# Ich!



## CowgirlFishKeeper (Jun 4, 2010)

I had Ich a week back at stage 1, and my friend told me to lower salinity over a 24 hour period to 1.015 and wash the top layer of my live sand with hot water and vinegar and leave the salinity a few days, but....How long is long enough? I will be getting some non copper Ich meds in a week or so, should I raise my salinity back up the ten points in the next couple days, or leave it until I can medicate? I haven't seen any Ich since day 2 of lowering the salinity, and it's been like this 6 days now.


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## kitten_penang (Mar 26, 2008)

i read in another post that you shouldn't use salt and medication together.


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## aunt kymmie (Jun 2, 2008)

This is a saltwater tank, correct? If so, saltwater ich and freshwater ich are two different things. I'll leave the treatment of saltwater ich to the S/W members but I recall some of the best advice I'd seen dispense was to do nothing other than to feed garlic. I would need to go hunt down Pasfur's post regarding his protocol for garlic treatment for ich. I'm a huge fan of avoiding meds if at all possible.


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## aunt kymmie (Jun 2, 2008)

Here's the thread I was referring to:

http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/saltwater-fish-diseases/ich-experienced-fishkeeper-16824/


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## kitten_penang (Mar 26, 2008)

ty aunt kymmie


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## CowgirlFishKeeper (Jun 4, 2010)

I do feed them a home made food that contains garlic in it; I also haven't seen spots on them for a while. I guess it's safe to raise the salinity again?


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## Pasfur (Mar 29, 2008)

If i'm reading this correct it has only been 9 days since you last saw ich. Is this correct? I would wait a minimum of 30 days to begin raising the salinity back, and continue feeding garlic daily for a minimum of 60 days. A full 90 days is the period of time I personally use to consider any ich treatment to have been successful. The last thing you want is a false recovery only to have lingering problems with additional fish.


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## CowgirlFishKeeper (Jun 4, 2010)

The food I use has garlic in it, and that's a staple, that I feed along with some frozen blood worms and the rare treat of Mysis Shrimp. I will keep that up. 

And I'd say it's closer to 14 days that this has been like this, maybe 20...


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## Pasfur (Mar 29, 2008)

Just stay patient. You should use the next 45 days or so to get a quarantine tank in place.


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## CowgirlFishKeeper (Jun 4, 2010)

I can't afford a quarantine tank unfortunately...Nor have the space.


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## rach867 (Jul 27, 2010)

*Help!*

ok, so I need some help. We have a 46 gallon bow saltwater tank thats been set up now for about 3 months. once the tank was established we bought a yellow tang, a bicolor angel, Naked Clown fish, Perculous Clown fish, purple fire fish, watchmen goby, and a coral beauty. ( not all these fish at the same time) But they have all died to what we think is ICH. We have been treating the tank to get rid of it and once we think its gone...add fish and they die again due to the white spots. 
We then bought a quarantine tank, and treated the main tank with kick ich. We treated the quarantine tank with copper and put garlic in the food for both tanks. None of this has seemed to help. I dont know If its in the main tank still, but all along it never effect the Fire fish or the watchmen goby, which we still have.
We put another Coral beauty in the quarantine tank and that also developed Ich, so we treated that with the kick ich, copper and para guard, (all at different times) but the fish still has white spots on one of the fins and all over its tail. 

I dont know what to do at this point, Im at a loss.


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## njudson (May 21, 2009)

If you still have fish in the main tank which it sounds like you do it is probable that ich is still present there. If you want to be fully rid of it for good you would need to let the tank be fish free for 6+ weeks. However it is perfectly normal for a marine tank to have some ich present. You just generally do no see any signs of it because healthy happy well fed fish are able to fight off the parasite on their own and most of the time don't show any signs of ich.

The good news is it seems like you are on the right track because you are QTing your new fish. Keep running your QT at low salinity and use your copper med of choice. What you need to do is slow introduce healthy fish to your display tank. If you keep introducing stressed fish or fish that are not suitable for a 46g (like a tang) you will continue to have ich.

This is a good read if you want some info on marine ich
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.php


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