Uh-oh... Ich (Semi-Long)

[Talvari]

I have gone more than a year without a single problem in my 55 gallon tank. I went through cycling just fine, added all my fish just fine, and only lost one fish, who died shortly after I bought him. (A gold gourami).

We lost power for about three hours the other day, and despite my best efforts, the temperature in the tank dropped five degrees. It didn't really seem to bother anyone, but yesterday I started noticing that my clown loach has spots, as does my African Brown Knife. Grr.

I've done alot of reading on the salt issue, but decided to continue on, slowly, with adding salt to the tank. I have aquarium salt, and the dosage is generally 1 tbsp for 5 gallons. (11 tbsp for my tank). Instead, I decided to go with dissolving only about 4 tbsp per day in a separate container and adding it over a few hours until I reach the just under the max dose. I also have been gradually turning the heat up in my tank from about 78 degrees to around 82. And I started keeping the lights off, I heard that helps keep the stress level down.

All my other fish seem to be okay... All in all I have 5 tiger barbs, 1 gold gourami, 2 clown loaches, 1 ABK, and a hi-fin pleco. Only the two fish are showing signs of ich.

I've been feeding Omega One tropical color enhancing flakes, as well as dropping in daily algae wafers. Three times a week I do bloodworms/brine shrimp. I was scrubbing, gravel vac'ing, and doing about a 25% water change once a week, but I'm thinking Ill do a small water change daily until the ich is gone... I also change one of the filter cartridges about every two weeks. (I have a two sided filter... The right side gets changed, two weeks later, the left side gets changed, two weeks later, the right side, etc)

I've got Rid-Ich Plus by Kordon (it came highly recommended by alot of people I talked to) but I havent added any yet... I know the CL and the ABK can be touchy with meds.

Any other tips or suggestions?

Side note: I know, the clown loaches get big. I adopted them from someone who had them in a tiny tank and was just going to flush them cause he was sick of them. As soon as we move out of our apartment, we are going to look for a 120g.

 

[librarygirl]

I'm not an expert with Ich but it sounds like you have it covered. There shouldn't be a need to change out your filter media so often though, generally it doesn't need to be changed until it's literally falling apart. Most of your beneficial bacteria live on those filter pads so discarding those can be an issue.

Good luck, I hope your fish recover.

 

[Rokuzachi]

I came into some Ich recently and did the same thing. I don't have anything sensitive (like I hear clown loaches are anyways) so I brought the tank up to a bit over the 1tbsp/5gal level (14 tbsp for 56g) over the course of a week. I also raised the temperature to 86 over the same time period.

The threefish that had 3-5 spots on them are clean now and no other fish have any signs of it. I'm coming up on week 2 of the treatment but plan to keep the tank at 86 and around this much salt for 4 weeks total as long as the fish don't show any adverse side effects from the treatment.

Just make sure you follow all the way through with the treatment - one of the worst things you can do is stop early and let the remaining parasites in the water (which I believe are always present anyways, they're just opportunistic and will infest fish who are stressed or in poor health) get your fish again, and have to put them through it all over again.

Good luck!