:-?
So I come home tonight and my tangs have ick. Once again my tank is infected. No new adds except couple frags from TFP which prolly introduced it. I’m so pissed right now just using the forum to vent.
I’m going to get more garlic juice and dose my frozen foods with it to help boost their immune systems. All I can really do is wait it out and hope for the best or lose $300 in livestock.
I would begin checking your parameters. I think the chances of a few frags infecting your tank are slim. If the fish were healthy and fine then they would be able to fight off the ick - and if you are alreadt seeing the spots as an outbreak then I do not think it could have come from something recently (within lat week) added to the tank.
More then likely something is causing stress to the fish - salinity, ammonia, stray current something is causing them to not be able to fight off the ick.
Ammonia - 0
Nitrates - ~0
Nitrites - .10
Salinity - 1.23
Extra food w/gahlic and cut the lights down for a couple of days.
How is your heater functioning? I had an ich outbreak shortly after I realized that my heater was fluctuating 4-5 degrees up and down with the cold snaps we were having last month…
this time of year I use 2 heaters …
so sorry ry. hope them seeing me outside the tank wasn’t the cause. lol good luck. it’s a beautiful tank.
Sorry to hear, never fun when disease hits.
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:2, topic:1156”]
I think the chances of a few frags infecting your tank are slim. [/quote]
I would aruge they were pretty high especially considering the source tank is full of ich 99% of the time. This is one reason why I qt all wet animals.
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:2, topic:1156”]
and if you are alreadt seeing the spots as an outbreak then I do not think it could have come from something recently (within lat week) added to the tank.[/quote]
Could be right there, but I don’t know the time line.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:7, topic:1156”]
Sorry to hear, never fun when disease hits.
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:2, topic:1156”]
I think the chances of a few frags infecting your tank are slim. [/quote]
I would aruge they were pretty high especially considering the source tank is full of ich 99% of the time. This is one reason why I qt all wet animals.
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:2, topic:1156”]
and if you are alreadt seeing the spots as an outbreak then I do not think it could have come from something recently (within lat week) added to the tank.[/quote]
Could be right there, but I don’t know the time line. [/quote]
Gong back to the theory that all tanks have ick in them (all those that don’t QT anyway) and that it only effects fish unable to fight the parasite then I believe adding new ick to the tank would nt have affected the fish.
The frags were in the tank for less then a week if my memory of last weekends threads is correct. I was always under the belief that a fish would need to be infected for at least a week before the ick became visible.
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:8, topic:1156”]
Gong back to the theory that all tanks have ick in them (all those that don’t QT anyway) and that it only effects fish unable to fight the parasite then I believe adding new ick to the tank would nt have affected the fish.[/quote]
It is a really complex relationship and difficult to understand exactly what goes on, but my best grasp at understanding something I have seen constantly repeat itself in the hobby over and over: Often times I’ve read on the forums or have someone tell me in person they hadn’t had a sick fish in a very long time then when they added a new animal all there fish got sick. A million and one things could have happened to cause the ich, but one possability is that the fish in the tank became temporarily imminue to ich a long time ago and the ich slowly disapeared in the tank. Then things went real well in the tank for a long time and the tank was slowly ignored. Nitrates got high and temp swings nightly due to a faulty heater, but the fish showed no symptoms as there was no ich in the system. A tiny bit of water was added from an LFS and all the stressed fish(from poor conditions, plus the owners hands in the tank) quickly got ick. Just one of a million possabilities.
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:8, topic:1156”]
The frags were in the tank for less then a week if my memory of last weekends threads is correct. I was always under the belief that a fish would need to be infected for at least a week before the ick became visible.[/quote]
[quote=“Gordonious, post:7, topic:1156”]
Could be right there, but I don’t know the time line. [/quote]
Valid points. But how long does it take ich to go from being microscopic to a full fledged outbreak visible to the naked eye?
I’m gonna have to agree with Jon here, I think, or just put my 2 pence in.
The ich may or may not be in the tank and just because you don’t quarantine doesn’t mean 99% of the time it’s in there. If all this fish are immune and nothing else is added theoretically in 8 weeks all the ich should be gone. Then the fish loose their immunity because the disease is no longer present and then it can be reintroduced from adding something to the tank.
Granted I don’t know and you don’t know if the fish are really immune and the ich dies from their body or it just goes into a recession to a point where we can’t see.
Bottom line either way the fish’s immune systems were lowered because of some type of slight stress in the water and now have ich. Fix it (and give it time) and the ich will go away.
Or you can quarantine every creature in your tank for 8 weeks before you put it in and that 8 week clock will restart everytime you add something else to your quarantine tank.
Now some food for thought. Does a fish that is constantly introduced to slight pathogens and their immune system fights it off OR a fish that lives in an environment where everything going in has been quarantined and is pathogen free, which one has the stronger immune system? (I’m thinking along the lines of ich as the pathogen here)
All valid opinions but let me add the only fish infected are my tangs. (Scopas and Hippo) Could their fighting stress each other enough to get infected? The Scopas is the dominant one even though he is smaller and he has like maybe 3 bumps where as the hippo has like 8.
Fighting can absolutely cause stress to the point of being susceptible to ich, especially since tangs in general are prone to ich. How long have they been in the tank together that they are still fighting?
Got the Hippo in Nov. they fought a little at first but now I haven’t seen em really go at it.
"Bottom line either way the fish’s immune systems were lowered because of some type of slight stress in the water and now have ich. Fix it (and give it time) and the ich will go away.
Or you can quarantine every creature in your tank for 8 weeks before you put it in and that 8 week clock will restart everytime you add something else to your quarantine tank."
Ian this is competly true, but really think about it for a second. Analyzing this train of thought is part of what convinced me to read a little more into QTing animals. Events are envitable. As I’ve said before I’ve had heaters fail and the temp drop to 75 and air conditionars fail and temps hit 90, but my fish have shown no outward signs of disease. For most of us having a second tank is not a huge deal many of us have at least two anyways. The difficult part is not buying anything for 8 weeks.(which is what drives me to have multiple qt tanks.
"Does a fish that is constantly introduced to slight pathogens and their immune system fights it off OR a fish that lives in an environment where everything going in has been quarantined and is pathogen free, which one has the stronger immune system? " In my tanks I have lost three fish to an anemone(little yellow clown gobies and a neon goby) and one fish to an eel. All of the fish I lost were due to predation and not to disease or other illness. I did also lose an angelfish, but that was because it could not handle a copper treatment I put it through a long time ago.
sneaky as cdangelo said Tangs are very prone to get ich. They typically are the first to show signs of it.
Is my world coming to an end? My son decided to put my whole test kit into my sump and add a few diapers. I recovered the test kit no spill but one of the diapers soaked up a bunch of water. Do I need to pull my whole system and clean it before rerunning the tank?
jeez, ry. a clean diaper or not?
Cloth diapor or disposable? How long was it in there? Was the system running when the diapers were added? For time being with out those answers I would say at least keep the power heads in and the heaters running in the display. Might want to throw in some carbon to.(in a filter bag)
Ouch! Change some water! That sucks, how do you child proof a tank/sump? You should probably put your test kits (in the future) somewhere where your kid can’t get to them as they usually contain some chemicals that aren’t the best to be ingested, but I’m guessing your planning on keeping them somewhere else now.
Sorry to hear about it, hate when things go wrong.
How long were they in the tank?
They absorb very quick and don’t release very quickly. I am sure they use something nasty but it has to be semi safe as its next to your kids butt