost a powder brown tang to ich. it was totaly covered in little white spotts. I bought a cleaner shrimp,nothing, cleaner wrasse, helped a lot but died very soon so it couldn't do much, soaked food in garlic,nothing. so eventually it died . I'm so mad because i have had him since 2 weeks after I cycled my tank. well, to replace him I'm thinking about a kole tang.