ich or not ich?

[harmy4993]

ok on sunday after doing a water change i noticed a couple of white dots on a coupl of my fish. the dots are about the size of a grain of table salt and can be found on the rear fins and top of the body. im assuming this is ich. so for the last 2 1/2 days i have been raising the temp. my typical tank temp is 80.3 to 81.1 and now its sitting at 85.6. the thing is there are more white dots now then there were on sunday. i thought the temp was suppose to make the white dots fall off? or is it possible that its something besides ich, or is it just running its course?

water parameter since it will be asked is:
ammonia -0
nitrite -0
nitrate around 20ppm ( planted aquarium and i dose it)

stocking list is 6 neons, 5 glolights and 2 rams and some cherry red shrimp. most recent addition to the tank is a bunch of plants added saturday night.

 

[rich311k]

You need to get that temperature up over 88F. Right now it is living faster the higher temps will kill the free swimming form of it.

 

[harmy4993]

oh i thought 84 was the magic number. ill keep raising the temp then

 

[AndrewH]

When my Red Tailed Shark had Ich I lowered the water level 25% and added an air stone to increase oxygen. Then increased the temp up to 90F... slowly of course. My shark had no problems and was as happy as could be. The ich cleared up in 3 days, but I left the temperature at 90 for two weeks just to make sure it was gone for good.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Sum22]

Keep in mind that it is going to get worse before it gets better. So it might seem like your fish are really covered in ich. Plus, since the white dots you see are the capsules the fish creates around the parasite, and not the parasite itself, it might take a couple of weeks for all those lesions to disappear.

 

[harmy4993]

ok ty. there does appear to be more and more white dots. but all my fish are eatting, no one is hiding. socially nothing has changed so i take that as a good sign for the time being.