Ick help

DRC Archive General Saltwater Discussion
1

Hi Guys, I noticed 3 days ago some ick on my newer flame angel. then cleared up than came back had him a little over 2 weeks. he was fine for a while then i had a ammonia spike did my regular water change 10g. did a ammonia test next day it was still .25 or .50 did another 10g water change next day the same so i did 3 10g water changes to get the ammonia under control. so i am thinking thats why the ick is showing on the flame angel. i raised the temperature to about 90* then noticed the clowns acting a little weird (maybe it was just me over thinking) but i lowered my heater from 89* to 86* i know the ammonia spike was from over feeding i was trying to get a new little guy to eat.

I read to feed them garlic, i have omega one pellets w/garlic. is that good enough ? is there any thing else i can do ? i have a reef tank with corals and anemones by the way i noticed the ick on the flame angel and royal gamma (i bought the flame and gamma at the same time) and 1 or 2 spots on my new sunburst/fat head anthias other older fish show no signs.

2

You could also add a little Microbe Lift Special blend bacteria, or something after water changes to get the bio filter count back up to speed. it helps.

3

Temp has no bearing on ich. Hypo salinity is the best solution for marine ich, which involves a hospital tank set at 1.009 sg for 8 weeks.

People can be anal about linking other forums but I don’t see the problem in spreading good information to our friends in the hobby (its not a cool kid contest after all) so here are 2 links to VERY good information.

http://www.reefland.com/forum/marine-fish-care-health-disease-treatment/20321-marine-ich-myths-facts.html

http://www.reefland.com/forum/marine-fish-care-health-disease-treatment/21830-hyposalinity-treatment.html

4

As Tim said raising the temp won’t help. It will likely kill the fish and any coral before ich. Fresh water ich is effected by high temps, but not marine ich.

More importantly that what effects ich is what effects your fish. You should never ever read ammonia in a marine aquarium that has life stock in it. You shouldn’t be buying any animals at all for your aquarium for the next month and revisit the basics. How large and frequent are your normal water changes? How mature is your aquarium? What types of filtration you use? Skimmer? Carbon? What do you normally keep your temp and salinity at? I’d recommend targeting 80F (+or- 1) and 1.025(using a refractometer not a swing arm hydrometer, if you own a swing arm throw it in the trash or better yet throw it off a building and then trash it) You also should have 0ppm Ammonia, 0ppm Nitrite, and less them 5ppm Nitrate. If not begin small daily water changes with a good salt.

I would not recommend hyposalinity in this situation. First thing is first make sure you have healthy conditions in your display tank for the animals you have.

5

Temp is always @ 80/81F, salinity was always .22 or .23. And I do use a swing arm hydrometer. I am doing 10g water changes every 5 to 7 days. I’m using reef crystals salt. I have a 10g sump filled with live rock halfway. Small bag of carbon near the return pump. Cheato with T5 running on it 24/7 I have a skimmer but won’t fit in my 10g I have other sump fuge but couldn’t get it to fit under my tank

6

Pick up a refractometer if you can. Most LFS in the state don’t carry them, so call ahead to make sure they do before driving out. Premium Aquatics usually has on. 10gallon water changes on a 70gallon tank? That would work with a low bio load and an efficient skimmer, but may not be enough currently. Nitrate and Nitrite level is?

Switch the Chaetomorpha to lighting to 12 hours opposite that of the display tank and it will help stabilize the pH. It is an extremely rare case when pH isn’t swinging low in a marine aquarium, so we should do what we can to help prevent swings and increase it.

7

i never seen my nitrite over 0pmm and for nitrate im pretty sure it was never over 0ppm but maybe 5.0pmm its kinda hard to tell it never looked orange. allways yellow. i am not running a skimmer. i may be in the market for a hob skimmer

8

You may want to try to make it out to a meeting - we are raffelling off refractometers periodically throughout the year.

