How long before tank is ick free?

[SherryQ]

A little over a week ago I bought a long nose butterfly fish. Within 24 hours he came down with ick. Last night he died. The other fish in the tank (3 greem chromis, 1 neon goby, and 1 unknown coral goby) never should any signs of ick. How long do I have to wait before I can safely put more fish in the tank? Do I have to take all other fish out of the tank and leave the tank fish free for 4-6 weeks or since these fish seem to have an immunity can I just leave them in the tank and wait the 4-6 week period? Or do I have to even wait that long? The tank is a 72 gallon I got as a used settup with the chromis about 1.5 months ago.
Thanks!

Sherry


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[dima96]

sorry to hear about the butterfly, they are ick magnets. i would leave the fish in there and give it a few weeks before trying any more fish.

 

[Syris]

I thought I read that the ick parasite is always present in our water? The reason I bring that up is because I have had the same fish in my tank for a while now with none ever getting ick. But just recently I did some major tank changes which stressed my hippo tang and he suddenly got ick! Now that hes no longer stressed the ick is almost completely gone.
I guess my point is the more comfortable and stress free the fish is the less the chance for ick.

 

[wrassefan]

Supposedly, if the tank was empty...4-6 weeks to die off ich with no hosts. When the tank has life, it has ich IMO. If your fish are healthy and not stressed, they can fight off ich. QT is easiest to monitor and feed new fish already stressed from shipping. Some stores run copper in there system so when the new arrival goes into your tank, the develop ich because now their bodies need to fight it off without the copper helping them. I've also heard that butterflies and angels are very sensitive to copper so if it was already in copper at the lfs....well you never know.

 

[Groove]

I've done a lot of reading on this as I had my first outbreak. I read what the experts were saying in the disease forum at RC. In summary, ich is a parasite that needs to host on a fish. Fish generally have a good slime coat(??) that helps fend off the parasites. If they attach to a fish, they host on them a short while and fall off to the rock/sand/bottom of the tank. From there that multiply and then must find a host fish themselves to complete the cycle again. They can survive in very low numbers that you may not detect on a healthy fish. If the fish is stressed and the immune system goes down, they will host in larger more visible numbers.

No expert on the disease forum believes there is a product you can add to a reef tank that will kill all ich and nothing else. They seem to feel the only way to kill off ich is to quarantine all fish in a seperate tank for 30-40 days. Your main tank will become ich free because the parasite cannot survive 30-40 days without a host.

I order to kill the parasites on your fish, in the Q tank you can treat with copper if you fish are copper safe, or you can treat with hyposalinity. I'm still researching hyposalinity so I won't tell you how to do it but will say it involves slowly dropping your salinity in the Q tank to 1.009 for a period of time and then raising it back up.

Good luck and I hope this information helps.

 

[starrfish]

Sorry about your loss. Here is a good article on all kinds of marine diseases. Included is some good info on ich and how to treat it with hypo:

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/hyposalinity.html

Personally, I would assume that all of your fish are carrying the parasite. I would remove all of them from the main tank and treat them in a QT with hypo. I would leave the main tank free of fish (ie, host) for 6 weeks to be on the safe side.

Good luck,
starrfish

 

[SherryQ]

Thanks for all the replies.
I don't think I can totally remove all the fish. The three chormis - yes - in fact I wasn't planning on keeping them. But, there is one or two little gobies living in a coral colony. I don't think they would take kindly to being removed. This is such a bummer. I really wanted to start stocking this tank. I'm just not sure what to do next at this point. Maybe get rid of the chromis and wait awhile before adding any new fish.
I read about the hyposalinity treatment and I began to try it on some of my gobies (my 10 gallon goby tank came down with ick a day before I got the butterfly). I removed them from the tank and was going to try a combination of the hyposalinity and moving between buckets trick. They did not eat, so I slowly raised the salinity back up and put them in the main tank where they began to eat again. Two of them are better, one of them died - a scooter blenny who was being kept in the 10 gallon only temporarily (I think the hyposalinity treatment did it in - it was all swollen), and the neon goby who I could not catch and who remained in the tank the whole time died.
So, I just don't know how to proceed.
Frustrating.

 

[reefsmurf]

I got ick from a store who's name I will not mention but I only bought snails from them and my flame angel who was healthy in my tank for a long time got a bit of ich. I know it's a bit of an old wive's tail, but adding garlic did seem to help .. none of my other fish got it and the ich did seem to reduce and mostly go away on the flame. He was never the same though. He seemed healthy but the ich would always come back, but in very low numbers.

I used the McCormack garlic juice from the supermarket. They are now using garlic extracts for cats and dogs too. Good luck.

 

[SherryQ]

Thanks. I am feeding all my saltwater fish garlic.

Sherry

 

[soccer4life94]

There is a great article they wrote over a 5 month period that talks about what Ick is, treatment rumors, and the actual ways to clean it from your tank:

http://advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2003/mini1.htm
http://advancedaquarist.com/issues/dec2003/mini2.htm
http://advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan2004/mini3.htm
http://advancedaquarist.com/issues/feb2004/mini4.htm
http://advancedaquarist.com/issues/mar2004/mini5.htm

there is alot of misinformation about Ick. I hope this helps you out some. If nothing else its a good read.

Kel

 

[SherryQ]

Thanks. I read the articles - a lot of great info.