What to do with my saltwater aquarium after an ich infestation?
by Aquaboy on Saturday, May 15th, 2010 | 3 Comments
I have a saltwater aquarium, and sadly most of my fish died before treatment was successful. What ever remaining fish I do have have been isolated. I did some online reading and it is suggested that I wait 6-9 weeks before attempting to introduce any fish back into the tank. I heard that increasing the salinity and temperature of the water will help quicken the eradication of ich, but I also have snails and anemone in there. Should I remove them as well? Or should i go on to increasing the salinity and temperature? Is waiting 6 – 9 weeks correct?
When I say increase salinity, I meant decrease…woops!
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Every time my fish aquarium got an infestation of “ich”, I just tossed 2 or 3 of those wooden back scratchers in there. You know, the kind with the little hands with curved fingers carved out of the wood.
I beats having to stand there all day with your arm in the water, while you scratch your fish’s backs. It also sucks if not all of your fish are castrated. I only like scratching my own.
p.s. ungreatful little bastards, they never will scratch yours back.
Ich is a crappy disease to get in your tank. Keep your fish isolated as long as possible, do a few nice water changes and check all the proper water properties to make sure they are good before putting your fish back. Maybe you can be a “tester fish” in first a watch him for a few days to make sure he doesn’t get sick and then if everything goes well you can put everyone else back slowly
You likely either had Oodinium or Cryptocaryon commonly called ich because of the similarity in appearance and effect to ich which attacks fresh water fish. Technically there is no ich in saltwater.
Six weeks is long enough to wait. What you are doing is insuring that the all of the parasites have entered their adult stage and died since they had no fish to infest. Raising the temperature in the water to 82 degrees will speed the maturation of the pesky critters and therefore might reduce the waiting time but I’d give it the full six weeks.
You likely introduced the disease into your tank by not quarantining a new addition. I’ve been there and done that as well and learned a hard lesson.
Reducing the salinity gradually over a 24 hour period to 1.013 to 1.01 from the normal 1.022-1.024 will kill the parasites and any other invertebrate in the tank (like your snails and anemone.) Fish on the other hand can live for ever at this salinity level. This treatment is called hyposalinity or osmotic shock therapy. I have been told but cannot confirm that reducing the salinity to about 1.018 will kill the crypto parasites and not your other invertebrates.
Since you already have your fish separated I would just treat the fish with hyposalinity for the full six week period. I’ve done this personally and it works. Then reintroduce your fish and begin using proper quarantine procedures for all new critters.
As for the idea of separating your snails and anemone, personally I wouldn’t do it. You certainly should not put them in with your fish if you are going to treat them with hyposalinity. Besides the parasites might hitch a ride to the new location.
Please check out my sources for good information.