Fish cure killed fish...

[Calcifer10000]

Hi,

I had a nice 29 gal basically stocked the way I wanted it, until I saw that some of my neon tetras and black skirt tetras had white dots on their fins. So I got Ick Away, followed the directions and dosed the tank for 2 days, after which I saw that the fish were dying; basically seeming to be bleeding at the bases of their fins and stiffening up. My tetras went first, but the bottle had said they were suseptible, but then my wonderful, hardy danios began haunting the bottom of the tank, became red-tinted and died.

I stopped dosing because I was afraid they were dying because of the medicine, and did a water change, but slowly everything in my tank: tetras, danios, barbs, all died except for my guppies. I had no clue what I did wrong...I still have all my guppies and they still seem pretty happy in the very empty-looking tank, so I'm glad I didn't lose everything. But does anyone know what the heck happened? Did I choose the wrong medicine, or did I stop dosing too early and they died of the disease?

I'd appreciate any comments so this doesn't happen again!

 

[tkos]

I can't imagine that ick would kill them that fast, maybe the neons but not danios. Did you use too much medication by accident? Did you remove the carbon from your filter? You have to do this in order for the medication to work.

Sorry to hear of your loss. Glad the guppies are still living. But if it was ick then it is still in the tank and should be dealt with. A simple way of dealing with this is to raise your tank temp to 84F-85F slowly over a few day while adding some NaCl salt to the water. 1 tsp per gallon I believe is what is used to kill off ich. Take some tank water out and dissolve the salt in it and add back to the tank. Do about 1 tsp per day until you reach the total amount. The salt will kill the ich when it is in the adult and free swimming phase and the raised temp will help the eggs hatch fatser to be killed by the salt. This should be kept up for 2-3 weeks to be sure that you kill it all.

This can help will other bacterial infections as well.

 

[PlatyLady]

Sorry about your losses... It's so frustrating sometimes.

Any ich meds I've bought in the past have always said to use half doses when tetras are present in the tank. I guess they don't handle meds as well.

As for your guppies, I totally agree with tkos. It is very likely that there is still ich in your tank, and you'll need to treat for it. The high temp method is great because it doesn't mess up your water parameters or kill your bacteria like meds will.

Allivymar's article on ich says that temperatures should be raised above 86F to kill it off, and as tkos mentioned, keep the temp raised for at least 2 weeks.

Good luck!

 

[Calcifer10000]

Thanks so much for the help!