Still Battling ick

[MamaJasmine]

I posted a few weeks ago about a recurrent ick problem that I just can not get to go away. I had at that point tried 3 medications, and salt treatment on my fish. It was suggested that I do a heat treatment at that time, which I have been doing since. I have my tank set at 86 right now, which is the max for my new heater. I have only lost 1 fish to ick, but more of my fish are looking unhealthy and one is very pale right now. I plan on doing a 50% water change today and taking out my plastic plants and the majority of decoration and doing a major gravel vac. Not sure what I can do at this point to help my fish. Here are some thoughts I have had:

-do a treatment of paragard with the raised heat.
-add in some live plants after removing all the old decor to help improve water quality and off the fish a little bit of hiding spots.
-keep up heat treatment for now and vacuum daily with a bare tank.
-remove the bio wheel.. thinking maybe that is filtering out too much of the meds I have tried.. with a combo of paragard and removing the wheel maybe we might make some head way.

 

[MRT555]

More filtration = better water quality. Just make sure you remove carbon if using meds. the heat alone will kill ich eventually, salt will speed up the process some. Meds will prolly help even more. Make sure your tank is at 86+ degrees.Will take time. We have been treating our tank for going on 3 weeks. We have our tank at 88, around 40 tsp salt now (increasing salt very slowly), and treating with Kordon's Ich Attack in our 55g. We are finally seeing some improvement. Make sure you continue to treat the tank for at least 2 weeks after the last ich has disappeared.

 

[MamaJasmine]

Today I did a 60-75% water change and removed all decorations and scrubbed the inside of the tank. I plan on scrubbing them with a tooth brush (I have a huge bag of never been used extras) and then dipping them in boiling water. I replaced the smaller air stone with my extra air stone that is bigger. Plan on removing the carbon tonight before bed and doing meds again tonight with the heat turned up..I have on hand for meds - quICk cure, a baby red cherry shrimp. We removed all the RCS and the babies and put them in the nursery tank before doing any med treatments 5 weeks ago. This makes me wonder that if a baby can survive all of the treatments I have done.. maybe I have not done them strong enough?

 

[MRT555]

Make sure you raise the heat gradually, couple degrees every 6-12hrs is safe. You will need extra air in the tank since warm water holds less oxygen. I would only use the meds as recommended, nothing stronger. I can't speak for your babies, but our 30+ guppy fry have handled it just fine.

 

[MRT555]

You can also leave the tank water level a lil lower and let the water falling from the filters provide extra air.