Ich in my tank need help please

[ichthyoid]

I am never sure which disease someone is talking about, in a marine aquarium, if they refer to it as ‘ich’. There is a freshwater disease called Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, which many of us have dealt with & I assume is the origin of use.

Anyway..
I’m going to assume here that by ich it means Cryptocaryon irritans, which is also a ciliated protozoan found in marine waters.

Two other common external disease organisms we often deal with are Amyloodinium ocellatum a dinoflagellate, sometimes called velvet, & Brooklynella hostilis another ciliated protozoan, though smaller than cryptocaryon.

I’m going to say something that may come across as harsh. In this hobby, having a way to prophylactically treat fish before putting them in a display tank or quarantine them in an effort to prevent infecting the display and/or a UV in the display, is required imho. Unless you know ALL of the fish, organisms & water that enters your tank is parasite free. That said, you never will know this with certainty. So, pick your poison (so you speak) or expect losses.

Regardless of what you are dealing with, I would put an appropriately sized UV sterilizer with an appropriately sized pump/flow through it, on the main tank.

If you are dealing with Brooklynella you may have already lost most or all of your fish by the time you read this. It rapidly divides by binary fission and can overwhelm an aquarium in hours to days.

Cryptocaryon is an insidious disease with which I am all too familiar.

I have used quinine based products successfully for decades to treat ectoparasites. The current favorite chloroquine phosphate is unavailable due to COVID-19. Many use chelated copper successfully, but never with invertebrates. Fwiw- Previously I have also used quinine sulfate & quinacrine hydrochloride, but could not find available sources last time I looked.

Approach the available information with care. There isn’t much money in doing research on aquatic parasites/diseases. Many of the companies that do it are interested in selling products to combat these conditions, so often have little inclination to share significant data.

My $0.02

 

[qasimja]

i learned my lesson in 2019 when i lost all my fish to velvet i had never even heard of it before that i hadn't had a tank in about 4-5 years right now its pretty rampant in the trade so ive heard what ive been curious about is do fish just carry this disease then with stress it explodes how do they survive weeks with it in holding tanks and through import then we get it into our tanks it kills within a matter of days

 

[ichthyoid]

That ^ is the general consensus.

Fish may often carry these organisms in small numbers, or even an individual. It apparently doesn’t usually cause a problem, unless & until they are exposed to handling & stress. Then boom!

The handling rubs off their mucus layer, which may also be colonized by organisms that help protect them (eg- bacteria, fungi, etc.). The stress from being transported & handled depresses their immune systems further. Once exposed in this state, organisms that usually don’t cause significant problems increase rapidly & especially in the limited volumes encountered during transport, distribution & in an aquarium. The oceans are infinite by comparison.

There are many accounts, me among them, of healthy fish which spontaneously show one or more parasites visible on them & which then just disappear. These fish are almost always in established healthy environments with low stress, eating well & in otherwise great condition. The fish obviously have some ability to fight off these parasites. They have evolved for millennia doing so. To think otherwise is naive, but that ability is also limited.

By placing fish in such constricted spaces as in an aquarium, we also assume the responsibility to help control any consequences of doing so. Diseases being a primary one (eg- UV’s), along with proper & adequate foods (eg- mandarins, butterfly’s, harlequin shrimp, etc.).