Need help finding info on parasite identification

[dpmamay]

I have been searching TR for pics of ICH or Whitespot to no avail. Does anyone have a link to some pics? I woke up this morning watched my tank for the usual 10 minutes while I drink my coffee and everything is fine. Come home at 5pm and all three of the fish (Powder Blue, Regal, CB Butterfly) are covered from mouth to tailfin with what looks like specs of salt. I am pretty sure it's ICH but want to make sure. I have a cleaner shrimp in this tank but he is shy so I am moving my other cleaner in this tank to help. Also have raised tank temp from 80 to 81 so far and will move it up higher in a couple of days. My salinity is 1.024 and I am slowly lowering it with a drip of RO water, about 2 drips per sec.
Anyway I just want to confirm it's ICH so I can start getting rid of it.
Thanks
Daryl

[V]

if no-one posts something soon, i;ll get u something to reference from

[dpmamay]

Thanks Rob for moving this post where it belongs, still learning your site but think it's the best one on the net.

[fat walrus]

wecome dpmamay. this is Rob and veriann territory.

[poppin_fresh]

Daryl,
You should check out
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=87

I am on the fence about Ich personally. I have sucessfully treated some and lost some fish to Ich. If you are trying to do hypo, I would not do it in the display tank, it will kill beneficial organisms. I would make sure your fish are well fed with a balanced diet. Read up on garlic additives and vitamins, I have had some sucess with these methods.

[V]

this is a better resource
http://www.reef-aquarium.net/resources/disease/ich.html

but i cant find a decent pic to display for u, i have some in great books, but not online. i;ll keep looking

[dpmamay]

Thank you for the time and effort. I actually went out and bought seachem garlic extract and am now soaking all of their food with it. I am also wondering how low can I take the salinity with the snails, crabs, shrimp, coral life in the tank? Interesting to note that my 2 longest inhabitants, my tomato clowns are clean so far.

[fat walrus]

i've gone down to 1.017 specfic gravity with no ill effect.

[dreams]

i have used ich attack...i cannot 100% comfirm that it worked, but i do have fish that survived....all my inverts are fine

i did "hear" that xenia and bubble anemone will not survive the treatment

also, i the dosed twice a day at full dosage, rather than once a day......haven't seen a spot since

[ghostbear29]

I had a yellow tang that had that marine velvet. with the hypo and everything else, I lowered the temp to 78-79, from 80-82! Just a idea I got from my bio classes. kinda made things easier on the YT. just a thought to consider for the Ich. good luck.

[fat walrus]

i thought raising temp to speed up ick life-cycle was prefered.

[V]

have a read of the link posted & drop in some updates so we know how the treatments going! if indeed it is ich, welcome to TR by the way! Glad u could join us

Treatment Option 13: Garlic
Garlic is another of the alternative treatments for Cryptocaryon to be touted lately. I have read of many people reporting using it "successfully" as a preventative. The difficult part in assessing these reports is whether the fish would have developed Cryptocaryon in the first place. And, when someone claims it to be a "cure," how can they definitively rule out natural, acquired immunity or even confusion over Cryptocaryon's life cycle. At the very least, garlic does have some proven anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-parasitic, and antiviral properties.

My biggest problem with the use of garlic is the mythology that has developed regarding it. This all began quite simply and innocently. Kelly Jedlicki was studying the use of garlic as an intestinal dewormer. She was examining the effectiveness of garlic against nematodes and cestodes on impacted puffers when she noticed a general decrease in Cryptocaryon irritans incidence. Later on, she proposed feeding garlic to fish as a preventative for Cryptocaryon irritans. From there the legend of garlic has spread.

Feeding garlic to fish is now an accepted cure for Marine Ich by some individuals. Furthermore, I have read of people merely hanging cloves of garlic in their tank in an effort to ward off the parasites, like some sort of bad vampire movie. And lastly, I have recently heard of a surprising number of hobbyists who soak their corals' food in garlic in an effort to combat possible pathogens when target feeding them. It goes to show that garlic has become an all-purpose wonder drug in some peoples' eyes based on little more than anecdotal observations.

[dreams]

walrus, it is raise the temp for speeding up the life-cycle

veriann, i look at garlic like this...it has been shown to boost T-cells in humans and to kill viruses ...so, if it doesn't hurt the fish, i might as well add a few drops to their food

but, i do understand the concern that it is becoming a cure all

[dpmamay]

I added my adult cleaner shrimp last night and when I woke up all 3 fish look 80% better, no they have the brown spots and some white spots. I have been watching my tank at lunch time and notice the cleaner shrimp almost attacking my powder blue frantically cleaning. I know that brown spots are the next stage and now I have tons of free swimming tomites but I will stick to the following.
1. Raise tank temp to 82.5
2. Lower salinity to 1.021
3. Soak all food in the garlic extract.
4. 10% water change every 3-4 days.
I will try this for the next 4-5 weeks and see how this goes.
Thanks for all the help

[CarmieJo]

Hi dpmamay.

:welcome: to TR. I hope your fish get better.

[gwen_o_lyn]

Welcome to TR dpmamay- keep us posted on how things go ;)