How I eliminated marine ich as a problem in my display tank

[lucas-grimm]

First of all, I have not CURED ich. There is no medication or other way to 100% eliminate ich in a display tank with corals and inverts in it. No medications that claim to “cure ich” or feeding your fish garlic are going to eliminate it.

My tank is 240 gallons, 72x26x30 in. My stocking list at the moment includes:
-1 Red Sea Sailfin Tang
-1 Tomini Tang
-1 Yellow x Scopas Hybrid Tang
-1 Baby Blue Hippo Tang
-1 Yellow Pyramid Butterfly
-1 One Spot Foxface
-3 Bimaculatus Anthias
-2 Ocellaris Clownfish
-2 Banggai Cardinals
-1 Melanarus Wrasse
-1 Marble Wrasse
-1 Yelloe Watchman Goby
-1 Diamond Goby

Fish in QT (Being added the 14th of November):
-1 Dusky Wrasse
-1 Orchid Dottyback
-1 Baby Mata Tang

Fish in the next round of QT:
-1 Schooling Bannerfish (H. Diphreutes)
-2 Yellow Tangs
-1 Purple Tang

The tank turns a year old in a couple weeks and I have been actively managing ich for about 8 months. I buy only quarantined fish from one of my lfs and then quarantine them myself for 6 weeks, then they go into observation for another 2 weeks. While in observation I do water changes with tank water so I can hopefully expose them to the ich, however I only started doing this about 2 months ago. I believe Ich got into my display via a coral frag or invert as I do not put inverts through a 76 day quarantine like I should’ve from the beginning. I first noticed ich on my marble wrasse, I saw 2 possibly 3 white spots and it began to rub on the sand every few days. I freaked out but did not remove it from the tank. All of the tangs were unaffected. I put in place an 80 Watt UV running on a 200 gph pump. This not only I believe helped eliminate a large portion of free swimmers but also improved my water clarity, so it was a win-win. I began to feed vitamin soaked frozen food once a day and still do this. I feed a mix of mysis, brine, lrs, formula one, and others and mix it up every day. I soak all frozen food in vitachem, selcon, garlic power, and aminomega. I also feed a sheet of nori everyday split up into 2 feedings on a clip. Once I added the baby blue hippo tang and pyramid butterfly I noticed spots forming on a few of the fish, all of the fish continued to eat aggressively at this time. I looked into hydrogen peroxide dosing. I was mostly interested in following this thread here: https://humble.fish/community/index.php?threads/peroxide-h2o2-dosing-for-parasites-in-reef-tank.725/

I began dosing 100mLs a day through a doser and slowly worked my way up to the 1mL per 5 gallons over about a month. I am now dosing 240mLs a day, or over 1mL per gallon. I have seen absolutely no coral losses or fish losses doing this. The only negative effect I saw was my ORP drop from 360-370 to around 300 when i first began dosing. Now the orp is back to around 330-350 on a regular basis and no longer drops off. I do believe hydrogen peroxide dosing made a difference in the ich management. Now I do not see any spots or flashing on any of the fish other than my marble wrasse occasionally rubbing on the sand maybe once a week. All of my fish are fat and I can’t see a single spot in the tank, although I know ich is still present. Whenever I add fish out of my quarantine system, I ensure they are eating extremely well before I add them to the display. The new fish will almost 100% have some spots on them for about a week or up to two weeks after adding them to the display. After that time, the spots disappear and the fish do great. I do not worry about ich anymore as I once thought of it as the end of my reef tank, but now I see it as more of a hassle. When dealing with ich in a reef tank, fish stress is absolutely the biggest issue. Hence why I cannot stress enough to NOT remove all of your fish and treat them in copper. As it in my experience has only resulted in me loosing a large portion of my fish. Thanks for reading and I hope something in here was helpful!

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Glad it worked for you. There is another thread here where peroxide dosing failed pretty severely. I'm on the fence on this. It is an emerging treatment, its use is based on a theoretical use. I do hate to see people just jump in and try it as "guinea pigs".