If you’re only ever reading 0 or 5 ppm nitrate I’d suggest either having your water tested by a second test kit (local fish store), or feeding more as your fish are lijely starving. I have a basketball sized load of cheato in my fuge and I still get nitrates up to 10 ppm

9

[quote=“Cdangel0, post:8, topic:3988”]
You may want to try to make it out to a meeting - we are raffelling off refractometers periodically throughout the year.

If you’re only ever reading 0 or 5 ppm nitrate I’d suggest either having your water tested by a second test kit (local fish store), or feeding more as your fish are lijely starving. I have a basketball sized load of cheato in my fuge and I still get nitrates up to 10 ppm[/quote]

Respectfully, that is a sign of over feeding. Nitrate levels should always be at 0 in a well bio-filtered tank with weekly 10-20% water changes. Feed only what they will eat as you stand there and make sure they eat each bite. I haven’t read nitrates over 0 almost a year and I use Salifert’s test, and all my fish are fat.

Another note on feeding, some people add vitamins to the water… thats not going to feed the fish just add nitrates. If you supplement vitamins, soak DRY food in it and remove excess fluid before feeding, and frozen mysis should be thawed and rinsed before fed to the fish as well to remove particle waste.

10

I know I over-feed - but my fish eat like I do.

99% of us do not have nitrate consuming bacteria in our systems (with the known exception of Ken) so macro-algae and water changes are essential to lowering nitrates. While I understand the desire to always be at 0 for your nitrate readings I think there are benefits to having “some” and by “some” I mean 10 ppm or less. Like temperature and salinity if the number is ALWAYS stable than our organisms don’t have the ability to react and adjust to fluctuations when they do happen.

If your nitrates are always at zero and you leave for a long weekend and something dies in your tank (like an anemone (god forbid))your fish and coras are less likely to be able to handle the nitrate spike and are more likely to suffer an ill-fate as a result.

11

If your nitrates are at 10ppm and a fish dies your going to simply have a higher spike and bigger problems, keeping them at 0ppm in your scenario would be a buffer to huge spikes, but the ammonia is the problem with a death not nitrates anyhow. As far as I know fish don’t really build up a tolerance to nitrates like drinking beer lol. Its the coral that can fail due to nitrates as low 10ppm.

12

Nitrate readings are all relative when using cheap hobby grade test kits. Your both wrong to an extent, but then again when your data has an accuracy range of ±20ppm you may be dead on(this range is obviously greater then the manufacturer claims, but what manufacturer is going to tell the truth when the entire industry is not monitored by anyone). An accurate reading of 0.00pm Nitrate could really harm some animals and Tim if you actually had that your Macro wouldn’t be slow growing it would be crashing and a lot of the stuff that grows on your rock and sand just wouldn’t. Do you keep Xenia or Anthelia in your tank Tim? If you really have 0ppm Nitrates any species of the Xennidae family wouldn’t grow and would likely crash. I know you think if you use a crappy test kit over and over again and take the average your results are some how just a good as a lab grade test kit, but that simply is not the case.

[quote=“TimH07, post:9, topic:3988”]
some people add vitamins to the water… thats not going to feed the fish[/quote]
Right.

[quote=“TimH07, post:9, topic:3988”]
just add nitrates.[/quote]
Wrong. For those of us who keep fish AND coral vitamins can benefit coral significantly. Spot feeding is better then broad cast, but broad cast still can be beneficial to some extent.(likely won’t cure ich, but has has other benefits) I am sure this information you are passing on came from something you read on a forum or heard in an LFS, but if you really look into it Vitamins can significantly improve coral health and growth rates.

[quote=“Cdangel0, post:10, topic:3988”]
99% of us do not have nitrate consuming bacteria in our systems[/quote]
I am not sure who started this, but this is just not right. I’d argue any of us that have live rock in our aquariums that was live when we received have some denitrifying bacteria in our aquariums.

[quote=“Cdangel0, post:10, topic:3988”]
so macro-algae and water changes are essential to lowering nitrates. [/quote]
This is true though macro-algae is optional just as is a protein skimmer and activated carbon. Ideally we’d us a bit of all of these filtration systems, but none of us on the forum can avoid the essential all mighty water changes.

