Lets discuss ICH treatment

[Jeremy Brito]

So guys at the moment I have lost 2 fish how ever the rest of the fish now appear ich free.. At least for the moment.
Not letting my guard down I decided it was time to look at ICH cryptocaryon irritants under a scientific eye.
Dust off those old biology text books guys and lets break it down by the numbers
First Marine ich aka crypto caryon is a organism know as a protazoans it belongs to the family of ciliates which is a name/term for what it uses to move and how it moves.
There are freshwater and salt water types.
Ich is a parasite and requires a host to help complete its up to 48 day life cycle which includes an egg stage, a free swimming stage, a feeding stage, and finally its encasement reproduction stage.
its most voulnerable in its free swimming stage.
It is sensitive to temperatures above 31 degrees Celsius in which it becomes stressed and temperatures above 39 degrees celsius have been known to kill it.
More to come

 

[_DZ_r€€f]

Fish Disease Treatment and Diagnosis There is tons of info almost anything u need for regarding fish

 

[Tyler]

I’ll be that guy and start by saying prevention is the best treatment. QTing new fish, especially those that stress easily and/or are prone to ich is really important, but you should quarantine all new fish, even if it’s just for two weeks. Beyond that you should make sure all your fish have enough room and are eating a good diet to ensure they live the most stress free life possible, helping to keep their immune system up to combat the parasite.
As for treatment once you have a fish with it, there’s a lot of options. The most common is copper. Simply dose it in a QT system at keep it at therapeutic levels for a couple weeks and it should die off. My personal favorite method is TTM, or tank transfer. Basically it allows you to outrun to life cycle of the parasites by changing tanks every day. Doing this will leave behind the previous life cycle and eventually they will no longer be able to reproduce. This is likely not as hard on the fish as copper and the treatment goes by much faster. I think i covered most of the important stuff


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jeremy Brito]

Hey everyone i just wanted to give you all some updates and let you know about a article i posted to the First Aid Forum called treatment Options, The article came from a post i found during my research on the REEFTOREEF forum. It lists all the most common medications and treatments on the market or in the hobby and how to use them plus there pros and cons and side effects and warnings. It is a very good read and i think will help alot of us out in the future.

I recently watch a video on youtube regarding illness in the aquarium and during it i heard a very good qoute, "we dont have Vets in are hobby, so part of being a good hobbyist we also need to be are own Vet"
this statement rings true to me like no other.. unlike are other house hold pets we dont really have the ability to take are fish to the vet when they get sick.. its just not practical but that doesnt mean we cant bring the vet to them by learning the basics of identifying when are fish are sick, understanding the illness, understanding the treatment options, and understanding the effects are treatments will have and the risks or benefits to using them.

So you all will be happy to know that currently my fish are ich free and appear healthy and happy... the tank may have ich lurking about but for the time being it is under control and i would love to share with you what i did and how i did it.

First RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH... i cant stress enough how much time i spent reading about ICH its biology, its life cycle, its strengths and weaknesses, its effects on fish, what helps it and what kills it! we have the internet and with limitless resources at are hands, in this hobby we have to become the experts you should all consider your self amateur Marine Biologists, basic water Chemists, Marine Life Vets, Researchers ect..