Hydrogen peroxide has many of the same attributes and drawbacks as ozone, and is similar to peroxide salts already on the market to treat Cryptocaryon (ich). The crux of the issue is that it is difficult to oxidize theronts and not also oxidize beneficial bacteria, etc. I would always advocate that people have a good low range peroxide test kit if they are going to experiment with this method. I show one brand of kit in my article here:

https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/hydrogen-peroxide-bench-testing.803/

Jay

 

[HBtank]

Using an indiscriminate oxidizer in a reef tank to “treat“ parasites doesn’t make sense to me.

Regarding the OP’s tank, I think “managing ich” is what many tanks end up becoming by just providing an otherwise healthy environment.

 

[lucas-grimm]

Using an indiscriminate oxidizer in a reef tank to “treat“ parasites doesn’t make sense to me.

Regarding the OP’s tank, I think “managing ich” is what many tanks end up becoming by just providing an otherwise healthy environment.

I believe the quote “All tanks have ich” is completely false, but most tanks will eventually add it. Managing ich for me isn’t much more than feeding well and keeping stress relatively low.

 

[HBtank]

I believe the quote “All tanks have ich” is completely false, but most tanks will eventually add it. Managing ich for me isn’t much more than feeding well and keeping stress relatively low.

I am not sure who made that statement, but I don't think it can be proven one way or another withstanding the strictest of protocols. People with known ich issues that have disappeared can't prove it is gone or just "managed", and people who have generally strict fish QT protocol and suddenly get it can't prove it wasn't there the whole time or came in on some frag plug or snail, etc..

 

[lucas-grimm]

I am not sure who made that statement, but I don't think it can be proven one way or another withstanding the strictest of protocols. People with known ich issues that have disappeared can't prove it is gone or just "managed", and people who have generally strict fish QT protocol and suddenly get it can't prove it wasn't there the whole time or came in on some frag plug or snail, etc..

I hear a good amount of more old school reefers make that statement. But 100% i can’t prove it came in on a snail or coral frag although that’s what i believe.

 

[brandon429]

You did a great job attempting all manner of today's best disease preps.


Regarding peroxide in a reef tank, for whatever reason, I doubt you'll be surpassing what we used this last decade on about fifty thousand logged peroxide threads. We got up up to 4 mils 3% per ten gallons, and nobody's tank recycled.

I'm off to search the stated peroxide crash to see if higher organisms died from disease or to see if the biofilter was crashed.

For example
This is 100% dosed peroxide into reefs, the pattern on file is zero crashes although it didn't necessarily kill dinos either. It's just a handy view of what one mil per ten gallons 3% actually does in common reef tanks:

Dinoflagellates my experience......h2o2 reefing tool!!!!!

aaaaaaarrrrrrr just wanted to share my recent battle and how i won!!!!!!!!! "i wish i took pics but i didn't..:(" so about 3 weeks ago my tank broke out pretty bad i mean bad!!!!!! my coast to coast overflow would get plugged and almost overflow my tank..... so i did my research and found...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[lucas-grimm]

You did a great job attempting all manner of today's best disease preps.


Regarding peroxide in a reef tank, for whatever reason, I doubt you'll be surpassing what we used this last decade on about fifty thousand logged peroxide threads. We got up up to 4 mils 3% per ten gallons, and nobody's tank recycled.

I'm off to search the stated peroxide crash to see if higher organisms died from disease or to see if the biofilter was crashed.

For example
This is 100% dosed peroxide into reefs, the pattern on file is zero crashes although it didn't necessarily kill dinos either. It's just a handy view of what one mil per ten gallons 3% actually does in common reef tanks:

Dinoflagellates my experience......h2o2 reefing tool!!!!!

aaaaaaarrrrrrr just wanted to share my recent battle and how i won!!!!!!!!! "i wish i took pics but i didn't..:(" so about 3 weeks ago my tank broke out pretty bad i mean bad!!!!!! my coast to coast overflow would get plugged and almost overflow my tank..... so i did my research and found...

www.reef2reef.com

i’m definitely not planning on continual dosing, but just as new fish are added to potentially reduce the number of free swimming parasites. The tank link I attached in my original post followed the same where they slowly reduced the dose after all the fish were added.

 

[piranhaman00]

Wow I add 1 ml per 10 gallons and nems hate it so I stopped

 

[HBtank]

You did a great job attempting all manner of today's best disease preps.


