3 dead bows in one night help!!!

[kristen]

Two days ago I noticed some white spots on a couple of my rainbows and started treating the tank for ick. I thought the treatment (Wardlys Ick Away) was helping until I looked into my tank this morning. I've lost three fish and the others are not looking good at all. They are not showing their color and not eating either. There are no spots on any of them anymore so I'm not sure what's wrong. A couple of them are hanging at the top with some labored breathing. If anyone has any advice I would greatly apprecite it. I love my bows and don't want to loose anymore! Thanks in advance.

 

[treedae]

are you increasing your temp? This is key. You need to raise the temp about 2-3 degrees/day until you're at 86.

 

[kristen]

actually i didn't because i directions on the bottle said not to, but i'll start right now

 

[kristen]

just looked in to raise the temp and found a dead otto....what is going on here...none of the fish are showing spots...could this be something else?

 

[TankGirl]

I would check for nitrite. You may have started a cycle with the treatment, so usually doing daily partial water changes whenever treating for illness is a helpful thing to do. If I am using heat treatment I do not use ich medication, and if I am using ich medication I do not raise the temp, but that is just the way I do things.

Good luck-

 

[treedae]

Does it depend on the medication you use TankGirl?

When I was reading on using medication for my ich (I'm using Cusulfate), I read to increase the temp in order to accelerate the life cycle of the parasite so that you can maximize its exposure to the treatment. I also read that temps of 86 are deleterious to the parasite that causes ich.

I've been doing the Cusulfate treatment which showed no change until I got my temp up to 86 for 4 days. Now the fish are all fine (and I'm still treating both w/ Cusulfate and temp increase), but alas I lost some in the learning process.

 

[Menagerie]

Here is an excellent article regarding ich:
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/showquestion.php?faq=2&fldAuto=32