During my research i learned about the ICH life cycle and its weak point which happens to be its free swimming stage, i learned that its free swimming stage can be brought forth faster by increasing the tank temperature, i learned that certain medications thought to be ineffective, actually are effective but only if used at the correct time in the correct way.
So it began, first i raised the tank temperature slowly to 80 degrees over a period of 2 days, during this increase of temperature i made sure to increase oxygenation of the water by adding extra circulation and I also feed pure oxygen into the water using a medical oxygen canister and airstone. I did this because of 3 reasons, the first was ich effects the fishes ability to breath, the second is because warmer water loses oxygen faster, and the third is because the medications i would be using would also deplete the waters oxygen level greatly (this is true for almost all medications).
The next step occurred on day 3, learning that it would be extremely difficult to remove all the fish and treat them out side of display tank i decided i needed to go a route of treatment that could be preformed directly in the tank but would be safe for the inverts and coral which ruled out copper type treatments and left me with a few options that have been hotly debated as to if they would work or not, but going with the thought its better to try something then nothing i decided to choose the ones that people have claimed to have the most success with, these were Metronidazole, prazipro, and a seachem product called neoplex. ***also one other medication called Chloroquine phosphate (not reef safe).
Metronidazole: is used to treat internal parasites mainly and will only work on ICH once its feeding on your fish prior to it forming its cyst encasement (the visible white spot). Metronidazole can be purchased in a product by seachem known as metroplex, it comes as a powder that can be added to the water or laced into food and feed to the fish. There isnt a clear answer on if it causes issues with inverts or corals so i went with the food laceing method which had the better results and produced little to no reports of issues effecting corals. To mix with food i used a second product by Seachem called focus which is a binding agent that helps the medication attach to the food and finally i added a garlic extract it improve the taste since there have been reports of fish rejecting the food do to taste and losing there appetites after consuming the medication. I treated with this medication every other day for a total of 3 doses, then i ran activated carbon to remove any residual medication left in the water before i started the next process
Prazipro: is used to treat external and internal parasites, and is believed to be reef safe except to benifical worms such as feather dusters. ***after stopping the carbon *** Dose 1 teaspoon per 20 gallons so in my case 5 teaspoons, again increase the oxygenation of the tank during the treatment process which takes 5 days per a round of treatment. After a round of treatment run carbon for atleast a day to remove residual medication and any ammonia that may have died during the die off in the tank especially if your tank had a large population of worms.
finally this part was done along side the first 2 treatments. I used Neoplex a medication by Seachem that has beneficial antibiotics that assist with healing of wounds and infections that may come secondary to a parasitic infestation.
the combination of these treatments done in this order with the measures taken to keep the water safe led to my tanks fish population to return to a healthy symptom free state, i am not saying this eradicated the ICH in my tank but it did help my fish fight off the ich and return them to appearingly full health.
One last note i recently obtained a medication known as Chloroquine Phosphate, it is unknown if this medication can be used safely in a reef tank by food lacing but it has had many good reports of successfully working and killing off ich. If it comes down to a last resort situation i may try the food lace method with this medication and i will report the results to you all here

 

[diana a]

You are planning for the DT to be fallow for 4 months? I hope to never get ich but if I do, I will only use TTM, Copper and/or hypo to treat fish.

Good luck!

 

[Jeremy Brito]

You are planning for the DT to be fallow for 4 months? I hope to never get ich but if I do, I will only use TTM, Copper and/or hypo to treat fish.

Good luck!

At this point currently no not unless I see signs agAin

Sent from my VS835 using Tapatalk

 

[ecam]

One last note i recently obtained a medication known as Chloroquine Phosphate, it is unknown if this medication can be used safely in a reef tank by food lacing but it has had many good reports of successfully working and killing off ich. If it comes down to a last resort situation i may try the food lace method with this medication and i will report the results to you all here



If you purchased the CP via Ebay... be careful its often diluted and wont be effective. the other thing is that CP is a powerful algaecide . which will kill an coral. Its also light sensitive so the reef lights will render it useless rather quickly. in addition its very bitter and fish will not eat it...

Good luck with whatever you chose and keep us posted

 

[Jeremy Brito]

I have access to a Vet and I got a script for it. I was aware of all that as well but thank you for the heads up

 

[ecam]

Well that is great. Maybe you can get me your vet to write me a prescription as well. I lost my vet when dr jim left.

 

[ecam]

And don’t use cp on wrasses. And hippo tangs. Instant death !!!

 

[Jeremy Brito]

As far as copper treatments and tank transfer methods.. I know they are both the most reliable with the addition of hyposalinity. I am also aware that the fish keeping community both fresh and salt have pretty much gone to them as a standard since it is difficult to find treatments that are worth the time outside of these, but my point in trying this is that the reason these are the main ones is because the others don't have much research done with them. The metroplex I,used its primary medicine doze kill parasites its used in humans for this purpose the problem with it in,the aquarium setting is that in my opinion in order for it to work it has to be administered at the right time via the right methods .. I believe a lot of people have tried and failed with other medications because of errors pertaining to treating thw right way with the medication of choice during the right stage of the parasites life cycle

 

[Jeremy Brito]

And don’t use cp on wrasses. And hippo tangs. Instant death !!!

Lol you must not have seen my post on this medicine in the other forum your pretty much reading it back to me word for word

 

[Jeremy Brito]

Also I think when people fail with other treatments, they tend to blame the treatment saying its garbage and doesnt work.. And then everyone else assumes it doesn't work so they also say it doesn't work and then no one tries it. Think of it like a diabetic being prescribed meds.. If he doesn't take them correctly he will not get the results he is supposed to get .. That doesnt mean the meds are bad just that they didnt work as designed because they weren't used right