Skip to Content

Is API Super Ick Cure Safe For Shrimp?

The popularity of keeping shrimp be it neocaridina shrimp or caridina shrimp in aquariums has skyrocketed over the last five years.

More and more people within the fish keeping hobby have realized just how great shrimp can be for eating algae, detritus, and left over fish food in your tank reducing the frequency that tank maintenance is required.

In addition to this, the brighter neocaridina shrimp such as cherry shrimp, neon yellow shrimp, and blue dream shrimp also make the shrimp more attractive to look at helping to convince people to add them to their tanks.

With shrimp being so popular in a wide range of different aquarium tank setups these days, we have noticed more and more questions about using various treatments in an aquarium that contains shrimp.

With ich being such a common problem in fish tanks and API Super Ick Cure being such a popular treatment option for ich in fishtanks, there have been a number of people asking about using various ich treatments in their shrimp tank recently.

Due to this, we wanted to go over if API Super Ick Cure and some of the other commonly used ich treatments are safe to use in a tank with shrimp.

Can Ick Live On Shrimp?

First, we need to address the question of whether or not ich can actually live on shrimp.

The answer to this is a bit complicated as ich can infect both fish and invertebrates such as shrimp.

However, the parasites that infect fish are slightly different than the ones that will infect invertebrates such as shrimp.

This means that while ich can infect both fish and shrimp, the ich parasites will not be able to complete their life cycle on shrimp.

Due to this, if the ich does not manage to move from the shell of your shrimp to a fish early in its lifecycle then it will simply perish.

Is API Super Ick Cure Safe For Shrimp?

Although API Super Ick Cure is one of the best ich treatments on the market by far, it is unfortunately not safe for use in tanks that also have shrimp or other invertebrates in them.

The active ingredient in API Super Ick Cure that treats ich so effectively will also cause irreversible problems with your shrimp too and eventually cause them to perish in your tank.

We know that there are a number of people on social media saying that you are able to micro dose API Super Ick Cure for a shrimp tank to keep your shrimp alive but then the effectiveness of the treatment is reduced.

Due to ich being a fast acting parasitic infection in your fish, you really do want to treat it as quickly as possible so you should be going with a shrimp safe ich treatment that we will cover later in the article if possible.

Is API White Spot Cure Safe For Shrimp?

Another very popular ich treatment from API that has a great reputation for treating ich in fish is API White Spot Cure.

Unfortunately though, just like API Super Ick Cure, API White Spot Cure is not safe for use in a tank with shrimp either.

Although API White Spot Cure is not as bad for use in tanks with shrimp, meeting the recommended treatment dose for a tank with shrimp in it will still cause problems and fatalities with your shrimp and other inverts.

Again, we would always recommend that you just ignore the people on social media recommending that your micro dose API White Spot Cure in your tank to make it shrimp safe.

Micro dosing API White Spot Cure drastically reduces its effectiveness at treating ich in your fish and increases the chances of your fish perishing due to the ich infection.

How Do You Treat Ich In A Shrimp Tank?

We have a dedicated article going over the best shrimp safe ich treatments for a shrimp tank that should make it as quick, easy, and cheap as possible to treat ich on your fish in tanks with shrimp in them.

In our opinion, the best option is to use the temperature trick but you have to keep in mind that this is not a suitable option for all shrimp tanks.

It involves you increasing the water temperature of the tank to the high 70s or low 80s to increase the life cycle of the ich to cause it to perish before it can reproduce.

Do use this method, you have to make sure that everything in your aquarium is able to live in this temperature range without having problems though.

Other shrimp safe ich treatments involve Parashield, decent garlic infused fish flake product, and garlic infused seaweed and algae sheets but these tend not to be as effective at treating ich.