I hope this helps, it has always worked for me. This is a great article to understanding the problem.
Raising the temp to 86 does nothing but stress the fish, 80 degrees is the optimal temp. to aim for. Also increase your oxygen in the tank, put in an extra air stone if needed because the heat will decrease the oxygen levels. Also clean everything including the substrate in particular, even the filter and do at minimum 50% water change daily.
I also over feed my fish to keep them healthy during an ick outbreak. You will be cleaning the tank anyway and the increase in food will not harm the water parameters because you will be cleaning the leftovers out.
I only have ick when I buy new fish, so I am a huge fan of quarantine tanks.
[FONT="]The life cycle of ich[/FONT]
[FONT="]The life cycle of Ichthyophthirius is complicated but very important in understanding the treatment and prevention of ich. Once the ich protozoan attaches to the side of the fish, it begins feeding on the skin and tissue causing irritation. The fish's body begins to wall off the parasite to try to limit its damage. The protozoan continues to move around in the cyst feeding and growing, while the body continues to further encapsulate and wall it off. This encapsulation by the body is one of the reasons that ich is so difficult to treat during this stage of the disease because medications cannot penetrate through the wall of the cyst to reach the ich parasite. During this stage, the ich protozoan is called a trophozoite. The trophozoite eventually matures and is termed a "trophont." It will burst through the cyst wall and then fall to the bottom of the aquarium. It then begins to divide into hundreds of new ich-infecting units called tomites. This stage is very temperature-dependent within its capsule, with the fastest replications occurring at warmer temperatures near 78-80°F. At optimum temperatures, the replication will be completed in about 8 hours. At lower temperatures, the replication takes longer making the treatment time for eradication much longer.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Once the replication is complete, the trophont bursts and releases the newly-formed tomites into the water. The tomites are motile and swim around the tank searching for a fish to attach to. Once they attach to a fish, the cycle will start over again. It is during this stage that ich is most susceptible to treatment. Many of the available medications will kill the tomites, thereby stopping the cycle of ich in your tank. It should be noted that these tomites will only survive for 48 hours, if they do not find a fish to attach to. These tomites will also attach to plants, filter material, etc. Depending on the water temperature, the whole cycle can take from 4 days to several weeks.[/FONT]
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Treating Ick
Now that we understand the life cycle of freshwater ich, many of our treatment recommendations make more sense. Because the life cycle is temperature-dependent and the ich can only be killed in the tomite stage, we will want to raise the tank temperature to 78-80°F over 48 hours to speed the cycle of tomite formation and release. Theoretically, if the cycle takes four days to complete at this temperature, then the treatment should be complete in 4 days. On the other hand, if the temperature is much colder, for example at 60°F, the treatment would need to last for several weeks or longer.
Since we understand that we cannot kill ich while it is on the fish, you must assume that the entire tank is now contaminated with ich and must be treated.
Remember, we are treating the tank, not the fish, so all effective treatments are designed to kill the trophite form of the disease while it is in the tank. The mature ich organisms that cause the problems on the fish do not die from treatment, but fall off in a couple of days during their normal life cycle and then their offspring die from the treatment in the water.
