Question about treating ick...

[BIANCA]

I recently added some new fish to my aquarium, and within a week i noticed that my new columbian shark was acting odd. I put him in a tank by himself and noticed just a few (less than 10) white spots on him. Well he died that night

Ive never had ick in any of my aquariums before but im sure that was what he had. None of my other fish seemed to have it but i wanted to treat the big tank as well. I had to get special stuff since i have a lot of catfish and other sensitive fish. It says to treat every other day with a total of 3 treatments.. So i started on the 9th, then 11th, then on the 13th, I also increased the temp to about 82. SO..I should be done treating them, but ive noticed now that one of my loaches has a couple of white spots and has had them for about 3-4 days. That fish seems to be the only one that has the ick, but a lot of my fish are silver and it is hard to see on them.

My question is, should i go ahead and treat them one more day? Also, am i supposed to do a 50% water change after im done treating them? Ive seen a lot of people recommend that.
And, assuming that i DO do a 50% water change, then put the carbon back in the filter, how many days do you think i should wait before i put my crabs back in the tank, like a week?

 

[reefrunner69]

Hmmm, I saw this last night and didn't post, cause I'm not really a F/W person, but I don't think any of us can offer an opinion without knowing what the medication is that you are using. Depending on whether you are keeping tetras or other scaleless fish, I would recommend Quick Cure for ick in F/W. If I'm not mistaken heating the tank a couple more degrees will work as well. Anothe option is salt, provided your fish are not sensitive to salt.

 

[Grant R]

Loaches, especially the clown variety are extremely prone to whitespot (ICH) , so I wouldn't worry about it. I used a whitespot treatment called ' eSHa Exit ' in conjunction with a general disease killer also made by eSHa and it worked well.

Definitely raise the temprature, but SLOWLY. Fluctuating tempratures don't do the fish much good ! I turned mine up about 4 higher than normal temprature. I wouldn't worry about a water change, you'll lose most of the medicine in it, but thats my opinion.
If you can, put the loach in a tank alone and treat him / her. A few days on his own won't kill him.

Unfortunately, both my clowns caught it and only one survived, but he's much better now and has two new mates with him.

Good Luck.

 

[Somethingfishy]

Depending on the loach will depend on the sensitivity, yes the clowns are extremely sensitive but there are others that are much stronger and not as sensitive, probably more than not.

Anyways getting to the situation at hand.

If you have not got a Q (quarntine) tank I would get one, as it is not generally a good idea to treat healthy fish as their immune system could degenerate and cause them to get sick.

As for treating ICH the way I did it, and I am not saying that this is the ONLY way, but what I did was used a product called WaterLife Protozin and Melafix. But what I also did was to do a 25% water change just before I added the medications, and took out the carbon in my filter, but you did that? I did my treatments for 7 straight days, but then I did use different medicines?

Good luck.

 

[Thaiboxer]

I'm pretty sure my female betta has Ich. I separated her from the rest of the fish - noone else appears sick. She has some small white spots by her gills and her eyes are glazed over. She does not look good at all. I did a 20% water change 2 days ago... so I'm not planning another yet. I will buy treatment tonight though and treat both tanks, just to be safe.

I hope she can recover!

 

[Somethingfishy]

I would not treat the second tank if the occupants don't show any signs of sickness. Treating the healthy tank, as riduculous as it sounds, does open them up to getting sick. I would hold out treating the 'healthy' tank until the rest of them show signs of the disease.

The fact that you seperated your betta from the rest is a good start to keeping the rest healthy.

 

[Thaiboxer]

The fish in the big tank aren't showing any signs of sickness as of this morning. I did raise the temp from 78 to 80 last night, might go up to 81 or 82 today just to be sure. Everyone in the big tank is tough.

The female was more active this morning! She's looking a little better. Will continue treating tonight, but I'm hopeful!

Thanks for the advice!

 

[Thaiboxer]

Good news/Bad news.

The fish in the big tank are still looking very healthy - everyone in that one seems fine. I lowered the temp back down from 82 to 78 today.

The female betta died last night. The ick looked like it was gone, but her belly swelled up real big toward the front, and she got bad and died within about 8 hours. I'm unhappy about that, but glad she was isolated.

 

[Somethingfishy]

Always good to isolate any fish that shows sickness. Not a good feeling when one of them goes
Sorry to hear about your loss

 

[Grant R]

Always good to isolate the fish, definitely - if you can actually net the damn thing ! I needed to quarantine my Gold Gourami over the weekend as he was constantly chasing a few of the new arrivals. Luckily he's slowly calming down now I think.

He killed a platy off like that not too long ago, I can't keep having that.