Newbie from South Australia with a problem

[sharz]

Hi everyone, its great to be here and welcome to all the other newbies out there also.

I just started keeping fish so I'm quite new to this. Ive got a 120 ltr (31g) freshwater aquarium and seem to be having one some problems.

Ive got 2 pearl gouramis, two sword tails, two high fin platys, 2 bronze corys, 1 bristle nose, 3 guppies and 10 neon tetras.

I've just finished cycling my tank with fish (unfortunatley I didn't really have a choice because I had to put them somewhere) and just when I thought I was at the end of twice daily 15% water changes (for almost three weeks), I've come home tonight to find that my guppies have got Ich. I did notice them rubbing them selves against some of the plants in the last few days, but put this down to the water quality due to the tank still cycling. Up until two days ago, my readings were
Ammonia -0
Nitrite - .5
Nitrate - 10 ppm
ph 6.8

My readings yesterday and today were
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - just a trace shows up on my test.
Temp - 27 degrees C (80 degrees F)
ph - 7

I dont know what to do, I'm worried that the ich will spread to all the other fish in the tank (is it contagious??) and I dont have any where to quarantine the infected fish, but by the look of it the others may already be infected as I noticed the sword tail rubbing against one of the plants tonight, but no white spots as yet.

Should I treat the tank with an over the counter medication that I bought which contains methylene blue, acrifavine & malachite green (this really doesn't mean anything to me ) On the bottle is says to turn off the filter while treating the tank, and I'm worried that it will kill all the good bacteria in my filter which has taken so long to finally get right.

I'm really at a loss as to what I should do..... if any one has any suggestion, please, please share them with me.

thanks
sharz

 

[melosu58]

Moving this to the FW unhealthy fish forum so you`ll get more response. This forum is for just telling people about yourself.

 

[happygirl65]

There is a great article at aquahobby Using Heat to Treat Ich in Freshwater Tropical Fish - Article at The Age of Aquariums - Tropical Fish that helped me back when I was having trouble with ich.

I used a heat treatment only. Some fish species will tolerate this better than others. ( my cherry barbs all died, but lemon tetras all lived) so be aware that some can not tolerate the temps.

Basically you slowly bring the temp up to 87 F degrees (32 C) some will bring it up even higher and then you keep it there for 10 days. You may experience some deaths but eventually you will eradicate the ich.

It is important to note that you didn't do anything wrong. It is possible to get ich even when you properly quarantine all new arrivals and everything looks fine.

Keep doing those water changes too.

Your beneficial bacteria should be able to survive the heat treatment just bring the temp up slowly over a few hours time.

Best of luck to you. I know it is scary but it happens to just about everyone at some point. You will beat it and your tank will go on to be healthy.