Kick Ick - tried it???

[jay24k]

Ich is not always present. UV ONLY kills the swimming stage. Not all get pushed through your UV. It can help keep the numbers down. Ich is a parasite. It is not like an infection. It is caused by stress because the immune system is lowered thus allowing them to attach. You only get ich if you introduce it.

No offense, but if you aren't sure, I wouldn't spread it. This rumor has been around for a long time and it has been proven plenty of times, that ick is not some disease but a parasite. And it does die off without a host. The reproduction cycle is know to be approximately 4 weeks. However, depending on when the eggs were hatched, it could be up to 6 weeks.

I would recommend doing some research on it.

 

[Rlumenator]

I do make my own fish food- for 1/2 cup blended food- how much fresh garlic- I would love to do it this way!

 

[pcardone]

It is my understanding that Ick Has a short life span without a host. Remove the infected fish, put him in a bucket or whatever with the best treatment avaliable. the tank should return to normal as the fish heals.

 

[Anonymous]

It is my understanding that Ick Has a short life span without a host. Remove the infected fish, put him in a bucket or whatever with the best treatment avaliable. the tank should return to normal as the fish heals.

It is recommended that at tank be left fallow of fish for at least 6 weeks to be rid of the parasite.

 

[Anonymous]

I know, but if stress causes it then where does it come from if you have a uv filter and an out break? ( like I did on my FOWLR)

It isn't caused by stress, but stress may allow populations to grow to levels where they can be seen. It seems that the parasite may often be around in tanks, but at levels that we don't notice. A UV filter may help in limiting the parasite, but not it eliminating it.

 

[Rlumenator]

It's funny- in all the years I've scuba dived, I've never seen a fish with ick!! I've seen isopods attached, and all sorts of things, but not ick. I seem to have lost the thread on Kick Ick. I dosed today,;I will see what happens, and keep you all posted. The tang is very active, no longer hiding and stressed like in the quar. tank, and eating well.

 

[Anonymous]

Ick is present for the most part in every fish in the hobby ( fresh and salt).
It isnt somthing that is brought in persay. It is cause by stress.
When they stress it causes them to sluff off thier slime coat and makes them vulnerable to other diseases as well. Think of ick as kanchor sores.
treat the break out solve the stress problem no more breakouts.
There are MANY articles that support this. I am just taking information from those articles.

Other infections may act this way, but since ich is a prorozoan parasite (proven fact) with a well understood lifecycle, it must be possible to have a fish without the particular ich parasite (c. iritans IIRC) on its body and even a tank full of fish without the parasite present.

The matter of how many fish and tanks are this lucky is another question. :wink:


I have 4 fish in my main tank. Each fish went through a month of hyposalinity treatment at 1.009-1.010 SG. The tank was without fish for a couple of months before the first of these fish went in. Since no ich could survive without fish for several months, the tank was ich free at the start. Since, in theory, a month of hyposalinity should make it impossible for free swimming ich parasites to live long enough to find a fish, each fish should have been ich free upon entering the tank. With all that, I think I have a pretty good chance of having an ich free tank....of course there is always the possibility that a parasite survived all of that. But in 2 years, I have never seen a single spot on any of the fish, despite several stressful periods, including losing power for days durring a hurricane and a heater breakdown on a cold night that brough the temperature dangerously low.

 

[Anonymous]

I know, but if stress causes it then where does it come from if you have a uv filter and an out break? ( like I did on my FOWLR)

It is a protozoan that lives in your tank. Your fish may constantly be fighting it for years without you ever noticing because only one or two parasites out of each reproductive cycle make it to a fish and successfully attach to the fish's skin. One moment of stress might be enough for 10-20 of them to successfully attach themselves to a fish because the fish have become vulnerable due to stress. Now the next reproductive cycle has 10-20 as many new parasites looking for fish hosts. At about 250 free swimming parasites hatching from the sessile cyst that forms after one white spot bursts off your fish, that could be 4,000 of them versus the 250 that your fish normally had to deal with. Probability wise, your fish now have a 20 times the chance of being infected. So next time, there are even more. Maybe 50 spots between all your fish. That turns into tens of thousands of parasites on the next cycle. And so on and so on.

Your UV filter works on probability. You can't have a UV filter that pushes water through itself slow enough to kill 100% of the parasites in that water and, at the same time, move the water fast enough to keep turning over your tank volume enough to guarantee 100% coverage of the water volume. So if your uv gets 80% of them on a regular basis, an outbreak will still mean that the 20% it doesn't get becomes a larger number exponentially. That's why tanks with UV can still have massive outbreaks.

 

[Anonymous]

It's funny- in all the years I've scuba dived, I've never seen a fish with ick!! I've seen isopods attached, and all sorts of things, but not ick. I seem to have lost the thread on Kick Ick. I dosed today,;I will see what happens, and keep you all posted. The tang is very active, no longer hiding and stressed like in the quar. tank, and eating well.

It os rare in the ocean. If fish in a tank can battle it and live with it present, as they often can, then imagine how hard it is for the parasite to find a host in the volume of water of the ocean. The concentration of parasites looking for fish per gallon of water on a reef would be a tiny fraction of what it is in your tank.

 

[FragMaster]

8O

 

[Omni2226]

Well I use a 12 oz package of seafood...octipi,squid,shrimp,whitefish and clams. To this I added two cloves of garlic and a handful of fresh garbonzos (chick peas). Popped it in a blender till it was a thick mush, no water added.

