Ich?

[texasguy]

Well I got some cardinals the other day. I think they have ich. They look like they have little grains of sand on them like 4-5 per fish. How can I treat this? I have 9 cardinals and 10 pygmy cories.

[texasguy]

anyone?

[Michwol42795]

You could raise the temp to low 80s, add a little bit of salt (not too much, cardinals are sensitive to salt), and treat with ich meds. Keep up treatment for about two weeks. The spots will go away but this doesn't mean the ich is dead, keeping up treatment insures that all the ich dies.

[texasguy]

how much salt? I'll see if i can pick up some ich meds after school

[Michwol42795]

On second thought, just use the meds. In a tank with cardinals and corys salt is too risky. It would have to be extremely low dosage if any.

[texasguy]

ok meds it is. Any recommended meds?

[blue2fyre]

I think salt and heat would be just fine. Cories are not scale less catfish so they should not be overly sensitive. I've never heard of cardinals being sensitive to salt, they are just sensitive in general. I would just raise the temperature and add the salt. Usually dose is 1 teaspoon per gallon. You can do 1/2 teaspoon if you are more comfortable with that. I will warn you ahead of time. It gets worse before it gets better.

[texasguy]

do i need aquarium salt or is kosher salt ok? How often? How long?

[Michwol42795]

If you're going to use salt I would put corys in a QT tank (if you have one). They are scaleless and very sensitive to salt. Not only that, but depending on your specific species can be sensitive to the rise in temperature. What kind is it? Really, anything you use would have to be a sort of half dosage, even meds. In my epxperience, cardinals are sensitive to salt so even with the cardinals I'd do a small dosage of salt. I think meds are better.

[blue2fyre]

QTing the cories would be pointless. People keep cories and neons with discus all the time and they do fine with the higher temperature. I always thought scaleless fish were fish with no visible scales, like many syno species? You can see scales of cories so I figured they would be scaled fish.


1/2 a teaspoon per gallon, or to be on the safe side you could do a tablespoon per 5 gallons.
Anyway aquarium salt is usually recommended but kosher salt could work as well. Be sure to dissolve it in a cup first! Then slowly add the mixture to your tank over a few hours. This will help your more sensitive fish get use to the salt.
Slowly raise your temperature to 80 then 85 degrees, This speeds up the life cycle of the ich. This is why it looks worse before the fish get better. Once the ich all drop off and your fish don't have anymore spots, continue treatment for a week. This makes sure the ich are totally dead.
You only need to treat with the salt once unless you do a water change. Then you will have to replace some. Treatment normally takes 2 weeks.

If you are seriously worried about the salt and your fish, then buy some Kordon's ich attack. It's 100% organic and not as harmful as most commonly available ich meds.

I treated for ich using the salt and heat method with my syno catfish( a scaleless fish) and they did just fine.

[Tay690]

Cories do not tolerate salt very well at all

I treated my loaches with salt at 2tsp per gallon and the albino cories all died

I read after the fact that someone has tested freshwater species being able to tolerate low amounts of salt in their water...and the cories were the first to die

So i would use meds...The cories were very lethargic even with 1tsp per gallon (and I slowly bumped it up to 2tsp per gallon...did a 16 hour drip
and the next morning all the cories were floating on the surface)

I hope it's not too late...this is what I've experienced first hand and unfortunately I didn't find out until it was too late that cories and salt don't mix...even in low doses

Here are some quick links of other people that have experienced the same thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corydoras
http://www.fishlore.com/fishforum/corydoras/56413-albino-cory-gasping.html

I hope it's not too late...

[blue2fyre]

Cories will be just as sensitive to meds than salt, maybe even more so.

I recommended 1/2 a teaspoon per gallon. Here are some links as well of people using salt with cories:
Link (http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151046)
Link (http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=161303)
Link (http://www.aquahobby.com/e2004/viewtopic.php?t=8136)

I think it's all in the dosing and the prolonged exposure that can harm cories. If one is still concerned I would not dump chemicals in the tank. Instead I would try just raising the temperature. This can be enough to kill ich in some circumstances.

[Michwol42795]

Here's what I would do
-1/2 dosage of ich meds
-Raise temp to about 80 degrees

I think Corys are more sensitive to salt than meds. The temp depends on the specific species of corydoras, some are subtropical. I still think it would be best to QT the corys if you can, gives you a bit more flexibility.

[blue2fyre]

You would still need to treat the QT.

[Michwol42795]

True, but you could provide a better treatment for both species instead of giving a sub-par treatment if they were in the same tank.

[barbarossa4122]

I am about to finish the treatment for one of my goldie. I used 1 tsp of Morton salt/gallon of water. The spots disappeared after 4 days but he's still in the hospital tank for another 7 extra days. On Friday he goes back "home" to join his buddies in the big tank. Btw, I vacuumed the hospital tank every day to make sure the ick is gone. Also I have this, but I did not use it yet.
http://www.bigalsonline.com/StoreCatalog/ctl3684/cp18441/si3637900/cl1/kordon_ich_attack__16oz?&path=c3684-def-USD-16695%23%23-1%23%23-1~~q69636b~~nc3684-def-USD-18437%23%233%23%23n&queryType=0&hits=12&offset=0

[texasguy]

well i got some kordon ich attack and i'm going to skip out on the salt. We'll see how it goes

[Michwol42795]

Good luck! Do you know what type of Cory you have though? It would help decide what temp the tank should be at.

[barbarossa4122]

well i got some kordon ich attack and i'm going to skip out on the salt. We'll see how it goes

Good idea. Good luck.

[texasguy]

didn't i mention pygmy cories? Well anyways strangest thing i went to up the temp and dose the ich attack, none of my fish had any spots on them? I did manage to find one spot on one fish. I upped the heater 84 from its usual 80 and dosed half dose on the ich attack. What happened to the ich?

[texasguy]

Well I got some cardinals the other day. I think they have ich. They look like they have little grains of sand on them like 4-5 per fish. How can I treat this? I have 9 cardinals and 10 pygmy cories.

I indeed did say that

[Michwol42795]

Oh, sorry! Pygmy corys should be able to tolerate a temp at 84 for a bit, that should be fine, especially if they were already at 80 but they normally like temps in the mid-high seventies. When you take the temp back down I'd put it at around 78, that should be good, cardinals would be fine with it too. Even if you can't see the ich it doesn't mean it's gone though, keep up treatment.

[Tay690]

you might have actually caught the ich during it's drop off period...that's the best time to siphon the gravel if you can pin point it...it will definitely help you irradicate the ich much faster

try to find that point where all their spots are gone and siphon daily at that time...

and Kordon Ich attack does work (that's what I used on my loaches when they had Ich) but it takes quite a long time

It leaves a god awful amount of junk in your substrate too
this brown gunk that kind of looks like mulm