Is this Ich?

[hitman12131976]

I noticed this on my Black Molly this morning. It doesn't seem like any other fish has this, just the Black Molly. My questions are these:

1. Since the Molly has Ich in the normal tank, should I treat the whole tank or just QT the Molly?

2. I don't have a QT tank at the moment, and was thinking about going to buy a 5 gallon QT tank. How can I set it up to maximize the chances that the Molly won't be stressed because it's not cycled?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Rbishop]

Treat the whole tank. By the time you see it, it is too late normally. It just appeared on the molly first.

[hitman12131976]

Yep, just on the Molly. I had added three fish two days ago. Took one back (swordtail) cuz it was being picked on. The silver Molly and Red-Wag show no signs of ich. So I'm not sure why the black molly got it. He sort of 'runs the tank' so I don't think it was stress. Very weird.

Okay, so I bought Jungle Labs Ick Clear as it will treat for secondary infections as well.

Here are a couple more questions:

1. The directions said to remove the carbon from my filter. I did, mostly. There were these REALLY small pieces that had woven themselves into the filter and if I removed them I'd leave a hole. Is it okay to leave those REALLY small ones in? There were very few.

2. Do I put the bag with the bacteria back in or leave it out? I figure leave it in, but I'm not sure. This is the first time I treat an illness. I'm a medical newb.

3. The instructions said: If you have small fish, scaleless fish, or sensitive fish, use half dose. Since I have Mollies, Platys, Otos, Cory's, Shrimp I figure I'd just use a half dose. Is that okay? Or should I full dosed them?

[Wat2Go]

Read the following post. It gives you an alternative to chemicals. I - then a complete newby - treated with malachite green the first couple of times I had ich and it either killed my fish, or didn't get rid of the ich. Then, because I kept getting that advise, I treated with heat/salt and - yeah! - did not loose any fish, plus killed all the ich!

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97882

This post explains really well how to add the salt to the water. To learn more on the salt/heat method just do a search on this site.

Good luck.

L.

[cherrypie]

Personally I can't tell for sure if it's Ich from the photos as they lack sharpness, Ich looks like little salt grains stuck on the fish so if that's what it looks like to your eyes then that's what it probably is.

From what I can gather (Jungle Labs don't post ingredients) those Jungle Labs tablets have malachite (victoria) green and acriflavine in them which is pretty effective against a number of external parasites so there's a good chance if it's misdiagnosed they'll still help.
A few grains of carbon in the filter shouldn't cause a problem, especially if they're more than a month or two old. Other filter media can stay, the carbon will adsorp the medication, which is why it has to go.

Give the tank a good vac and a water change before you start, lowering the amount of waste material in the water will help maximise the effectiveness of the medication. Full dose should be fine for those fish (and generally is fine even with the more sensitive fishes with a few exceptions), generally it's good policy to half dose and then bring up to full dose an hour or two later, allowing some time to observe the fish after each dose (half dose is usually fairly inneffective anyway).
A 25% water change before repeat doses is also a good policy as it helps to reduce the parasite load as well as excess waste organic material.

Keep the lights off as malachite green degrades fairly rapidly under bright light and make sure you maintain treatment for at least 3 days after the last signs of infection have disappeared.

[Mgamer20o0]

http://aquafacts.net/components/com_mambowiki/index.php/Ich

[hitman12131976]

Thanks guys, great advice. I've already started treating and so far the spots appear to have dulled down a bit, but I'm gonna higher the temp about 1 degree every hour until I get to about 80*. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my corys and oto's can withstand a full dosage. I put a 10 gallon medication into my 20 gallon tank (which is holding about 15 gallons of actual water). Next time I'll put 1 1/2 tablets.

[sheloudre]

when my mollies developed what looked like Ich, i used AquariSol, and raised the temp to 85 as it says to, on the bottle. Treat DAILY until at least 3 days after the last spot is gone. (Btw, my bottle didn't say to treat DAILY.) NONE of the other fish developed it, and i found out afterwards that mollies (and other livebearers), when stressed, develop what looks like Ich. (I think this is what mine had. Reduce the stress, and spots go away. They haven't had it since.) At the time, (being a newbie) i had added my fish prior to cycling, so it was during the high ammonia/nitrite part.