Regarding peroxide in a reef tank, for whatever reason, I doubt you'll be surpassing what we used this last decade on about fifty thousand logged peroxide threads. We got up up to 4 mils 3% per ten gallons, and nobody's tank recycled.

I'm off to search the stated peroxide crash to see if higher organisms died from disease or to see if the biofilter was crashed.

For example
This is 100% dosed peroxide into reefs, the pattern on file is zero crashes although it didn't necessarily kill dinos either. It's just a handy view of what one mil per ten gallons 3% actually does in common reef tanks:

Dinoflagellates my experience......h2o2 reefing tool!!!!!

aaaaaaarrrrrrr just wanted to share my recent battle and how i won!!!!!!!!! "i wish i took pics but i didn't..:(" so about 3 weeks ago my tank broke out pretty bad i mean bad!!!!!! my coast to coast overflow would get plugged and almost overflow my tank..... so i did my research and found...

www.reef2reef.com

Do you have any documentation on what dosing H2O2 theoretically accomplishes?

 

[brandon429]

agreed they do get mad that's true, anems and xenia most commonly.

it's amazing and humbling in the face of today's disease trending to see all this effort he made still get a vector leak/under challenge. Anything you're trying here after that type of beginning attempt is a good faith effort that's for sure. you vastly exceeded in post #1 what the majority of new tank owners will ever attempt with regards to disease preps.

 

[brandon429]

I sure do that those links on peroxide, they're mighty long reads. they're common "I dumped peroxide in my tank to kill algae threads" totaling about 500 pages across several links collated over the years from 2011 to today.

will it help anything if I post them beyond what I summarized above?

that one I posted above is fifty pages of the exact same patterns I can add ten more links to/all it does is show the same thing: nobody's tank crashed, we did hit and miss on algae wins.

it's been mentioned before: the instant organic pull from a reef tank acts on peroxide to dissociate it/ the effects aren't as devastating as they'd appear in a test tube.

the #1 weakest organism in reefing to peroxide is the lysmata shrimp. what I'd rate as the toughest? filter bacteria.

we do peroxide dosing on seneye tanks now to chart effects...that's precision ammonia measurement. a paradox happens: nitrification boosts vs gets lowered. reasons assumed: we are giving aerobes more of what they like (up to a point, toxicity will result at some point we all agree)

but not at 1:10 dosing, I've seen routine in-tank doses as high as 4 mils per ten gallons not stress a biofilter and they did it about 20 days in a row trying to kill green hair algae.

I have no idea if it works or can help on fish disease, no idea at all. Humblefish sure is working on it, he makes a great dither reefer for disease trending that's for sure lol.

 

[HBtank]

I sure do that those links on peroxide, they're mighty long reads. they're common "I dumped peroxide in my tank to kill algae threads" totaling about 500 pages across several links collated over the years from 2011 to today.

will it help anything if I post them beyond what I summarized above?

that one I posted above is fifty pages of the exact same patterns I can add ten more links to/all it does is show the same thing: nobody's tank crashed, we did hit and miss on algae wins.

it's been mentioned before: the instant organic pull from a reef tank acts on peroxide to dissociate it/ the effects aren't as devastating as they'd appear in a test tube.

I was more interested in harder information, and what the theory is for broadcast dosing H2O2 to eradicate ich (and/or algae)? I have used it for dipping (certain corals) and algae, but at higher concentrations combined with physical removal; and even then it feels like a game of chicken, breaking down the algae before whatever coral is damaged.

I'll be honest, threads showing the limit of H2O2 a tank will take before "crashing", and correlating its dosing with whatever changes occur, isn't all that interesting to me.

I work with H202 and oxidizers for a living to remediate organics, I find it fascinating that people are simply dosing their tanks with it, as if it "targets" ich.

 

[brandon429]

Our threads have never investigated it for ich control thats a totally new trend to me, I saw humblefish start posting about it eighteen months or so ago. The scope of our collection is simply thousands of tanks who dose one mil per ten gallons/sometimes a bit more and we’d watch to see if the algae / cyano / dinos died. The unapparent outcome of all the combined doses 2011-now was we never worried about filter bac nor fish in the tanks. When we had a fail from using peroxide it was that the target organism won/ didn’t die and they had to move on to some other treatment experiment for it

 

[Roli's Reef Ranch]

I believe the quote “All tanks have ich” is completely false, but most tanks will eventually add it. Managing ich for me isn’t much more than feeding well and keeping stress relatively low.

