Ich is killing everything!!!

Hey all,

I have read many options to treat ich, but since I am new to the USF forum I thought I would ask your opinion:

Within the last 4 days I have had 1 algae blenny, 1 cardinal, and 1 mandarin die. I wasn't sure what the cause was until I saw a big white spot on my mandarin who died earlier this afternoon.

My water parameters are perfect and I just installed a new powerhead to encourage positive oxygen levels.

I watched the cardinal go ape-$h![ before he died, and just came home to the mandarin dead.

I have a CUC working tirelessly and 1 cardinal as a survivor. In all my experiences, I have never experienced a whip out like this. Words from the wise would be poifect!

it might be something that you havent tested for like carbon hardness, calcium, copper stuff like that if you havent tested for that id suggest getting a test kit for it. It could also be the water you are using to fill your tank or change the water if you are on city water its a sure death sentence to all fish i use glacier bay water and ive never had a problem and its reverse osmosised and uv sterilized hope that helps if you need any more help pm me

Ugh, I haed an ich problem for a really long time. It really sucks. There are some treatments out for it, but if you have ANY inverts in the tank it will kill them (corals, snails, hermits, etc...). You can quarentine your fish and treat them, that should help, but ich is a vicious cycle that hides in your sediment/rocks until it has something to prey on. Treating your fish will let them heal up nicely, but as soon as you put them back in your tank, they are likely to get it again. Usually it comes in from an infected fish or hiding in some rock/coral you recently added, or if that powerhead was previously in someone else's infected tank. Some fish are less likely to get it than others.

Stressed fish typically get it because stress lowers their immune system and makes them less able to fight it off. Fish causing the stress are usually fine. If you dont notice any quabbles in your tank, it may be something in the water. High nitrates or annoying levels of... really anything.

Im pretty sure my damsels built up a resistance to it after like a year, but any new fish I added would be attacked by ich and die quickly. If you quarentine your fish for about 6 months (quarentine them seperately, don't put any of the rocks/substrate in the Q tank and siphon out the bottom daily to pick up any that may have come out of the infected fish), the ich should die off in your main tank because they have nothing to feed on. But a tank with no fish for 6 months (minimum) is no fun

A UV sterilizer is said to help majorly with this problem and is the main reason I purchased mine. It's really one of the only benefits from a UV sterilizer. In a closed system, such as an aquarium, things can multiply out of hand really quickly, so a UV sterilizer can keep it in check, and it would kill most ich that's in the water column, meaning they are less likely to find your fish. The downside is that it's really efficient. So if you have any corals in your tank that rely on floating food particles, you'll have to go in and feed them because anything they used to eat will be gone.

I have a UV sterilizer, but hooking it up has been a bit of a conundrum and I've not been able to dedicate my time with it yet. My issue was partly solved by my damsels building a resistance to ich. I think they starved because I had only damsels for quite a long while. Additionally, when I moved, I took out all my old sediment and put in new. That probably got any remaining cysts out. Anything left in my rocks may have been transfered but I've added a goby and a damsel since then and they've been fine. They haven't been stressed yet though, so only time will tell.

Well I have news boys and girls:

In less than 12 hours, I have had 2 cardinals and a green mandarin kick the bucket.

This leads me to believe that it was NOT Ich. It could have been swim bladder or a voltage split or a bacterial infection.

Both cardinals were swimming as if they were drunk and misplaced. One whipped in vertical circles and then sideways and then smacked into everything it could. (NOT for the faint of heart)

And then the mandarin passed, I believe, from stress.

I am now completely wiped out of fish and have a CUC still working. I will now start the cycle over.. wax on, wax off..

Wow, that's terrible, Michael.

+1 to what Logan and Ashley said.

If you don't think it's ich, do you think another disease or parasite? If you post your water chemistry levels, we can check to make sure that it's all in line...

If it was a common parasite, it would have been evident. To give you an idea my system still has ich in it, and when I added in my copperbanded butterfly fish it got several spots. If ich is killing the fish, most of the fish will be covered in it visibly.

What parameters did you check? When I see something off in my tank I test my Ph, Nitrites, Nitrates, Phosphates, and ammonia.

Like Samantha said feel free to post up your parameters on here .

Best of luck, It's hard losing fish. I had to watch my harlequin tusk and fu manchu die over a period of days as ich turned into a bacterial infection.

