Goldfish with Ick for Over a Month Now - are they ok?

[Delapool]

I guess its progress What's your temp now? Increasing temp will speed up the ich cycle a bit and it would be nice to get rid of this in the next week's treatment.

Using Heat to Treat Ich in Freshwater Tropical Fish - Article at The Age of Aquariums - Tropical Fish

The Ich life cycle is temperature dependent. Higher temperatures within its livable range speed up every stage of the life cycle, while the lower temperatures will slow it down. At 18°C/64°F the cycle takes 10-12 days to complete.

 

[saradomin]

I guess its progress What's your temp now? Increasing temp will speed up the ich cycle a bit and it would be nice to get rid of this in the next week's treatment.

Using Heat to Treat Ich in Freshwater Tropical Fish - Article at The Age of Aquariums - Tropical Fish

The Ich life cycle is temperature dependent. Higher temperatures within its livable range speed up every stage of the life cycle, while the lower temperatures will slow it down. At 18°C/64°F the cycle takes 10-12 days to complete.

My temp is around 68-70F. I don't have a heater to simulate the conditions of a pond.

Can the ick be killed while attached to the host or does it have to break off first?

 

[Delapool]

Temp should be fine or can go a few degrees F higher if he can cope. Mainly to speed up ich life cycle.

A salt dip is meant to work. There were some instructions on this in the link.

 

[saradomin]

I've dosed the tank 5-6 times now and there are still white spots on the fins. They seem to be imbedded into the tails rather than sticking out. Temperatures have stayed in the mid 60's and above (Fahrenheit).

I've used the correct dose each time and changed 50% of the water before each dose as recommended by Tetra themselves.

 

[saradomin]

All the fish seem to be very healthy and new spots have not appeared.

 

[Delapool]

The spots on the fish I find can be very resistant. I've just had to wait for them to go.

Last ich treatment at 86F took a week for one spot to go. Generally not recommended but I was also dosing ich then multi-cure meds and it still stayed around.

 

[saradomin]

The spots on the fish I find can be very resistant. I've just had to wait for them to go.

Last ich treatment at 86F took a week for one spot to go. Generally not recommended but I was also dosing ich then multi-cure meds and it still stayed around.

Should I continue dosing?

 

[Delapool]

How long have you been dosing for now? I've had it take 2 to 3 weeks to get rid of it. Others get it to go in days.

If the fish are doing fine, should be ok to redose. Those meds don't look too harsh. Have you checked the water chemistry in case the meds are killing off good bacteria? Also is the tank water fairly clean? Lots of organic matter will soak up the meds and reduce effectiveness (same problem as filter carbon).

 

[aqua_holic]

I don't, but they look like the ick in this picture. The spots on my fish are more closely packed together.

Not my picture.

I don't believe you have ich. If it were it would have spread all over the body. I didn't see any mention of spots on the body. Did I miss that? If you could post pictures of your fish that would help immensely in determining what's what.

 

[saradomin]

I've dosed the tank for about 5 weeks now (1 dose a week). There has never been ich on the bodies of the fish. In the beginning, there was one spot on the fin that I could confidently call ich.

 

[aqua_holic]

It doesn't sound like ich, not at all.

 

[Delapool]

A pic would be great. That's a long time.

 

[saradomin]

On one of my goldfishes, the spots look exactly like this


Again, it's only on the tail fins. They have never shown up on their bodies


I had to use another picture as my camera will not pick it up. Time for a new phone.

 

[aqua_holic]

Ich WILL spread to the body, so the fact that it hasn't ever indicates that it is not ich. And while the spots in that picture do resemble ich, it's something else. Don't know what, but it's not ich. the spots are different.