Ick Meds....Temp Method....Can my fish take the heat??

[CareBear3030]

I've read good and bad about both using meds and the heat method for ick. I've heard that my loaches and catfish cant take meds....but none of them can take the heat.

Here are my fish....please tell me the easiest and less fatal way to take care of the ick.

2 pica catfish, 2 clown loaches, a beta, 2 rainbow sharks (one of which has grown 3 times the size of the other....whats up with that....thats another post I guess) a few mollies, 4 tiger barbs, and a dwarf frog.

Can these take the heat or should I use meds? I did find an ick med called Ick Guard III that says it is for scaleless fish such as loaches and catfish.

Any help is appreciated!!!

 

[aqua_guy]

What is an ick? is that the same as the water ich? because currently my clown loaches have water ich and i am treating them with malachite green which i bought in a lfs. they have been in medication for three days now and is doing fine. the lfs staff told me that the rumor regarding the clown loaches being killed by medicines and salt are not true. so i tried it and the white spots in the loaches are diminishing. But the guy told me to keep the medication running for about a week after the last spot has been removed.

The only thing i dont like about the med is that my tank water is green.

 

[Tigerlily]

Hi Carebear!

Ich medicines are basically poisons that work on the principle that the ich will die before your fish will. Creeps me out.

I recommend the heat method (did you read about it in the articles section here? Great article). I've used it twice on two different tanks of tiger barbs and rainbow sharks with no problems and no fatalities. It worked great. Make sure you get the heat up above 86. I used 88 degrees for two weeks. After the first week the ich spots were all gone. The second week of treatment is to insure that there are no free-floating ich spores left in the tank.

I know others have used the heat method on loaches, mollies, tetras etc. I don't know about the frogs or catfish in particular, but if they are tropical, I'd be surprised if there was a problem. Just watch for signs of distress as you slowly raise the heat. The only fish I would hesitate to use the heat method on would be goldfish and maybe white clouds, which both prefer cooler water than tropical fish.

There have been a lot of posts on the heat method here lately, so take a look around the site for more information (maybe you can find something about the catfish or frogs that I missed, or maybe someone who has used the method with them in the tank will chime in) and keep us posted as to how it's going! Good luck!

(P.S. Rainbow sharks can be very territorial. Usually one to a tank is recommended unless your tank is really big. Is the larger one picking on the smaller one - keeping it from foraging the bottom for food? Keep an eye out for aggression. It's common with them and that could explain why one is growing at the expense of the other...)

Here's a link to another thread where someone is going through the same thing you are right now. Hopefully there's some more helpful info here...

http://aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?t=14155&highlight=

 

[William]

I used heat treatment on my 29gal in my sig.

At the time it had five 2 inch long Balloon Mollies, African Dwarf Frog, Albino Pl*co, and everything else thats listed in my sig under the 29gal at the moment, only the snails were not in the tank at the time.