i am guessing my tang has ick....

[some'n'smellsfishy]

i guess my yellow tang has ick seeing that it is allowing my cleaner shrimp to jump on it...and it is rubbing itself on things...but heres the question will my shrimp get rid of the disease?????

 

[Anonymous]

I don't there is a way to "get rid of the disease" in a tank with fish in it. I could be wrong. The shrimp is obviously enjoying it

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The best course of action is to remove whatever caused the stress for the tang to contract ich. Do some water changes to get the parameters in line, get a bigger tank, run some carbon. We need a little more information to be able to address the better.

 

[jdeets]

some'n--sometimes a cleaner shrimp will work over a fish even if the fish is healthy and free of parasites. I have two cleaner shrimp in my tank and it is always cleaning on my tangs. The shrimp are there more as a prophylactic measure, as I've never had symptomatic ich in my system, at least not that I was able to see. Right after I added my tangs to my tank, they were "scratchy" too, but they don't do it any more. The shrimp have been "cleaning" the tangs from day one.

Just because the shrimp is working on your tang and it is scratching doesn't necessarily mean it has ich. Have you seen any visible parasites on your tang? How long has the tang been in the tank?

If there are no visible ich parasites, then I'd just keep an eye on the tang and let us know if anything develops.