I completely agree with Craig’s statement that some Nitrates in the system can have it’s benefits. Those with accurate test kits who reach 0.0ppm Nitrates have often found very negative results. As I stated earlier Xennidae corals and macro algae won’t grow, but also color lose in scleractinians, RTN, and STN are also signs of Nitrate and phosphates being stripped too low.

This is all an aside from the topic at hand though.

13

[quote=“Gordonious, post:12, topic:3988”]

[quote=“Cdangel0, post:10, topic:3988”]
99% of us do not have nitrate consuming bacteria in our systems[/quote]
I am not sure who started this, but this is just not right. I’d argue any of us that have live rock in our aquariums that was live when we received have some denitrifying bacteria in our aquariums. [/quote]

OK - how about “Not enough denitrifying bacteria to be overly beneficial”?

I’m referencing more the DSB anaerobic bacteria. I think Ken is the only one in the club that still runs a functioning DSB (and a plenum)

14

Anaerobic bacteria exist inside of live rock regardless of what you’ve heard on the forum in the past. Not enough to be overly beneficial is slightly better, but it is relative and wrong when it comes to many balanced aquariums. In most of my aquariums containing little fish and in the past often receiving very little food there was plenty anerobic bacteria to keep the Nitrates very low. With significant nutrient management(coming close to just adding the food needed by the animals present) and significant reduction of excess nitrates and phosphates via use of activated carbon, phosphate reducers, and protein skimming what is left in the water column can be significantly impacted by the denitrifying bacteria.
In your aquarium you may feed enough that the anaerobic bacteria isn’t capable of making a “significant impact”, but if you stepped back on the feeding a bit and kept up with the maintenance you are doing now it may be the difference between seeing 5ppm and 10ppm on your kit.
If somehow you could remove the anaerobic bacteria and leave everything else constant not only would just the numbers on your kit change(say from 10ppm to 25ppm), but the amount of cyano present on your sand bed would likely increase by 90%, the majano anemones growth rate would reduce likely increase by 50%, your scleractinians would become much darker and grow 95% slower, but then again your Xenia corals and your BTA could slightly increase in growth rates.

Another way of looking at it: It is likely some of the stages of algae growth an aquarium goes through during the first couple of months of maturity is a direct result of the small amount of anaerobic bacteria present in the rock. If you used only half live rock and half dry rock and the “live rock” you added was shipped in bags not filled with water, but just wet newspaper a lot of the anaerobic bacteria present may be harmed. Not to mention the fact that the nitrate concentration in the ocean is much less then it will ever be in a maturing aquarium, so the relative concentration of this bacteria is smaller to begin with.
So perhaps the reason we get all this unsightly cyanobacteria growth, and hair algae during the first couple of months and the reason most are not successfull with placing Acropora in a 1 month old aquarium built from scratch has something to do with the small amount of anaerobic bacteria present in those aquariums as compared with a mature aquariums such as Cdanel0.

So if the fact that your sand bed isn’t full of cynao, rock isn’t covered in hair algae, and majano anemones are present, but not over growing your new found “sps” corals isn’t a “overly beneficial” result of denitrifying bacteria, then perhaps you could live with or with out them. :wink:

In my opinion one of the greatest differences between an established aquarium and a newly set up aquarium besides the knowledge and experience of the hobbyist is because of the amount of anaerobic bacteria present.

15

Ok I guess a better way to express what I said by “good bio-filter” is that your system can cope with the minimal nitrates that are in your tank. So with my Caulerpa growing very slowly I have some nitrates, BUT it is being dealt with by the Caulerpa, and minimal skimmate in the skimmer, 0 micro algae growth. Having a reading of 10ppm nitrates WITH growing macro algae and skimmer means you do NOT have a proper bio-filter in place OR are over feeding.

Again, nitrates with good filter become consumed too quickly to accumulate and weekly water changes should remove any excess that would show up at 10+ ppm on a test.