Will ich treatment kill live plants?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Salt will have an effect on some plants like swords... but they tend to recover... I haven't had a medicine really KILL all my plants before but I have had salt and meds kill some parts of the plants.. but they recover quickly
 
I had ICH in my planted tank and I was worried about this. I raised the temp to 86 and the plants weren't affected and the fish were treated. You don't need medicine so to speak to treat it.
 
Your Plants

Please help/more info/ experience

Hello Aq...

Chemicals put into the tank water can have a negative affect on fish, plants and the beneficial bacteria. If possible, deal with the "Ich" parasite by natural means. Like, raising the water temperature to the low 80s to avoid plant damage and keep the dose of aquarium salt to a couple of teaspoons to every 5 gallons of replacement water. The water changes really need to be done daily and half the volume of the tank in gallons and do a good job of vacuuming the bottom material taking care to avoid the areas very close to the plants.

These steps can be followed until you see improvement in the fish.

B
 
Heat can kill some plants, but many will be ok. Unfortunately it can be difficult to predict at times due to a number of factors, from a plant's individual tolerance to its overall health.

Salt can definitely cause mass casualties of tanks, but many species are particularly resistant to brackish conditions, eg lilaeopsis sp. As above, it can be difficult to predict.

Most of you standard ich meds, eg QuICK Cure, are a combination of malachite green and formalin. In general, they are entirely plant safe, but are potentially toxic to snails/shrimp, so their should be used with extreme caution in tanks with those denizens.


In my own experience, I usually opt for chemical treatment. It's faster, very safe, and generally easier on a tank than high temps or salt from a fish perspective, as many tropical species or subtropicals really don't appreciate temps that high.
 
I have used both Paraguard and the medicated fish food for external parasites such as ick that Angels Plus sells. The food has always worked quite well.
 
I like Seachem's Paraguard as well. I've had to use it a couple times. The only ill effects I saw were that my newest Julii Cories did not like it and ended up dying a week later. It did not affect my plants or biofilter.


Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice
 
I am a big proponent of skipping both salt and meds for treatment of ich. Increase the temperature up to 86 degrees (don't combine this with meds) and you don't need to add any salt at all.

This is a tried and true method for managing ich and I have never seen higher temps cause any problems for my plants, fish, snails, or anything really. Even the time when we had a temperature spike last year and I had to ice my tanks to keep them from going much over 90 degrees.

I have however, had problems with presumably safe medications killing my shrimp. At one point I tried prazi pro to treat my tank for gill flukes which is supposedly one of the best invert safe meds out there for shrimp. A week later I had lost over 100 of my wild neocardinia shrimp.
 
When using Paraguard with scaleless fish such as cory's, loaches, and other catfish you have to use it at full strength. It talks about treatment of them on the bottle and the amount to use. I found if I dosed 1/2 the amount in the morning and the other 1/2 in the evening the fish tolerated it quite well. I also found that many small tetra's don't handle full doses either.
 
back when I was a noob to the hobby I used a malachite green ich treatment in my planted tank. It caused the plants to kind of slow down growing and die a little but they soon recovered and were fine after water changes to remove the meds. I would go with the natural method now looking back on it but haven't had ich since.
 
Back
Top Bottom