Can Anyone Please Tell Me What to do Next Here?

[Osage_Winter]

Okay, so as I have been explaining everyone, and because the threads were merged, you can see where the advice is a bit contradictory based on an individual's independent opinion or take -- I am inclined at this point to go with Cog's suggestion of just leaving the Ich medicine out for now and doing a 75% drain as this water is HEAVILY infested and cloudy, while raising the heat in the water, but I am really uncertain if I should stop the Stability, Rid Ich and salt just like that...

 

[Osage_Winter]

Update: Unfortunately, Not Much of a Change...But Plenty of Stains from the Meds

Okay, now I'm really upset -- and so is my wife. We did a 50% water change tonight PHYSICALLY BY HAND by removing jarfuls of water, then replacing all the water because the syphon tube/gravel vac we purchased at Petsmart just wouldn't work; I don't know what we were doing wrong, but no matter how many times we pumped the thing, we couldn't get the syphoning to begin.

But I did add the proper amount of Seachem Prime after adding the new tap water...

So, we said "to *** with that," and we did a manual water change. After pouring the hour of time into that, we discovered that not only is every ornament, plant and sealant in the tank stained blue, there were traces of the Rid Ich that must have dripped across our brand new carpeting of our new two story house. The spots are everywhere. Because this is a dye, I am not expecting them to come out, but we called for Stanley Steamer to come tomorrow anyway in an emergency situation.

The most we were able to do by hand was 50% of a change -- this didn't seem to eliminate much of the cloudy or blue-tinged water, but I'm simply done with the liquid ich treatments -- we also bought a Top Fin heater, which I set up and submerged, but I gotta tell ya...this thing is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to read in terms of the temperature indicator -- there's like a plastic orange colored block stack that is supposed to go up and down with temperature changes of the knob on top, but I can't read the thing...

What's the procedure in a case like this in terms of heating up the water to begin a heat treatment for ich? How do I know if the degrees are simply going up one by one as it was suggsted to me to do in the case of my sick goldfish?

If anyone could help with this new round of dilemmas, I would greatly appreciate it...I'm already prepared to throw this whole kit out the window for the destruction of the new tank, ornaments, gravel, airline tubing and our home's carpeting from the blue dye based Rid Ich...

 

[neilanh]

None of the hobby grade heaters are really accurate by setting the numbers on the dial. You'll need a thermometer to read and use that to adjust the temperature.

Generally we recommend not changing the temperature of a tank by more than 2 or 3 degrees every 12+ hours. This is to try to minimize the shock on the fish that are already under a great deal of stress because of the ich.

So sorry about your problems, and that really stinks about the carpets.

 

[Osage_Winter]

None of the hobby grade heaters are really accurate by setting the numbers on the dial. You'll need a thermometer to read and use that to adjust the temperature.

Generally we recommend not changing the temperature of a tank by more than 2 or 3 degrees every 12+ hours. This is to try to minimize the shock on the fish that are already under a great deal of stress because of the ich.

I indeed bought a thermometer along with the other equipment today, Neilan -- I forgot to mention that in the original post. So, we do have a thermometer in there; the thing is, how do I regulate the one degree or so per day increase based on just the thermometer? In other words, when I raise the knob on the heater, it seems to make the light go on, and then off after a minute or so as it automatically attempts to hold that temp -- but how do I deal with this based on reading my thermometer's reading?

So sorry about your problems, and that really stinks about the carpets.

Tell me about it...we just don't know what to do -- this Rid Ich stained EVERYTHING in the tank, supposedly permanently, as well as our carpets. We're in for a $5000 carpet job now (new ones) which we simply don't have...

 

[neilanh]

IME if you can read the numbers on the dial, they're pretty accurate in terms of relative temperature. What I mean is, if you set the heater knob to 78 degrees, setting it to 80 degrees will yield an approximately 2 degree change. Where I've found heaters to never be accurate is that a setting of 78 degrees will read something different on a thermometer by up to 5 degrees.

So, in your case, since you're starting with a tank that essentially has no heater in it, set the knob on the heater so that it just barely kicks in (light turns on), then leave it alone for 12 hours. Take a reading on the thermometer and adjust appropriately. If the thermometer reads 72 degrees, but the knob on the heater says 75, for instance, then to increase the tank to an actual 74 degrees set the knob to 77. Think of the thermometer as a calibration tool for the numbers on the dial on the heater.

