POLL: Is your tank ich free or do you live w/ ich and reduce stressors?

Is your tank ICH free or do you live w/ ich and reduce stressors?


  • Total voters
    25
  • Poll closed .
But anyways please I hope there is no hard feelings, debating is fun as long as no one takes it personal. But yes there are things I should have worded differently man
 
Lol I read the ones you sent at 7:13. Not the other ones yet

Those are the links that I'm talking about. Everything is layed out quite clearly, how the life cycle works, and how to break it. Also many references to back up what's being said.
 
No, no hard feelings, this is not personal. That said, I will always be direct in pointing out misinformation when I see it. Saying that we don't know how to break the life cycle IS misinformation. Please refer to post #29, is that not what you were saying?
 
Lol I read the ones you sent at 7:13. Not the other ones yet

No, no hard feelings, this is not personal. That said, I will always be direct in pointing out misinformation when I see it. Saying that we don't know how to break the life cycle IS misinformation. Please refer to post #29, is that not what you were saying?

Yes it is. Again my apologies. I didn't word it exactly like I wanted to. Kind of when you say something and it doesn't come out how you truly mean it.

I dealt with a crypt out break myself in the beginning and lost everything but 5 green chromis. I was also wet behind the ears (still am compared to a lot of you) but I was suckered into buying a bunch of fish and was told I could fully stock a new tank from a lfs that I currently avoid... I stressed the heck out of my tank, half of the fish died instantly and the other half were covered in the "salt grain" like fashion. I can assume ich killed the white specked fish but to this day I don't know what instantaneously wiped out the other half instantly. I mean literally swimming and eating healthy one day, going to bed and wake up to them dead on the sand. But months passed and I learned a heck of a lot about adding fish extremely slowly and carefully drip acclimenting
 
If there was a misunderstanding of words, then I am sorry for jumping all over your post.

Can we agree that;
1- ick/crypto is very likely if not inevitale on most fish aquisitions
2- ick/crypto can be a giant PITA to actually eradicate
3- ick/crypto CAN be eradicated if the needed and known interventions are used.
4- There is really no practical way to confirm that fish / a system is fully clean of ick/crypto.
 
Lol I read the ones you sent at 7:13. Not the other ones yet

Not to be brazen here reefkeeper1699, how long have u been keeping saltwater fish? U seem to not know there was even a difference between the 2 types of Ich....

I know this sounds direct, but I have to wonder where u getting your information. U haven't provided one piece of article supporting ur theories. That's what I would like to see.

Again, this is just a debate and I hope u don't think this is a shot at u. We just like to hear facts....

Higor

Sent from my Galaxy S4
 
No higor I was the one who originally brought up crypt. I was saying that crypt was sometimes called marine ich but I put that after the freshwater part and. A period got in there. Please keep in mind I am on this forum with my cell phone that is autocorrecting words and me and misplacing punctuation.

Ha ha and no I'm not saying my cell phone is autocorrecting the information that I am giving because I know someone will make that comments.

Seriously though I like this forum. Your correct on the questioning on the length of time with me having saltwater fish as it has been only 4 or 5 months. But I can tell you I do Alootttttttt of reading and have a ton of books I go through. But yet again book smarts does not compare to "street" smarts.

I know marine ich and crypt is the same thing and I know freshwater ich is not and is never allied marine ich.
 
I put "ich free" because, so far as I know, that is the case in my tank. However, as has been stated quite well - one can't really know for sure they DON'T have a disease / parasite, one can only know for sure if they DO have it. I QT incoming fish and use tank transfer as "ich prevention".... but I don't QT incoming coral or inverts. So something may well be there. There is a relatively low fish volume and low stress so far as I can tell - no aggression. Have never seen signs of disease in the display.
 
Yea caps.... I need to qt a little more than I do now.... I barely at all... It's a gamble..I have a 10 gallon tank basic set up and filters soaking in my fuge of my main tank waiting for the need to qt for new fish or hospitalization.
 
I never used to QT when I first started, and thankfully I never had cause to regret it. But really, a 5-10g tank, old filter/powerhead, small heater - it is not too much trouble to protect my established fish.

My current QT is set up as needed, and I just add AmQuel (as it is just a 5-10g, for 4 weeks). Between the AmQuel and the tank transfers (thus 100% water change), I haven't had an issue with the QT not having been cycled. Unfortunately I don't have another space to QT inverts / corals, so corals get a dip & honestly I simply rinse the inverts off in tank water after acclimating but I'm not sure if that is useful or just makes me feel better...

Not saying stuff can't get through, because I know it probably does. But at least it isn't a tank-decimating disaster that I could have popped right in there direct from the store.

If someone had the resources to scrupulously QT every single thing that came into their tank, then I think it would be fair to call their system ich free. And if you have a large enough tank with enough invested in it, it is surely worthwhile to do so (and seriously if your system is worth thousands and you can't even spend $40 for a 40B to QT in, that's just asking for trouble). And honestly if I had to strip all the fish from my 40B, and treat them, and go fallow for 10-12 weeks - yes that would suck, but it would be doable. Not necessarily so in a 300g+ system.
 
