Is This Ich?

[Ice Man]

On Thursday I got 11 cardinal tetras. Two of them died on the same day. remaining 9 were OK. on Friday and Saturday morning they were ok as well. I came home Sunday night and found them covered in white tiny dots. My other fish seams to be ok. Is that an ich?
Actually on Saturday morning I saw white super tiny bugs crawling on front glass. They were about 1/64 of an inch.
I took some pictures with my phone.

 

[Ice Man]

Is any of these meds helpful for treating ich?

 

[Sake]

You can treat for Ich with heat instead of meds. If you slowly raise your temp up to 86 degrees and hold it for a week or two after you see the last spot that should be enough to kill Ich. Don't raise the temp all at once just do a degree every hour or two.

 

[Mumma.of.two]

Yes that is ich. The white bugs in the glass would be something else unrelated.
To treat ich:
Raise the temp to 86-88F
Increase aeration
Increase gravel vacs and water changes
Leave the temp up for at least one week after last spot is seen
No meds needed.

 

[Ice Man]

Thx! I am raising temp slowly and added couple tablespoons of salt. Never had ich before. This case of ich looks nasty.

 

[Cecil2010]

When you put your fish in the tank did you net them out or poor the whole bag in with your lfs water?

 

[Ice Man]

When you put your fish in the tank did you net them out or poor the whole bag in with your lfs water?

Drip acclimatization for an hour and then I fish them out with net.

 

[Cecil2010]

did you notice the "salt like" formations on your fish or any of the fish at your lfs when you bought them?

 

[Ice Man]

did you notice the "salt like" formations on your fish or any of the fish at your lfs when you bought them?

Nope. They looked good!

 

[Cecil2010]

humm, so have you turned up your heat or are you going with the meds?

 

[DoIt4Fun]

Another way to treat it is use aquarium salt on non iodide salt you can get it in any market store it's one teaspoon per gallon...

 

[DoIt4Fun]

On = or

 

[Ice Man]

humm, so have you turned up your heat or are you going with the meds?

I turned the temp up to 84F and added some aquarium salt. 50% PWC today. Meds are too risky for my other fish.

 

[Mumma.of.two]

Make sure you get it up to 86F or above. Anything less will only speed up the life cycle.

It has been found that Ich does not infect new fish at 29.4°C/85°F (Johnson, 1976), stops reproducing at 30°C/86°F (Dr. Nick St. Erne, DVM, pers. comm.), and dies at 32°C/89.5°F (Meyer, 1984), [1]

http://www.aquahobby.com/articles/e_ich2.php

 

[Andy Sager]

Sounds to me...

On Thursday I got 11 cardinal tetras. Two of them died on the same day. remaining 9 were OK. on Friday and Saturday morning they were ok as well. I came home Sunday night and found them covered in white tiny dots. My other fish seams to be ok. Is that an ich?
Actually on Saturday morning I saw white super tiny bugs crawling on front glass. They were about 1/64 of an inch.
I took some pictures with my phone.

For starters, there seems to be a few things going on.
#1: Ick is a parasite caused by stress on the fish. That stress can be anything from temp. change, poor water quality (I'll get to that in a minute), harassment, PH difference, etc. The fact that these are new fish and they have it leads me to...
#2: Tiny white "bugs" ( copapods)on the glass are usually a symptom of an unclean aquarium. Your older fish have had the opportunity to get used to this dirtyness but the new fish were dumped right into it most likely stressing them out and causing the ick episode.

Assuming that the fish weren't sick when you bought them and that your fish weren't sick when you introduced these new fish into the tank, the "new" form of ick seems to be tolorant of a lot of the meds we used to use for treatment. That being said, a RAPID rise in temp of 4-6 degrees disturbs the parasite's natural cycle and helps the fish out. Assuming you keep your tank at 78-80 degrees, 4-6 degrees should land you around 86 degrees which the fish can handle. Using a copper based product like CopperSafe can help get rid of stubborn ick problems should temp alone not work. If possible, do a 20% water change and clean up some of the gravel area to try to clean up the detritus that the copapods are feeding on. Replace the water removed with 86 degree water.

Once healed, you want to make sure that you reduce the temp SLOWLY. No more than a 2 degree drop in a 24 hour time span. Too fast and you'll stress the fish out again and have a relapse. Once you've achieved a normal temp, get into the habit of doing a 10% water change weekly and clean a small portion of the gravel bed every other week to every 3rd week. You don't want to do too much at one time or else you'll disturb your bacteria bed. With a maintanence schedule like this, the water should never go bad unless you overfeed or over stock.