 

[bluerose]

Osage-- try something like Oxy-Clean spray before you get too despondent about the carpets; it's pretty amazing stuff.

Good luck.

 

[Osage_Winter]

IME if you can read the numbers on the dial, they're pretty accurate in terms of relative temperature. What I mean is, if you set the heater knob to 78 degrees, setting it to 80 degrees will yield an approximately 2 degree change. Where I've found heaters to never be accurate is that a setting of 78 degrees will read something different on a thermometer by up to 5 degrees.

So, in your case, since you're starting with a tank that essentially has no heater in it, set the knob on the heater so that it just barely kicks in (light turns on), then leave it alone for 12 hours. Take a reading on the thermometer and adjust appropriately. If the thermometer reads 72 degrees, but the knob on the heater says 75, for instance, then to increase the tank to an actual 74 degrees set the knob to 77. Think of the thermometer as a calibration tool for the numbers on the dial on the heater.

Uh oh...numbers again...

Thanks for the attempt at the explanation -- but let's see if I did this right...I indeed turned the heater on until the light just turned on -- but this seems to just make the heater turn on and off every minute or so, and I can't really make out what the indicator on the heater itself says...

So, should I wait until tomorrow and see if the thermometer went up at all? If it did, should I raise the heater a bit more, or even if it didn't?

 

[Osage_Winter]

Osage-- try something like Oxy-Clean spray before you get too despondent about the carpets; it's pretty amazing stuff.

Good luck.

Thanks blue...

Unfortunately, my wife just informed me that we only have the Oxy Clean powder, not the spray -- but we have Stanley Steamer coming out tomorrow to do all the carpets in the house, so I'll let you all know how that goes...

As for the staining in the tank...does anyone know if this is actually permanent? My skull ornament has been dyed blue, and all the sealants and tubing have been dyed...

Will this eventually fade?

 

[cogburn]

it will eventually fade

 

[Osage_Winter]

it will eventually fade

Thank you...

 

[Osage_Winter]

Update...

Okay everyone...

So, we did a 50% water change last night, getting a good deal of the crappy water out of there, I added Prime to dechloronate the new water, and then started raising the temp per cog's recommendations. So far, the temp seems to have climbed by maybe a degree or two, if my Top Fin thermometer is working right, and I'm still running the heater, upping it a bit this morning to get a degree or two up from there...

The thing is, the temp indicator on the Top Fin heater I bought is so hard to read from the back of the tank -- you can't even see the light orange indicator through my still cloudy-ish water. Should I just keep upping the heater each day and keep my eye on the thermometer?

 

[neilanh]

yeah, definately only use the thermometer to make your readings.

 

[Osage_Winter]

Okay...

 

[Osage_Winter]

So, should I just continue "upping" the temp control of the heater based on what my thermometer says? It doesn't look like it's moving in a monumental way at all; going up maybe a point or two at the most from when I first started doing the heat...

Do I do this until the temp reaches 90? Are we sure this won't cook my goldies??

 

[Osage_Winter]

I'd like to share an update with everyone...

So, as I said, we did the 50% water change and even changed out the filter carts on the Aqueon 55 because it seemed as though all the Rid Ich was simply just getting sucked into the pads (I did NOT clean or wash the biogrids on the filters for fear of destroying any good bacteria that may be growing there); plus, we began the heat treatment after we bought a Top Fin heater and thermometer. The water change seems to at least made the three fancytails in the tank a bit more active and spry, unless it's my imagination, and the all-orange Oranda doesn't seem to be suffering from the Ich in any spread locations. It is REMOTELY possible that I diagnosed what was wrong with it, although it did exhibit the classic symtom of the salt-like bumps on the head.

At any rate, I think changing the water to get rid of some of the old, diseased and overmedicated water did some good -- I of course treated the tap water we put back in with the correct amount of Seachem Prime. Now, we're just waiting on the heat -- my main concern at this point is that I don't cook these fish, literally, by gradually increasing the temperature to 90 degrees...the temp is definitely going up in the tank slowly it seems, according to the thermometer, but is there any chance of the high heat killing these goldfish?