help with ich please!!!

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ghost knife

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Nov 14, 2013
Messages
26
Location
Midlands
Please help as both my large angel fish seem to be covered in white spots and I have treated them for ich by the book but no improvement after 2 weeks and 4 seperate treatments. I have also turned the heat up. Any help is appreciated as I love these 2 and don't want my other fish infected too.
 
Sorry to hear about your ich outbreak. Ich is definitely best caught treating as early as detected.

I recently had an ich outbreak. I treated it by cranking up my heater as far as it would go (86 degrees) and putting 20 tablespoons of salt in my 55 gallon aquarium (or 2 tablespoons per 5 gallons approximately). It worked like a charm.

What cranking the heater up does is shortens the life cycle of the parasite. Ich has three stages. Im no expert but its something like:
1. Infecting the fish and having visible white spots on it. This is where you notice it, ich may have been present prior to this but this is where you detect it. What the ich is doing is feeding off the tissue of the fish.
2. Ich drops off and falls to the substrate.
3. Ich spreads by exploding in a thousand (insert scientific term for it here) and the thousand little buggers look for new fish.

Ich is highly intolerant to salt and after the ich falls off the fish, it becomes vulnerable to salt in either the 2nd stage or the 3rd, i cant remember. Thats where the salt kills it.

Anyone may correct me if I'm wrong, I'm no scientist and my brain is allergic to big words.

It worked for me, it may not work for you, who knows. It would help to know:

1. how high you've turned up the heat?
2. What ich treatment you have been using?
3. How big your tank is?
4. What your tank paramaters are?
5. What the tank mates are?
6. Do you have a quarantine tank?
7. Is it a planted tank?
 
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