SAE's and Swordtails - ich after 2 days quarantine...

Treat all of the fish in the infected tank

joby said:

Hi,
I have had 3 SAE's and 2 swordtails in quarantine for 2 days now. I just noticed a spot of ich on one of the sword's tails. My question is, is it too late to move the SAE's to my main tank? Or...should they be treated as well? (even though the first spot has just appeared.) Unfortunately I don't have another empty, cycled tank.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I have looked into ich quite a bit and found out that this parisite has a fairly long and complicated breeding cycle.

Thanks,
Joby

Click to expand...

As Spartan said, treat the whole tank. For what it's worth, many LFS run on a central water sytem in which multilpe tanks are hooked to a large central water source for easier drain and fill. If not, often the same wet equipment goes from tank to tank, be it a net, a gravel vac, etc. So, usaully if one fish from your LFS comes down with something they all have it. Generally I avoid buying from an LFS which visibly has something wrong in a tank or two. And, in your case, since the SAEs are in the tank with the Swordtails and definitely in the Ich pool, treat them all.