What is the best way to treat ick on 2 clownfish?

Question

I have a 29 gallon biocube with 2 other pj cardinals and zenia, star polyps, and mushrooms. If I treat the tank with meds I will likely lose all of my snails, corals, etc. I have a quarantine tank set up for them, but was told that if I quarantined them the ick would still be present in the tank. Is my best option to raise the temp a bit (currently at 78) to 80 and drop the salinity to 1.020? If I did this could I put the corals in the quarantne tank to ensure that the lowering of the salinity doesn't killl them?

Answer 1

You seem to have been doing some reading on this already.

First, I would say to remove your fish to a quarantine tank, if you haven't already. Many of the marine diseases are highly contagious, so hope you've caught this early.

You are correct that any medications will have an adverse effect on your tank invertebrates, as will lowering the salinity.

Are you are positive of your diagnosis? Marine ich, velvet, and anemone fish disease can all appear similar if you're not familiar with any diagnosis other than "white spots". Marine ich will appear more as discrete, salt-like dots from 0.3 - 0.5mm in size. Marine velvet will also form discrete spots, but will be much smaller and "powdery". Clownfish disease may start as white dots that grow together to form patches of greyish-white "slime". Marine ich is relatively easily treated, while you have to be more aggressive intreating the others.

You will need to treat any affected fish (and preferably all fishes to be safe) in a separate tank. Lowering the salinity is a good start for ich and clownfish disease, less effective if you're dealing with velvet (for very stubborn cases, you can go as low as 1.015, if changed slowly - keep an eye out for distress in your fish) or giving them a freshwater dip before moving them to the quarantine tank (don't worry about this if you've already moved them). Medication of choice for Marine ich and velvet is something containing chelated copper or citrated copper sulfate. For clownfish disease, use malachite green (still copper-based, but in a different form).

You will have additional parasites in your tank, but without a host fish, they will eventually die. This may mean keeping your fish in isolation for a month or more, but will at least prevent the introduction of medications to inverts in the tank.

Answer 2

If you read up about ich (or ick as it is sometimes called) you will see that the meds do not kill the parasite. Raising the temp or adding salts only speed up the cycle. The ich parasites drop down into the gravel. Hopefully enough will be cleaned out during water changes. When the ich is active you can sometimes see stringy things floating in the water. Only the free-swimming stage of the parasite is killed with the meds. If you have a tank that you can place them in then by all means, do it. But still treat your tank and continue with the water changes. Hopefully you will get rid of them before you put everyone back. Try to find out what was causing the stress because usually a small amount of ich parasite will not effect your fish unless they are stressed...usually from bad quality water.

Good luck.

The link will give you a better understanding of the cycle. http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/ich.htm

Answer 3

Give them a freshwater bath of about 5-10 minutes. Keep them moving the whole time so that they breathe the water. They will be fine. I have done this many times. This will cause the ich ti implode and fall off. Lower the salinity in your tank. You can drop it further than 1.020 I have taken it as low as 1.008, but unless you are an expert level aquariust, I wouldnt recommend it.

DO NOT USE COPPER SULFATE!!!!!!! It will kill your corals and snails.

Answer 4

get a same tank put them in it buy ick stuff and waite

Answer 5

Clown Fish Diseases