88F to fight ICH in my planted tank?

[67Elmo]

As a relative newbie, I thought I'd post this here instead of the disease forum...

I have a 2 month old 75 gallon planted tank that is to be a showpiece in my living room. CO2, plant gravel, full spectrum lighting, etc. The tank and plants are doing amazingly well with the CO2 injection, and have surpassed my expectations.

However a particularly virulent strain of ICH is in the tank from the fish I put in, even though they were in my quarantine tank for two weeks first with no symptoms. I have guppies, harlequin rasboras, cardinal and neon tetras only in this tank. I have been treating for a MONTH with a product called ICH-X which is supposed to be the most powerful product sold in Canada for Ich. I do 20% water changes DAILY (its getting old after a month) and add the chemical daily as per the instructions on the bottle. The temperature is 78-82F.

However half the neons and cardinals have died, but the harlequin rasboras and guppies seem fine. I have about a dozen cardinals left and 3 or 4 of them STILL HAVE SPOTS from the ich. Not a lot, but perhaps 3 or 4 spots each. It just won't go away despite a full month of daily treatment. The guppies and rasboras do not have spots and appear fully normal.

My only option now is to crank the temperature up to about 88F which is supposed to kill ich, especially if I keep treating it daily. But this is supposed to harm plants which I don't want to do as the tank looks magnificent now with the luxuriant growth.

Will the plants survive 88F for a week or two? Surely in tropical regions they must hit water temperatures of 88F for a short period of a few weeks in a "heat wave". Advice? This ich strain I have must have morphed into something much more powerful than the average ich strain, as its just not responding to treatment after a full month. So other than raising the temperature my only other option is to totally clear the tank of all fish life for a month, and the ich parasite dies due to a lack of hosts.

 

[fish wrangler]

I used heat in my planted tank. Java fern, wisteria, and anacharis all wnet through the treatment and came out alive

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[tiger terror]

Same here ,heat+meds.Plants came through unscaved...

Getcha sleeves wet fish tank people!

 

[Linwood]

Same here - wisteria, jungle val, annubias, crypt wendtii, amazon sword all showed no impact from changing from 78 to 89 degrees, nor really did the fish except they were more active (tetra, raphael catfish, BN pleco, shrimp, snails). It was kind of a non-event.

However, most things I have read say do NOT use medicine plus > 88F heat, as both rob the fish of oxygen, and combined that might be fatal.

Some heat (low 80's) and medicine is usually recommended, the low heat speeds up the ich lifecycle, exposing it more rapidly to the medicine.

High heat (> 86F) is supposed to kill it in some of its lifecycle stages, so you leave it on 2 weeks to ensure you cover a couple of those cycles.

There's a good discussion from a pretty reliable source here, discussions of the Ich-x (which is basically malachite green) is about a third of the way down, along with some hints as to when it might not work well (lots of organics in the tank).

PS. He's a fan of both heat + salt, I was afraid of that high of salt dosage with plants, and used heat alone.