When thawed it has a distinct hint of garlic. Too much just right or not enough...I have no idea but the animals love the stuff. I throw in a small pinch of omega one protein flakes and fresh sushi nori every other day.

 

[Rlumenator]

Day 3- the tang is looking better.

 

[Anonymous]

Which is what happens with ich without medication.

 

[Rlumenator]

No, the last time I had ick- it didn't go away , trust me. if I used hypo- you would say that is why it went away- because you approve of this method. Because you don't approve of Kick Ick, the ick just went away by itself!

 

[Anonymous]

If you had used hypo and said it was clearing up after 3 days I would say the exact same thing as I said above. You need to treat for the amount of time it takes the parasite to go through at least one of its life-cycles, but two or three are better - and even then you can't be sure you got it all in a reef tank.
Even if the ich goes away after following the directions of the kick ich, it may easily be the case that it has simply dropped to levels that are unnoticeable by the aquarist, or the fish develops immunity or partial immunity.
Almost every case of ich is different. Different levels of the parasite, different fish in different states of health, different environmental conditions.

Remember what was said earlier in the thread and remember the life-cycle of the parasite. The life-cycle of ich is such that it comes and goes in waves. Thats just how it works, and is why there are so many 'treatments' (and why lots of people have stopped hypo or copper or kick ich after a few days).

I have used kick ich and had the same results as when I didn't use it. AFAIK, there are no ingredients on the bottle, just statements of what isn't in the product. Can you point me to the study the manufacturer claims to have done? I can't find it.

I would be very very happy if the product actually worked, however the evidence that it does is exactly the same as the evidence that changing light bulbs cures the parasite. People really want this medication to work - its easy, its not very expensive and it makes people feel like they are doing something. Sadly, I have seen too many people use it and lose fish to just let the topic slide when it comes up.

FWIW, I feel no malice here, I am just engaged in an interesting discussion.

 

[Anonymous]

No, the last time I had ick- it didn't go away , trust me. if I used hypo- you would say that is why it went away- because you approve of this method. Because you don't approve of Kick Ick, the ick just went away by itself!

I don't think Righty gives advice based on what he likes or dislikes. He seemed to be the most open person here to evidence about Kick Ick.

Research the lifecycle of ich. You will then understand why ich tends to go away and then comeback stronger. In summary, the ich has to drop off the fish and enter a sessile cyst form to divide and multiply before hundreds of free swimming fish seeking parasites emerge from the cyst. Each spot dissapears from the fish as it drops to the tank bottom and develops. A few days later, a couple of hundred free swimmers explode out of the cyst.

Unlike kick ick, hypo is a proven cure becuase the single celled ich parasite cannot survive below a certain salinity. If you used hypo and you still had ich development, you did not go low enough with the salinity. There is a very fine line between killing the ick and doing nothing. You absolutely need a refractometer to perform this operation properly. A regular hydrometer is not accurate or precise enough. If you did hypo at 1.013 SG, you are doing nothing. It has to be at around 1.009-1.010 SG. But if you go below 1.080 SG you will kill the fish. That's why the refractometer is an absolute must for hypo to work. There is no way you can be that precise with even the best hydrometer.


Question: Have you researched what ich really is, how it attacks fish, how it reproduces, etc.? Or are you just looking at threads on forum boards? There are scientific articles about marine ich that will change how you think of it. On the forums, there are still superstitious people who think it is some magic disease that "just happens" to fish, along with a ton of anectodal evidence that means nothing.

 

[Anonymous]

How does it look today, Dawn?

 

[Rlumenator]

Wings: Looking better, thank you. Also my giant cleaner shrimp are working on him.

Manny & Righty- Yes I'm aware of the life cycle. Besides reading Fish Diseases, also books by Borneman, Sprung, Nielson & Fossa, etc., very good articles by StevenPro, I also look at various other fish forums- some even don't get sidetracked from the basic question I posed. There are actually responses to the question, not expalnations of the cycles- tomites,trophonts, etc. for this is not the thread. It is as if I asked does anyone use Tide? No- you must use Whisk, only Whisk is proven to do the job. First you must sort your clothes, then you must pretreat... Get the idea?? My question was asking for results by people who tried it. Regards, Dawn.

 

[Rlumenator]

Oh, I forgot- to treat a 160 gal. tank is ~$30.00, not as cheap as hypo or garlic!

 

[Anonymous]

Wings: Looking better, thank you. Also my giant cleaner shrimp are working on him.

Manny & Righty- Yes I'm aware of the life cycle. Besides reading Fish Diseases, also books by Borneman, Sprung, Nielson & Fossa, etc., very good articles by StevenPro, I also look at various other fish forums- some even don't get sidetracked from the basic question I posed. There are actually responses to the question, not expalnations of the cycles- tomites,trophonts, etc. for this is not the thread. It is as if I asked does anyone use Tide? No- you must use Whisk, only Whisk is proven to do the job. First you must sort your clothes, then you must pretreat... Get the idea?? My question was asking for results by people who tried it. Regards, Dawn.

I said I tried it and it did not work. It failed misserably in fact. The ick went awy after a few days (normal for the lifecycle), I continued using kick ick according to the instructions on the bottle, and a few days later my fish were covered in spots and died from the parasites' attack.

Not only did it not rid the tank and fish of ick, but it didn't even help bring the parasite numbers down to controlled levels.

So that's one mark in the negative column.

Hope that helps.


As Righty said, there are no ingredients on the bottle and the maker doesn't even explain what kind of chemical it is that kills the ick but leaves corals, inverts, and beneficial bacteria unharmed.