Ich Treatment

[Narwhal]

So After years of trying to be carful with fish I got ich. Learned my lesson, treat plants before they go in. Anyway I have lost basically everything in a few days. So I fist noticed white spots on some synos and some cichlid fry, and immediately went for treatment, my friend swears by this artimiss stuff, not sure what plant extract is going to do for protazoans, but he says it works. I brought up the temp, and I lost all the plecos and catfish overnight, should have never raised the temp. So Now I am just trying to save my male Pundamillia. I took the fish out as I am going to just do heat on the tank for a few days without hosts, don't what to dink with salt in that tank. Anyway, I have heard salt baths can work as an instant treatment, and will take out the cysts. I could just wash out the quarantine system while he is in the bath and then fill in up with non contaminated water right? I am also freaking out about it contaminating other tanks. My friend has ich wipe out a tank, the after he had re set up the tank a dried decoration was put back and ich returned. I just can have it hit another tank. What is a good decontamination protocol on equipment?

 

[BIG-G]

As far as I know salt dips are ineffective on the actual cyst. It’s only when they rupture that the ich can be killed.
For equipment I would sterilize every thing with scalding hot water with a little bleach in it. Then soak in water with a chlorine neutralizer.
The only thing I have personal experience with to treat ich with plants is Ruby reef kick ich.
Raising temperatures will speed the ich life cycle

 

[duanes]

Agree with the above, salt baths won't do anything.
When the parasite is on the fish, it is protected by the fishes own slim coat, and the protozoans impervious shell.
It is only possible to kill it, when it hatches out of the white spot.
You will need to bring the salinity up to at minimum, 3 ppt (parts per thousand) For a 100gallon tank (that is about 3 lbs of salt.
And treat for about 3 weeks, until all the protozoa have run thru their life cycle.
There are some inert ick in the substrate (also impervious to treatment) but vacuuming with water changes will help remove them.
But when you vacuum, the replacement water should also have at least 3ppt salinity.

 

[squint]

Ich can't survive being dried out so let equipment dry out. It can't complete its life cycle without fish so two weeks without fish and bio media, substrate, plants, etc., will be free of it.

Yeah, heat doesn't work that well on ich:

UV, on the other hand, decreased mortality from 83% to 0.7%:

I used UV from day 1 and after having clown loaches for 15 years, never got ich. A friend of mine had a severe outbreak and cleared it using UV alone.

In all these years, I've never heard of anyone with a properly setup UV sterilizer having an ich outbreak. The main advantage is that it uses no chemicals so it's safe for plants, invertebrates, and fish. You can (and should) run it 24/7 for as long as you want. Try doing that with heat. Every day you'll be praying that your fish outlast the ich. With UV, you can run it day after day, week after week, with no stress on your fish.

Ich sometimes appears overnight and even with the best treatments, it may be too late for some fish. UV is always on (or turned on when you put anything new in the tank) and will stop the outbreak before it begins.

If you don't want to go that route, there are newer and safer treatments such as metronidazole and quinine (in feed only) that are effective.

 

[Rocksor]

I used UV from day 1 and after having clown loaches for 15 years, never got ich. A friend of mine had a severe outbreak and cleared it using UV alone.

In all these years, I've never heard of anyone with a properly setup UV sterilizer having an ich outbreak. The main advantage is that it uses no chemicals so it's safe for plants, invertebrates, and fish. You can (and should) run it 24/7 for as long as you want. Try doing that with heat. Every day you'll be praying that your fish outlast the ich. With UV, you can run it day after day, week after week, with no stress on your fish.

Ich sometimes appears overnight and even with the best treatments, it may be too late for some fish. UV is always on (or turned on when you put anything new in the tank) and will stop the outbreak before it begins.

If you don't want to go that route, there are newer and safer treatments such as metronidazole and quinine (in feed only) that are effective.

What's the proper setup for UV? Last thing you want is for the guy to buy a Sunsun canister with a UV bulb, and think that is sufficient.

Where do you get quinine from? Brand?

 

[Narwhal]

What's the proper setup for UV? Last thing you want is for the guy to buy a Sunsun canister with a UV bulb, and think that is sufficient.

Where do you get quinine from? Brand?

Not what I was thinking, I felt like he meant a UV Sterilizer, like one of those green killing machines, maybe their is a better brand?
I am interested by the paper, can you give me the name and authors? I kind of want to read the thing.

 

[squint]

What's the proper setup for UV? Last thing you want is for the guy to buy a Sunsun canister with a UV bulb, and think that is sufficient.

Where do you get quinine from? Brand?

Any reasonable quality UV sterilizer that provides at least 0.3 W/gal. I used a 57W on 125 gal. You may be able to go lower as the study only used 78W for 720 gal. I think the manufacturer of my UV units, Aqua Ultraviolet, recommended 25W for 125 gal. I decided to go up one size though as the price difference between replacement bulbs was only a few dollars.

I bought a few jars of quinine from National Fish Pharmaceuticals several years ago. They called their product "Crypto Pro." It's probably easier to buy one of the nitroimidazoles such as secnidazole or metronidazole. Those are readily available OTC.

Not what I was thinking, I felt like he meant a UV Sterilizer, like one of those green killing machines, maybe their is a better brand?
I am interested by the paper, can you give me the name and authors? I kind of want to read the thing.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2761.1983.tb00062.x/full

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1577/1548-8454(2001)063<0293:TFIIIC>2.0.CO;2/abstract

 

[Rocksor]

Any reasonable quality UV sterilizer that provides at least 0.3 W/gal. I used a 57W on 125 gal. You may be able to go lower as the study only used 78W for 720 gal. I think the manufacturer of my UV units, Aqua Ultraviolet, recommended 25W for 125 gal. I decided to go up one size though as the price difference between replacement bulbs was only a few dollars.

What was the recommend "slow" flow (GPH) through the UV? (link to paper is not loading for me for some reason)

 

[squint]

What was the recommend "slow" flow (GPH) through the UV? (link to paper is not loading for me for some reason)

7.5 gal/min but it shouldn't really matter due to the Bunsen-Roscoe law.

 

[tiger15]

This is the best scientific data I've read on ich treatment. I don't know the difference between flow and static test, and why there are two check columns on "ich elimination", so I would like to read the original paper to understand fully.

The data show that Malachite Green is the most effective remedy, formalin a distant second. Copper sulfate, iodine, potassium permanganate, heat alone and all other remedies are useless to lowly effective. Too bad there is no testing on salt which is the most commonly recommended remedy by hobbyists.

Having kept CL for years and periodically brought in ich from new fish, I've tried many remedies and found the proprietary malachite green and formalin combo worked best, provided it is dosed daily for 2 weeks with large WC no less than 3 times a week, even if the symptoms have disappeared. Yes, I always quarantined my fish, but 2 to 3 weeks quarantine may still not be enough.

It's lot of work to treat ich the right way with chemicals, so I will be interested in trying UV sterilizaton in future outbreak. I want to run UV for short-term quarantine and disease treatment use only. The life expectancy of UV bulb is short, and there is no reason to run UV continuously which may compromise fish immunity and precipitate out micro nutrients that affect plants.

The last time I lost my CL I could only administer treatment for a few days as I had to go away for a week. If I had the UV set up, they could have been saved, and the price of a UV unit is a lot cheaper than my decade old, king size CL.