Ich outbreak; question

[Marconis]

Came home today and found 6/9 of my fish, mainly the cherry barbs, covered in ich. No recent additions...perhaps stress made these protists have a field day. Initially, I was planning on buying a second 10 gallon this weekend in order to start up my new dirt tank. Then I realized the conversion isn't as difficult as I thought, so I'd just put the fish in a bucket while I worked on it.

Well, after seeing this random ich outbreak, my plans again reverted back to buying a new tank. I was going to sell my cherry barbs (I hate them), but now that's out the window. My plan now is to treat the fish in the old ten gallon while my new one is up and running with the old filter. If the infected fish are not in the new tank, can the ich still be carried over from the filter contents/substrate? I don't really know the parasitology/transmission of ich, so I'd appreciate if someone could fill me in on this.

 

[neilanh]

The answer is yes, it can carry over.

If it were me, I'd use the heat method to treat the current tank and work on the new tank on the side in the meantime.

 

[neilanh]

Let me clarify to say that 1 of the parasites life stages is a free swimming phase, this is when they can move around and if you have some in that phase it's possible to move it over with the filter.

 

[Marconis]

What's the heat method again? I won't be around all of Saturday and most of Friday. Setting up the tank on Sunday.

 

[neilanh]

Slowly increase the temp in the tank to >85 deg. Hold here for 2 weeks past any visible cysts.

 

[Marconis]

Ugh, alright. What a time for this to happen :-\.

Thanks.