Very true. I have a tank with no ich in it at all. It's been sitting empty for 2 years.

 

[lucas-grimm]

Do you have any documentation on what dosing H2O2 theoretically accomplishes?

No studies, mostly just following research from humblefish threads and experimental treatments from others.

 

[lucas-grimm]

agreed they do get mad that's true, anems and xenia most commonly.

it's amazing and humbling in the face of today's disease trending to see all this effort he made still get a vector leak/under challenge. Anything you're trying here after that type of beginning attempt is a good faith effort that's for sure. you vastly exceeded in post #1 what the majority of new tank owners will ever attempt with regards to disease preps.

i wish disease prep and prevention was as big as cycling a tank in the beginning. the introduction of velvet or brook (not ich) is catastrophic to any marine system when it could’ve been easily prevented.

 

[lucas-grimm]

I sure do that those links on peroxide, they're mighty long reads. they're common "I dumped peroxide in my tank to kill algae threads" totaling about 500 pages across several links collated over the years from 2011 to today.

will it help anything if I post them beyond what I summarized above?

that one I posted above is fifty pages of the exact same patterns I can add ten more links to/all it does is show the same thing: nobody's tank crashed, we did hit and miss on algae wins.

it's been mentioned before: the instant organic pull from a reef tank acts on peroxide to dissociate it/ the effects aren't as devastating as they'd appear in a test tube.

the #1 weakest organism in reefing to peroxide is the lysmata shrimp. what I'd rate as the toughest? filter bacteria.

we do peroxide dosing on seneye tanks now to chart effects...that's precision ammonia measurement. a paradox happens: nitrification boosts vs gets lowered. reasons assumed: we are giving aerobes more of what they like (up to a point, toxicity will result at some point we all agree)

but not at 1:10 dosing, I've seen routine in-tank doses as high as 4 mils per ten gallons not stress a biofilter and they did it about 20 days in a row trying to kill green hair algae.

I have no idea if it works or can help on fish disease, no idea at all. Humblefish sure is working on it, he makes a great dither reefer for disease trending that's for sure lol.

i’m probably pushing limits going over 1 ml/ gallon but i’ve yet to experience any crashes in the biofilter or recycling the tank. Humblefish has absolutely been revolutionary with h202 dosing and other fish treatments.

 

[lucas-grimm]

I was more interested in harder information, and what the theory is for broadcast dosing H2O2 to eradicate ich (and/or algae)? I have used it for dipping (certain corals) and algae, but at higher concentrations combined with physical removal; and even then it feels like a game of chicken, breaking down the algae before whatever coral is damaged.

I'll be honest, threads showing the limit of H2O2 a tank will take before "crashing", and correlating its dosing with whatever changes occur, isn't all that interesting to me.

I work with H202 and oxidizers for a living to remediate organics, I find it fascinating that people are simply dosing their tanks with it, as if it "targets" ich.

It also could very well be giving us “results” when in actuality the fish could be displaying less parasites due to building some “tolerance” over time like most of the fish i have have done, but we have no way of knowing until actual tests are performed.

 

[brandon429]

that's a keen observation about disease preps being up front

before concerns over ammonia and nitrite, cycling is about disease preps because all reefers employ cycling options that were already designed before them (nothing new under the metal halide lamp tenet) and in marine settings, getting bacteria is easy not hard

cycling requires no thought no tinkering no coaxing, it's done after ten days in any arrangement we all see. cycles don't stall (and if they do, someone's tank is going to die below soon and I'll be drummed right out)

here is a soon to be 40 page thread testing what we're discussing where only disease prep matters/we advise to focus solely on that aspect during the cycle

How to unstick any seemingly stuck cycle

Updated Cycling Science in Action This is a testless reef tank cycling thread, the only one from any board. If you ever had trouble with reef tank cycling in the past, you won't any longer after working some jobs with us. chances are you are using/about to use a method of reef tank cycling...

www.reef2reef.com

we have been testing the premise that cycling should be about disease preps, ammonia control works itself out as those preps are going on/seems to be working fine.