Help Ich or something else?

[LaurieC]

Help! Ich or somthing else?
I noticed that my two neon cleaner gobies had some white spots on them, but then I also noticed that one of them also had a larger brownish, tanish spot on his side. I removed both from the DT and now have them in QT. What is this? How do I treat them and what should I do to my DT to make sure this doesn't spread. I have various corals, snails, hermits, shrimp, other fish, etc. I have UV running so very suprised by this. Tank has been running since Aug. 1 and these fish have been in the tank and healthy for a month. 55g, 60lbs lr, live sand, canister filters (just cleaned a week ago), I do a weekly 10% water change. Temp. 80. Parameters tested this am:



SG: 1.023

Ph: 8.4

A: 0

Ni: 0

Na: 10

Alk: 3 meg/L

Mag: 1110

Ca: 410

I have one or two small aptasia which the berghia nudis are taking care of, but no other anenomes. Corals are ricordia, mushrooms, acans, kenya tree, montipora, dendrophyllia, chili coral.

THanks!!

 

[basiab]

Looks like a nice pair and looks like ich. Surprised that it would not show for a month. I got a pair once and both got it within a week. I took them out and treated them with copper and one made it (still have it) and the other died. I never saw them trying to clean each other even though they clean other fish. Anyway you can try to just feed them well and hope for the best or remove them and treat with something or try one of the other many suggestions on this site. It looks like they have it bad so I would treat them.

 

[LaurieC]

They are so cute together I'd hate to loose them or one. Some of that is sand since I took the photo right after I caught them. Had to tear my tank apart to get them--fast little critters. It is weird that it suddenly developed and none of the other fish have it (yet). Poor neons, they clean everyone else and then they get sick. Suprised the cleaner shrimp didn't clean them either. I haven't added anything since the swap and they were ok in the morning, then before bed, bam they have ich and somekind of brownish discoloration too. Debating if I need to remove all fish and treat all of the fish in a seperate tank. My QT is only 10G (nyc apt. little space!) so I may need to go get a bigger tank to house them all.

 

[ellebelle]

Laurie,

First, a UV will only kill the ich parasite in the free swimming stage. Secondly, in order for the UV to have enough time to kill ich, you need to make sure that the bulb is clean and you are sending water through very slowly. If you look online, there are charts that indicate the flow rate to kill various parasites and Ich is one of the slowest rates. I have found that many people run their water through the UV too quickly and forget to scrape the bulb.

Secondly, I would not move all fish that show no sign of disease into a QT tank. That will stress your fish and they are more likely to get sick of they are stressed. Many people think that ich pretty much lives in all of our tanks at all times, but healthy fish simply won't be affected. I don't really know if I believe that or not, but I would never remove a healthy fish from your system and risk compromising it. I had a bad bacterial infection in my tank and half of my fish died and half of them were never affected.

Thirdly, you should monitor that QT tank carefully for ammonia. With no sand or rocks, you likely have a small bacterial population there. With two neon gobies it shouldn't build up too quickly, but monitor it carefully and be sure to do frequent water changes. You might also want to buy a bottle of Amquel in case of an emergency. It won't fix an ammonia problem, but it will buy you time to do a water change. If you truly do have ich, you don't want to waterchange out of your DT as if there are free floating parasites, you risk infecting your QT tank with the parasite.

Good luck!

 

[LaurieC]

Read the instructions again on the UV last night--says bulb is good for 8,000 hours and it's been running since first of Aug. so I didn't take it apart. I'll look at it tonight though, I wondered about that. So sounds like I should leave the rest of the healthy fish in DT and add garlic to DT to be safe? And add garlic to QT. Any product to recommend for garlic? In addition to making sure they are well fed and that the water parameters stay good.

The QT has been running since Aug., so A level ok in it for now, but great point, I'll watch that closely. I have some biospira on hand in refrig. so I could add some of that to the QT as a precaution. I wonder if I should start a larger QT in case the other fish start to show signs and need to be removed. If I did, could I add some of the sponge from either by DT or QT filter to the new tank filter and maybe biospira to avoid a cycle? Thank you so much everyone. Trial by fire huh

 

[NYreefNoob]

what brand of uv ? not all are created the same and for it to work against parasites flow for most is around 200--400 gph

 

[LaurieC]

Coralife Turbo Twist

 

[chinatown]

adding garlic alone to the tank won't do anything. the whole purpose of garlic is to entice your fish to eat the food, so they can build up their immune system to fight off the ich. soak your food in garlic and then feed it to your fishes.

garlic extreme by Kent is a good one and they're readily available at Petco.

 

[ellebelle]

Read the instructions again on the UV last night--says bulb is good for 8,000 hours and it's been running since first of Aug. so I didn't take it apart. I'll look at it tonight though, I wondered about that. So sounds like I should leave the rest of the healthy fish in DT and add garlic to DT to be safe? And add garlic to QT. Any product to recommend for garlic? In addition to making sure they are well fed and that the water parameters stay good.

