How does ich look like

Among them, Currently, huge selections of beautifully colored aquarium fish are available so hobbyists can stock their aquariums to satisfy their taste and add beauty to their homes. Aquariums are often placed in the waiting rooms or lobbies of restaurants, clinical offices, hospitals, commercial buildings, and hotels, providing enjoyment, satisfaction, and relaxation for people in these areas.

Several factors influence the health of aquarium fish, and parasitic disease is a major one. Several major groups of parasites can be seen in aquarium fish. Protozoans are single-celled organisms that typically have a direct lifecycle, requiring no intermediate host to reproduce. Monogenetic trematodes flatworms or flukes commonly invade the gills, skin, and fins of fish. They have no intermediate host, but are host- and site-specific—if they are found in one species, they usually will not spread to other species of fish, even in the same tank.

Digenetic trematodes grubs have a complex lifecycle involving a series of hosts, including snails and birds, nematodes and leeches, meaning they cannot complete their lifecycle in an aquarium because they cannot reproduce.

Crustacean parasites come in many types, such as Argulus fish louse , Lernaea anchor worm , and Ergasilus gill lice. Most of the parasitic diseases encountered in aquarium fish are protozoan parasites, especially those that cause white spot disease. White spot disease is a very common problem in freshwater aquarium fish. The disease is caused by the ciliate protozoan Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, commonly called ich or ick.

If the infection is restricted to the gills, however, no white spots will be seen. Ich infects almost all freshwater fish and has a high mortality rate. All the fish in a tank could be easily killed in a short period. Some aquarium fish may be more sensitive to ich infection than other species, but no fish species has complete natural resistance to ich.

Ich is a ciliate parasite that has three developmental stages, a parasitic trophont, a reproductive tomont, and an infective theront. The host provides the parasite with food and other necessary substances for growth.

The mature trophont leaves the fish, attaches to the sides and bottom of the aquarium, and secretes a cyst wall to become a reproductive tomont. Each tomont divides from one cell to two cells and then undergoes multiple divisions to produce to 1, theronts within a single cyst.

Infective theronts then bore their way out of the cyst and swim actively in the water in search of fish to attack. Did you introduce new fish to your aquarium without quarantining them first? Was the fish tank poorly maintained, or were there rapid changes in parameters such as pH and temperature? By keeping the water quality high and minimizing sources of stress, you can easily avoid any future outbreaks of ich. Fortunately, ich is one of the easiest diseases to treat, and fish generally will not die immediately from it unless they already have a compromised immune system.

With the right medication and a bit of patience, your fish should be cleared up in no time from those pesky white spots. Shop Menu. What is Ich? This microscopic view shows ich in its trophont stage, feeding under the skin of the fish. Does My Fish Have Ich? Can Ich Affect Humans? What is the Best Ich Treatment? Since stress ich and velvet also look very similar, it may be helpful to wait 24 hours and confirm the diagnosis. Dose Ich-X according to the instructions, which is 5 ml of medication per 10 gallons of aquarium water, and wait 24 hours.

Do not use half-strength dosage for sensitive fish because that concentration will not be strong enough to kill ich. After treating thousands of fish, we have never seen a problem with any species. Change one-third of the water and dose the aquarium again at the same concentration of 5 ml of Ich-X per 10 gallons of water. The disease may then cause respiratory distress, severe agitation, loss of appetite, and eventually death.

This disease is often identified based upon history, symptoms, and the presence of white spots, but if there is any question, it can be identified microscopically. A lesion can be scraped and viewed under the microscope to reveal a rather large cyst between 0. It also has a very characteristic large horseshoe-shaped nucleus. The life cycle of Ichthyophthirius is complicated, but very important in understanding the treatment and prevention of ich.

Once the ich protozoan attaches to the side of the fish, it begins feeding on the skin and tissue causing irritation. The fish's body begins to wall off the parasite to try to limit its damage. The protozoan continues to move around in the cyst, feeding and growing, while the body continues to further encapsulate and wall it off. This encapsulation by the body is one of the reasons that ich is so difficult to treat during this stage of the disease because medications cannot penetrate through the wall of the cyst to reach the ich parasite.

During this stage, the ich protozoan is called a trophozoite. The trophozoite eventually matures and is termed a "trophont. It then begins to divide into hundreds of new ich-infecting units called tomites. At optimum temperatures, the replication will be completed in about 8 hours.

At lower temperatures, the replication is slower, making the treatment time for eradication much longer. Once the replication is complete, the trophont bursts and releases the newly-formed tomites into the water. The tomites are motile and swim around the tank searching for a fish to attach to. Once they attach to a fish, the cycle will start over again. It is during this stage that ich is most susceptible to treatment. Many of the available medications will kill the tomites, thereby stopping the cycle of ich in your tank.

It should be noted that these tomites will only survive for 48 hours if they do not find a fish to attach to. These tomites will also attach to plants, filter material, etc. So if you move a plant from an infected tank into a clean tank, you have just infected the clean tank with ich.

Depending on the water temperature, the whole cycle can take from 4 days to several weeks. Theoretically, if the cycle takes four days to complete at this temperature, then the treatment should be complete in 4 days. Since we understand that we cannot kill ich while it is on the fish, we know that moving a fish to a quarantine tank for treatment will not solve the problem in the main tank.

The time to use a quarantine tank is before a new fish is introduced into a display tank. If a fish in a tank has ich, you must assume that the entire tank is now contaminated with ich and must be treated. Another way to get ich out of a tank is to remove all of the fish. To be safe, wait 4 days before returning the fish to the tank.

But remember, you will need to treat the tank that the fish are moved to, otherwise, fish entering that tank could become infected.

We are treating the tank, not the fish, so all effective treatments are designed to kill the trophite form of the disease while it is in the tank. The mature ich organisms that cause the problems on the fish do not die from treatment, but fall off in a couple of days during their normal life cycle and then their offspring die from the treatment in the water.

Some of the best treatments historically have been formalin or malachite green, or a combination of the two. Copper, methylene blue, and baths of potassium permanganate, quinine hydrochloride, and sodium chloride have also been used, but do not appear to offer an advantage over the more readily available formalin and malachite green products.

When using formalin, make sure to use recently purchased formalin. Formalin that is stored for long periods of time can convert to paraformaldehyde, which can be toxic to fish. An indicator that this has occurred is the formation of a white precipitate in the bottle. Malachite green may also stain some decorations and silicone to a green color and may be toxic to piranhas, neons, sunfish, and some scaleless fish, if given at the recommended dose.

For these fish or other sensitive species, they should be treated at half strength and monitored carefully for signs of distress. While we rarely recommend treating an entire tank for a disease, ich is an exception. Make sure to follow individual label directions, remove the carbon from your filter, and shut off any UV sterilizers or protein skimmers during treatment because they will inactivate or remove any medications that are added. Ich is a very common disease and if your fish get it, you are going to end up having to treat the entire tank.