Best ich treatment? Urgent, pls help me.

[lucavicini]

Copper will kill inverts and scaleless fish

You will see here that metrodinazole doesn't contain copper: Metronidazole - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The advantage of metrodinazole, compared to other products targeted to fight ich, is that it attacks anaerobic organisms with very limited impact on fishes.

It is quite common to find metrodinazole in any pharmacy and it is quite inexpensive (a 28 pills box costed me 1.5€ in Spain). It is used to treat certain types of urinary tract and skin infections (from amoebas or protozoa).

 

[librarygirl]

Aw I hope your fishies are better soon! Those purple dadios sound lovely!

 

[siva]

They really are..I love them. It looks like slowly adding 3 tablespoons of salt has brought the SG to 1.003. The heater is cranked all the way and tank is at 84. Hopefully that will be warm enough. I have some different kinds but I don't think any will go hotter than that. The fish seem to be doing well. The two that had white spots still have them though...if this is going to work, how long should it take for them to be gone?

 

[Mr. Limpet]

They really are..I love them. It looks like slowly adding 3 tablespoons of salt has brought the SG to 1.003. The heater is cranked all the way and tank is at 84. Hopefully that will be warm enough. I have some different kinds but I don't think any will go hotter than that. The fish seem to be doing well. The two that had white spots still have them though...if this is going to work, how long should it take for them to be gone?

I've heard 86 degrees minimum for the salt/heat treatment. The salt/heat has never worked for me, I've only cured ick with Quick Cure with 100% success rate and no recurrence. Also, If you have plants I've heard the salt will kill them.

 

[roydooms]

I don't think 86F is the minimum. Maybe if you're just doing heat to kill ich then it should be 86 and up but if at the same time your treating it with salt or whatever 84F is fine. You're just speeding up the ich's life cycle with the heat and killing it with the salt or whatever you are using.

 

[roydooms]

I even kept my temp around 82F the whole time I was treating ich with "ich cure"(malachite green). Heat to speed up, treatment to kill. Unless you just want to kill ich with heat, 86 and up is recommended.

 

[Mr. Limpet]

I even kept my temp around 82F the whole time I was treating ich with "ich cure"(malachite green). Heat to speed up, treatment to kill. Unless you just want to kill ich with heat, 86 and up is recommended.

So just the heat kills ick? What's the salt for? I can't do either in my DT, since high heat is too hard on my Moors and salt kills my plants.

 

[roydooms]

Yes. I read that ich can't withstand any temp over 87F and will die. I was going to do it with my discus tank but I have other fish. 86F was the highest I could go but that was pushing the limit.

 

[roydooms]

The salt is to kill the ich. The temp is to speed up the ich's life cycle so the salt could kill it. Really high temp will kill ich as well.

 

[siva]

I do have plants but the fish and inverts are more important to me. I don't keep any terribly sensitive plants. So far they look OK. If I'm too worried about any of them, I can pull them and clean them in a bleach solution and stick them in a different tank.

 

[roydooms]

I do have plants but the fish and inverts are more important to me. I don't keep any terribly sensitive plants. So far they look OK. If I'm too worried about any of them, I can pull them and clean them in a bleach solution and stick them in a different tank.

Amazon swords are hardy plants and mine showed signs of salt damage 10 days in to the salt treatment. You read my thread. So you know to dose less salt because you have inverts?

 

[siva]

Well I've read through that thread like three times and no, I don't remember reading anything about inverts. If a certain amount of salt is required to kill the ich, I don't see how dosing less is going to be effective?

 

[roydooms]

I read that you're suppose to treat scaleless fish like inverts which I have(corydoras). Read this article:

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/disease/ickscaleless.php

 

[siva]

Ok that says the inverts often can't handle the heat, which is what I was worried about with the bamboo shrimp..but I don't think I want to go less than 84 so I'm hoping it can handle it. I think in the heat of summer in my house the tanks are going to get almost that warm anyway. So far it's doing well...doing it's filter feeding thing all the time and being active.

 

[roydooms]

Just raise the temp slowly to reduce the heat stress and stress from sudden temp change.

 

[siva]

I raised it 6 degrees over 2 days. I was making sure to wait atleast 12 hours then bump it up a little bit.

 

[roydooms]

That's a little to fast. I was told to increase temp only 2 degrees a day. You already reached your target temp, right? How are your fishes? Do they seem stressed or acting weird?

 

[siva]

Ok I read 1-2 degrees every 12 hours was good. You know, everyone and everywhere seems to say something different so it's hard to decide exactly how to approach the situation.

As the temp increased, the fish just seemed to do better and better. The platties that had been haning at the bottom for days all of the sudden started acting normal again.

OK..now I'm kind of freaking out. I just turned the tank light on. The platy that had spots looks better. The dadio that has spots looks the same. The 4 neons now ALL have spots.

 

[siva]

Should I start doing daily water changes or something?

 

[roydooms]

That's normal. You're speeding up the ich's life cycle and the white spot is the last stage of the cycle. Make sure to clean your gravel to suck out most of the cysts before they become "free-swimming" and attach to other fish.

Same thing happened with me. It will get worse and before you know it, all the white spots are gone.