Temp: 78
KH: 10.08
PH 8
NO2: 0
NO3: 20

I have done a lot of reading and the possibilities are so vast Idk what to do.

Possibilities:

lack of O2= I have a powerhead pointed to the surface.
swim bladder= would explain the "drunk-like" activity of the Cardinals, but not the mandarin(his could have just been stress and a lack of a fully established pod pop.)
PH= would explain hard breathing, but not the neurotic activity. Plus I had done a 20% water change thursday night.
NO3= this could be possible because the mandarin and the mandarin were newly introduced and it could have set the bioload sky high.

Only the mandarin had any sign of ich. He had one spot on his left side and it was fairly large. This of course could have been from many new variables for the little guy. Including his little adventure into the overflow.

At any rate, I am going to let it cycle for 4 or so weeks before I add anything else (fish and corals) and let my CUC go to town.

Your parameters are fine, so that's not the issue. Unless, your ammonia spiked. That's a possibility...

Ich is typically very small. If you saw a large white spot on your mandarin, I'd bet it was something other than ich. I'm placing my money on disease rather than parasite, though. That, or some kind of spike in ammonia or hydrogen sulfide. Did you disturb the sandbed during the water change? That could have released hydrogen sulfide...

No I don't mess with the sand bed. I let the shrimp and hermis do that.

I would assume that its my ammonia. Remember my six line was a casualty last week? I left him in there for the CUC.

Should I just let the cycle naturally take care of it. Or do you think I need to QT my entire tank? I need to look into some of Dr. Tim's other products to see if there is something to kill this bacteria without slaughtering my CUC. Any ideas?

i personally dont believe it was the stress on the mandarin they are so hard to keep that even the slightest change in the water will kill them as for the cardinals i can believe that they had a swim bladder problem they are very proned to that and it is kinda crazy if you need anything let me know cause ive got some extra salt and meds and stuff and if you u need any other help with the whole water situation pm me id be glad to help you out man hopw your tank recovers from this ive been in your shoes so i know what you are going through

The degradation of a dead fish can definitely spike your ammonia. If you have high nitrate levels they can suffer from a poisoning of it, but that usually shows up in vein-looking discolorations and the fins looking torn up. Hydrogen sulfide definitely causes labored breathing but not so much neurotic behavior. With ich, you will often see the fish rubbing up on rocks and stuff because their gills are irritated, so if you see them doing that, a parasite could be plausible. I have no idea how fish react to bacterial infections other than general lack of behavior/not eating/being sickly.

Ammonia tests come in most basic test kits, if you have it I would test it. If it's high, a water change will help.

If you think it's a bacterial infection, I would QT them seperately until you find out who's infected and what it is.

Have you by chance added anything you've collected from the ocean lately? Domoic acid can cause the behavior you described, but Im not sure how you would have gotten a hold of that...

i totally agree with ashley id quarintine whatever fish you have left

Nobody is left lol got back from the lfs a little bit ago to ask for a second opinion. They confirmed that my water perameters are as accurate as my kit at home.

I did collect a few shells for my hermits to grow into. Along with the shells I gathered a small crab. Do you think he would have brought that?


Like I said, all fish are gone. All that is left is my CUC of hermits, snails,that crab, and peppermint shrimp.

Since all fish are gone, there is no need to QT. I will just need to do water changes and not add anything for 4 weeks.

Thank you all for your support. It is a frustrating time, but it is a process.

I am seeing domoic acid and its effect on marine animals, but not on fish. Nothing has eaten him, but could he have contaminated the water?

It's essentially from algal blooms and is something that can be easily picked up by filter feeders like shellfish and just generally in the water column. When it infects shellfish and small fish, they are in turn eaten by larger animals and can have adverse effects that way. That's when you start seeing pelicans and seals and humans getting sick from it. There was a pack of sardines that once wandered into the bay and was acting erradically and domoic acid was thought to be the cause. That's debatable though because if it were domoic acid, it should have inhibited the sardine's ability to school, yet they were still in a school formation. Anyway, I doubt that luck would have it so that there was an algal bloom on the day you went collecting and there happened to be a tiny bit in the water from your shells or from the crab. I would really count that out.

What are the odds?!?! j/k. Thanks