The QT has been running since Aug., so A level ok in it for now, but great point, I'll watch that closely. I have some biospira on hand in refrig. so I could add some of that to the QT as a precaution. I wonder if I should start a larger QT in case the other fish start to show signs and need to be removed. If I did, could I add some of the sponge from either by DT or QT filter to the new tank filter and maybe biospira to avoid a cycle? Thank you so much everyone. Trial by fire huh

Laurie, what I meant by scraping the bulb is that algae will build up on your bulb inside the UV tube. There should be a scraper attached to your UV unit to scrape off the algae without taking apart the unit. You want to make sure to scrape that every couple of days for maximum effectiveness.

As far as the flow, it really depends on your unit. I have a 25w Aqua unit. It is recommended that the water receive 100,000 microwatts of UV per pass through the sterilizer to kill ich (http://www.emperoraquatics.com/Microorganism_UVDose_Chart.pdf). If I look up my unit, I can see that at 400 gph, the water is getting 90,000 microwatts per pass (http://www.aquaultraviolet.com/sites/default/files/brochures/UV%20Charts%20Salt%20and%20Fresh%20Water.pdf). So, for me to kill ich with my unit, I need to pump water at a lower rate than 400 gph for it to be effective. I have about 70 gallons of water in my system, so I need to turn over my tank water about 5 times an hour for effective parasite control. You need to find the numbers for your own system though.

Ammonia levels are going to be fine because there was no bioload in your tank. You need to watch it very, very carefully going forward. I would not remove any more fish from your display. I also agree that feeding fish garlic is one of the great myths of the aquarium hobby. Garlic does not cure ich; it may or may not have beneficial effects on a fish's health. I agree with the previous poster - the biggest benefit to garlic is enticing the fish to eat.

What do you intend to do with the fish in QT? Hyposalinity or copper treatment?

 

[lfsmarineguy]

I agree, more often than not, people are running way too much flow through their UV for it to have any effect on parasites. Most of the mediocre companies don't have proper info, if any, with their units so it's hard to get it right if you don't know what you're doing. I was going to Emperor Aquatics is the authority on the subject as far as I am concerned. They worked with me on an entire store build with several systems and tailored each unit for the system it was going on. They even worked with us after they were installed to get the zap dosage down to the gph we needed and we never had any problems with ich. They are by no means inexpensive compared to coralife or aquaultraviolet but in this hobby you get what you pay for.

The only other thing I can say is that neon gobies almost always get ich when they first arrive from shipping. They also manage to get through it pretty quickly on their own most of the time since they are a "cleaner" organism. Even the tank raised hybrids from ORA explode with ich right after they ship so it isn't out of the ordinary.

 

[LaurieC]

Blue Light District for Neon Gobies

Loads of fabulous information. Thank you! With the turbo twist, you do have to take the whole thing apart after removing it from the return lines. Ug! This will be a task for the weekend and now I am considering upgrading to emperor aquatics when the 90G goes up shortly. Here's what I've decided to do after getting loads of good feed back on MR and much, much research:

1. Removed the gobies last night to 10G QT and will leave them there. All other fish are staying in the DT until/if anyone else shows signs of ich. I have a second 55G on hand in case and am making up extra salt water.

To Gobies in QT:

Tonight
1. Raised temp. to 82 degrees in QT.
2. Added 1 ml Mehylene Blue dip to 10G QT (and will really watch the A as Mehylene Blue can kill off bacteria--I have BioSpira on hand)
3. Added 1 drop Kent Garlic Extreme per directions for parasite infections
4. No food

Tomorrow
1. Start cupramine treatment in QT
2. Continue garlic treatment
3. Feed and vacuum up any spare food at bottom of tank--will feed sparingly and only every other day.

To DT
1. Last night I did a 20% water change
2. Will up 0.5 Selcon to every day instead of every other day (I also use Vita Chem once a week and will continue that)
3. Garlic soak for food and will feed once a day (I feed an hour before lights out so any food that isn't eatten by the fish is quickly grabbed when the CUC is most active)
4. Testing water parameters daily
5. 10% water change once a week

I talked to LFS tonight and they said the same about neon cleaner gobies being particularly prone to ich. Especially when the outside temp. drops as we move into fall. My tank did drop temp. by two degrees and they said even a 3 degree change can cause ich. They also said most healthy fish can naturally fight it off even after they get it, so if the other fish show a few spots I should leave them in DT and watch them closely, but if they still have spots after a few days or it becomes worse then they should be removed and put on treatment. So sad that neon gobies don't clean each other and they don't allow cleaner shrimp to clean them either.

Here are a couple of good articles:

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ichart2mar.htm
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/dips_baths.htm

Here are the gobies hanging out in the blue water dip. They are swimming around and active despite the ich. Will report back on how treatment goes.

 

[ellebelle]

Perhaps marrone or domboski will chime in here, but I think copper power is supposed to be a little gentler on the fish than cupramine. Fwiw.

 

[lfsmarineguy]

I've seen cleaner gobies "clean" each other fairly often. The problem with most "cleaner" organisms, especially the shrimp, is that they don't continue their cleaning behavior for very long in captivity. The cleaner gobies are one of the only species regularly available that will continue to clean for a considerable period of time. I'm sure this is due to several reasons such as regularly available food and a lack of parasites to remove from other fish since it's the same few fish they see day in and day out. Relying on these animals to remove parasites is more often than not, a waste.