I hear ya man. Luckily my lfs gets their fish from exotic reef imports and actually quarantines them in the store on the second floor before they bring them down to their sale tanks. They all come in and get treated and qt in rotations. The restock the qt room from ERI then restock their store tanks from the qt room. Only thing I can't say I know is if they even qt them long enough for ich. I highly doubt it but they probably do a 1 week qt and dose them with copper and also monitor them. But at least I know I am buying fish with the majority of parasites cleaned off of them and desieses as well as getting fish that have had a rest period from shipment. This way I am not buying fish that came from California, tossed in their tank, then I take them and toss in my tank. A lot of stress there
 
I hear ya man. Luckily my lfs gets their fish from exotic reef imports and actually quarantines them in the store on the second floor before they bring them down to their sale tanks. They all come in and get treated and qt in rotations. The restock the qt room from ERI then restock their store tanks from the qt room. Only thing I can't say I know is if they even qt them long enough for ich. I highly doubt it but they probably do a 1 week qt and dose them with copper and also monitor them. But at least I know I am buying fish with the majority of parasites cleaned off of them and desieses as well as getting fish that have had a rest period from shipment. This way I am not buying fish that came from California, tossed in their tank, then I take them and toss in my tank. A lot of stress there

Where are you buying from?

We all live close by no reason to keep such a place secret.
 
Least that's what the young kid that works their told me. Animal instincts also pre-quarantines their fish before they sell them but I had some conflicts with them and stopped going there so it's been fish bowl at the moment. Both in Fall River.
 
thanks for the discussion and special thanks to John K for providing the links... I just started my first day of a 10 week QT of my remaining three fish while my DT remains fallow. Very sad day to have no fish in my DT. I must say it was so painful removing my 3 fish that I NEVER want to do this again - had to remove all my LR to get 'em. I now have a QT set up and running and I will NEVER place a fish in my DT again with out a QT

BUT

I am disheartened by the feedback from Greenhead in the link you posted John K... And
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2159738 Does anyone have an explanation to Greenhead? I would hate for that to be my situation. Part of why I am doing this is that I desperately want a hippo tang.. and my past 3 attempts over 10 years have failed to ich. I now believe that my tank always had ich/crypt but my non stressful environment allowed me to have a pretty healthy environment anyway.. but would not allow a blue hippo tang.

Neptune
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The link wasn't working but I fixed it ^

It sounds like greenhead treated using hyposalinity. Hypo is effective if done perfectly, but plenty of people have made errors and had the ick survive. For hypo to be effective the SG needs to be kept no higher than 1.009 for the entire treatment. This can be screwed up by not checking it frequently enough, not replacing evaporation daily, or by not having an accurate measur of SG. Some people rely on swing arm hydromoters, or refractometers calibrated with a seawater standard. It should be done with a good refractometer calibrated with pure water since 1.009 is closer to pure water than it is to 1.025.

It is also possible to mess up copper of you don't get the level right, or dont' montitor it frequently enough. IME copper test kits can be hard to read so that could be an issue.

In the end, the treatments do work, but only if done correctly. When I've used hypo I targeted 1.008 and checked every other day or so, with daily evaporation replacement.

In a perfect world, you complete the treatment, then observe for a couple/few weeks to be sure. Even then, there is some risk you won't see it, but that risk is low as long as you did the treatment correctly in the first place. IME the last time I only QT'd a fish and didn't treat it, it looked fine during a few weeks in QT (with mild lighting over the QT tank). I introduced the fish to my display and as soon as I released it, under the bright light I could see the spots. I promptly re-captured the fish and put it back in QT, then marked my calender for the expected outbreak in 7-10 days. At @ day 8 everybody was peppered with spots and I went into my second round of treatment. Tank has been clean since (8yrs)
 
This???

Greenhead

"EXACTLY!!!!! This stuff sucks. I treated/Observed in a QT for 8 weeks while tank sat fallow for 10 weeks. Then added 1 Powder Brown Tang, 1 Regal Blue Tang and 1 Coral Beauty and they did fine after about 2 weeks I had a PH drop (caused by an o2 issue I believe). Within the next couple days I started to see the outbreak. Now I believe once you let some of these guys in they breed like wildfire and your out of luck. But I believe its always there. Why do you think when you read on a company like red sea's PH test kit it sais low ph in reef tanks is the number 1 cause of marine white spot. Now I never believe everything I read but I have now witnessed this for myself."

Sounds like a newbie.
I have a yellow tang and a Hippo tang with no Ich in my tank.
And PH has nothing to do with Cryptocaryon.
 
Oh yea, I misread giving him more credit than deserved. If he treated the tank and existing fish, then threw another fish in with no precations of course the new fish could have re-introduced it. Kind of like saying "how could I be pregnant, we only did it without protection 10 times".

This is the kind of sillyness that keeps the myths alive and hobbiests confused.
 
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