Ich & Carbon Filter

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

emmaparsonsm

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
May 26, 2025
Messages
9
Location
england
Hi all, a couple of my fish have ich however my filter is the superfish hang on back filter which has cartridges with a carbon sponge and a tiny bit of filter floss in. How can I treat for the ich if I can’t remove the sponges? My tanks only been cycled a couple of weeks so although I’ve ordered a new filter with components I can remove was worried about messing with changing the filter now due to this.
 

Attachments

  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    135.5 KB · Views: 1
This is a very good reason to not set up aquariums "out of the box". Cartridges are just a scam intended to tie you into replacing them and giving the manufacturer aftersales. A filter is just a box that can contain whatever filter media you want to put in these, and throwing away the cartridges and customising the set up is almost always the better option. Everytime you replace a cartridge you will need to recycle your aquarium, they will need replacing at some point, and you can avoid that just by custom setting up your filtration.

This is a good video on how to set up your filter in a much better way than the manufacturer tells you.


In your particular circumstance, having already cycled your aqyarium, you have a few options.

1. Remove the course pad that is impregnated with carbon, and accept that you will lose your cycle, set up the filter properly, medicate your aquarium and re-cycle the aquarium at the same time.

This would be how I would proceed. The carbon in the course pad is only going to last a month or so anyway, so you should be replacing them every few weeks. Every time you do this you will set back your cycle, so get it out of the way now.

2. Treat the ich with either aquarium salt or heat. Neither of these treatments are effected by carbon, but neither is going to be as effective as the medication. Many strains of ich are now heat and salt resistant.

Just a few notes on treating ich and a mistake many people make.

Are you 100% sure its ich? There are other diseases that look similar especially to someone inexperienced.

The ich parasite can't be treated while it's in the visible, infected stage. It's only when the parasite has left the fish and moved onto a free swimming stage when the fish appears to be healed that the parasites can be killed by your treatment. This could be several weeks later. So you need to ensure that the treatment is present for a complete lifecycle of the ich parasite. The lifecycle is temperature dependant. At room temperature it takes about 3 months for a complete lifecycle of the parasite. At typical tropical water temperature about 3 weeks. At 30c/86f about 1 week.

So ideally, as long as the fish can tolerate the higher temperature, you raise the temperature to 30f to speed up the lifecycle so you don't need to medicate for so long, and medicate the water for 4 or 5 days after the last sign of infection. If the medication is removed too quickly, it will appear that the fish has been cured, but parasites won't have been killed and your fish will just be reinfected in a few weeks time.

If you don't raise the temperature you need to have the medication in the water for several weeks.
 
This is a very good reason to not set up aquariums "out of the box". Cartridges are just a scam intended to tie you into replacing them and giving the manufacturer aftersales. A filter is just a box that can contain whatever filter media you want to put in these, and throwing away the cartridges and customising the set up is almost always the better option. Everytime you replace a cartridge you will need to recycle your aquarium, they will need replacing at some point, and you can avoid that just by custom setting up your filtration.

This is a good video on how to set up your filter in a much better way than the manufacturer tells you.


In your particular circumstance, having already cycled your aqyarium, you have a few options.

1. Remove the course pad that is impregnated with carbon, and accept that you will lose your cycle, set up the filter properly, medicate your aquarium and re-cycle the aquarium at the same time.

This would be how I would proceed. The carbon in the course pad is only going to last a month or so anyway, so you should be replacing them every few weeks. Every time you do this you will set back your cycle, so get it out of the way now.

2. Treat the ich with either aquarium salt or heat. Neither of these treatments are effected by carbon, but neither is going to be as effective as the medication. Many strains of ich are now heat and salt resistant.

Just a few notes on treating ich and a mistake many people make.

Are you 100% sure its ich? There are other diseases that look similar especially to someone inexperienced.

The ich parasite can't be treated while it's in the visible, infected stage. It's only when the parasite has left the fish and moved onto a free swimming stage when the fish appears to be healed that the parasites can be killed by your treatment. This could be several weeks later. So you need to ensure that the treatment is present for a complete lifecycle of the ich parasite. The lifecycle is temperature dependant. At room temperature it takes about 3 months for a complete lifecycle of the parasite. At typical tropical water temperature about 3 weeks. At 30c/86f about 1 week.

So ideally, as long as the fish can tolerate the higher temperature, you raise the temperature to 30f to speed up the lifecycle so you don't need to medicate for so long, and medicate the water for 4 or 5 days after the last sign of infection. If the medication is removed too quickly, it will appear that the fish has been cured, but parasites won't have been killed and your fish will just be reinfected in a few weeks time.

If you don't raise the temperature you need to have the medication in the water for several weeks.
I haven’t replaced the filter pads at all in about a month do u think the carbon would even still be present in the pads? Thankyou for ur advice I have a new filter coming so was hoping to just cut the sponges from the cartridges into the new filter so the whole cycle didn’t restart but obviously could now only move the small amount of filter floss across.
 
I haven’t replaced the filter pads at all in about a month do u think the carbon would even still be present in the pads?
It's possible the carbon is used up, it really depends on how much carbon there is and how much work it was doing. Typically it lasts a 4 to 8 weeks, if there isnt a lot of carbon in the filtration and it's removing a lot of organics then it might only last a week or 2. If there aren't much in the way of organics it might last a year or more.

It's really not worth the risk though. If you are medicating the aquarium then remove the carbon.
 
Back
Top Bottom