Finally, FYI, Maracyn and Maracyn 2 are antibiotics and will do nothing for the ick problem. Once the ick is cleared, they would be good to use to fight off any secondary infections from the parasites. Make sure you do a full treatment when using any antibiotics or you will create "super bugs" that will become immune to the meds (which is what I believe has happened with the Ick parasites). The parasite guard would be the only med of the three pictured that would have any effect on the Ick parasite.

Hope this all helps...

 

[Ice Man]

For starters, there seems to be a few things going on.
#1: Ick is a parasite caused by stress on the fish. That stress can be anything from temp. change, poor water quality (I'll get to that in a minute), harassment, PH difference, etc. The fact that these are new fish and they have it leads me to...
#2: Tiny white "bugs" ( copapods)on the glass are usually a symptom of an unclean aquarium. Your older fish have had the opportunity to get used to this dirtyness but the new fish were dumped right into it most likely stressing them out and causing the ick episode.

Assuming that the fish weren't sick when you bought them and that your fish weren't sick when you introduced these new fish into the tank, the "new" form of ick seems to be tolorant of a lot of the meds we used to use for treatment. That being said, a RAPID rise in temp of 4-6 degrees disturbs the parasite's natural cycle and helps the fish out. Assuming you keep your tank at 78-80 degrees, 4-6 degrees should land you around 86 degrees which the fish can handle. Using a copper based product like CopperSafe can help get rid of stubborn ick problems should temp alone not work. If possible, do a 20% water change and clean up some of the gravel area to try to clean up the detritus that the copapods are feeding on. Replace the water removed with 86 degree water.

Once healed, you want to make sure that you reduce the temp SLOWLY. No more than a 2 degree drop in a 24 hour time span. Too fast and you'll stress the fish out again and have a relapse. Once you've achieved a normal temp, get into the habit of doing a 10% water change weekly and clean a small portion of the gravel bed every other week to every 3rd week. You don't want to do too much at one time or else you'll disturb your bacteria bed. With a maintanence schedule like this, the water should never go bad unless you overfeed or over stock.

Finally, FYI, Maracyn and Maracyn 2 are antibiotics and will do nothing for the ick problem. Once the ick is cleared, they would be good to use to fight off any secondary infections from the parasites. Make sure you do a full treatment when using any antibiotics or you will create "super bugs" that will become immune to the meds (which is what I believe has happened with the Ick parasites). The parasite guard would be the only med of the three pictured that would have any effect on the Ick parasite.

Hope this all helps...

Thanks a lot! I do PWC once a week, around 30%. Always vacuum bottom of the tank. I run 2 filters on the 25g tank. Aqueon 30 and Eheim 2211. I don't think that I have any issues with tank being dirty. Water parameters are were they should be only with nitrates running a bit high at 40ppm only because my tap water already has 40ppm of nitrates.
So far so good. Water stays at 86F and cardinals act normally.

 

[Ice Man]

More problems.
Just noticed that 4 of them are missing part of their tails. :-0
I watch them a lot and didn't notice any hostility from other tank mates. They are housed with dwarf gourami, two HY511 tetras (aka candy cane) pair of australe killifish, five corys and 4 japanica shrimps.

 

[Andy Sager]

It's a funny thing....

Thanks a lot! I do PWC once a week, around 30%. Always vacuum bottom of the tank. I run 2 filters on the 25g tank. Aqueon 30 and Eheim 2211. I don't think that I have any issues with tank being dirty. Water parameters are were they should be only with nitrates running a bit high at 40ppm only because my tap water already has 40ppm of nitrates.
So far so good. Water stays at 86F and cardinals act normally.

It's a funny thing about fish tanks. You think you are doing the right things but the situations in the tank say otherwise. Little white bugs don't usually show up in a clean aquarium because they have nothing to eat. You say you have them therefore they have a food source. Now, I'm not saying that this is a bad sign. It's just a sign that there may be other things going on that you are not aware of.
It's been my training and opinion for over 40 years that a larger water change is more stressful on fish. When properly maintained, a 10% water change combined with proper filtration, proper feeding and proper stocking prevents almost any problem from developing. At least it ALWAYS worked for me.

Another thing, ICK, while a disease, should really be thought of as a symptom of a larger problem. In a healthy aquarium, fish don't come down with Ick even at lower temps. It's the rapid changes or degredation of the water that makes the fish finally break down.

Just some things to think about

Glad to hear the cardinals are doing better