Ich outbreak! Help!!

[Boogety48]

I got up today and all my fish appear to have Piche. I'm fixing to go get some aquarium salt from the lbs. Is that what I need? Also what do I do with my snails, I don't want to kill them with the salt. My tank has corys, tetra, dwarf frogs, snail, and shrimp. What needs to be taken out?

 

[LyndaB]

You can't use salt with half of the species you have. At least, it's not recommended for a newbie. Plus, you must treat the entire tank for ich, not just certain species.

Try the heat method:

Raise temp to 86 F (slowly)

Add an airstone to increase oxygenation

Gravel vacs every 2-3 days to remove ich spore from substrate

Maintain schedule for minimum of 2 weeks

Ich gets worse before it gets better. Patience is key.

P.S. What is piche?

 

[Boogety48]

Sorry I was sending that on my phone so it auto-corrected ich to piche. I just read back over it and was like oh man that looks bad lol. I bought a bigger air stone and turned my heater up a little bit. How often should turn the heater up so that I'm not doing it so fast? I was worried about treating everything with salt because I know just from reading different posts that not everything I have can be treated. That's why I posted on here so I didn't hurt anything more. I took out my plants and when this is done I'm going to replace with fake ones. I don't seem to be getting proper plants so I'm going to stick with fake. Every fish seems to be hanging around the air stone and swimming through it often. I have other air stones in the tank but not as big as this one.

 

[LyndaB]

You don't want to up the temp more than 3 degrees per day.

 

[Boogety48]

Ok. I only bumped it up two degrees. I was hoping that wouldn't be to much.

 

[LyndaB]

Just remember that the very best thing for your fish is clean water. Cures a lot.

 

[Boogety48]

I did a water change yesterday but I'll get some more ready to go and clean it out again tomorrow or should I do it tonight instead?

 

[Boogety48]

I'm not so sure its ich but I don't know what it is. There's a few spots of ich looking stuff on a couple of fish and all are not moving a lot. Also two of my corys have a white dot on their eyes. Is this something worse than ich?

 

[Boogety48]

Ok so here's an update. I've been slowly turning up the temp of my tank. I'm keeping the lights off because I've read that helps with ich and other fishy diseases. So far I've lost one tetra and one emerald cory. Everything looks to be doing a little better. I see fewer white spots but I know I'm far from in the clear.

 

[Boogety48]

New Update:
No more losses so far. Everyone seems have perked up. All fish are eating and swimming like normal. All the ich spots are gone that I can see and I've also been vacuuming my gravel very thoroughly.

 

[LyndaB]

You're doing a great job. Keep it up. Sorry for your losses, but some fish are more sensitive to ich and other diseases and don't seem to be able to pull through.