my fish have ich!

[spd7143]

Well, this is the latest in my saga of trying to get my fishtank going. I came home today and ofund all my fish seem to have small white spots (ich, I suppose from reading) on them. From reading, I know I have to raise my temp from 75. Can I raise the temp quickly-overnight or should I go slower? Second, I have a couple of live plants in the tank so salt is out? I also have two raphael cats in there so I need to lower the recommended dose? can someone please advise?

[NY Detailer]

i just went through a case of ich. my two clown loaches were covered in it over night. I bought some rid-ich at first. but then i read up on the forum and raised the temp to 80 and added salt to the tank. I know you have plants and i have no clue on how to answer that, i am a newbie myself.

the clown loaches did not survive the ich, but all the other fish we ich free and doing fine (i hope)

[meangene714]

I also got over a case of ich recently. I used salt and raised my temp control from 80 to 84 in one step. It took a little over 24 hours to reach the final temp, and my fish were fine. If you do the same, I imagine it would also take enough time where your fish wouldn't suffer a temp shock. I believe it has to do with something called the "specific heat" of water, which is pretty high compared to something like metals. This high SH means it takes a while to heat water to a certain temp (assuming you don't use an overly intense heat source) and it also takes a while to lower the water temp to room temp, if your heater failed for example. Anyway, it also depends on how much you want to raise your temp and probably depends on the wattage of your heater in relation to the volume of your tank. Oh yeah, and what kind of fish you have, and the temp range that they can tolerate. If they are used to 75, I'm not sure if they would survive an increase to 84.

[rich]

the salt/temp raise works great! its worked for me everytime my fish have had ick and the only loss i had was a royal pleco that just couldnt shake it. try that first and if it doesnt work try the rid ick stuff. personally that stuff sucked for me and killed a couple of my cories.

[cattlegrid_79]

I use a treatment called Protozin by Waterlife. (UK site is www.waterlife.co.uk) for whitespot. I've not found any "off the shelf" remedy that's anywhere near as good.

By the way, if you're going to use any treatments, make sure you take the carbon out of your filter first (if you use it!), otherwise the carbon will filter out the chemicals that you are trying to put into the water.

[spd7143]

Thanks folks, I raised the temp from 75 to 80 over the past day and will try increasing it to 84 by tomorrow. I don't think that adding salt will work as I have the plants and they won't like it. I did buy some noxick and am treating at half strength due to the catfish who can't take full strength. So far everyone seems to be doing fine. Looks like the german rams have it the worst but my siamese algae eaters and catfish aren't showing spots yet.