ich question

Yes salt will help. 1 tbsp per 5 gallons is good, but you may want to look into doing hypo-salinity treatments (I'll let someone else comment on that). If all of your fish are getting ich, then I'd add the salt and slowly raise the temperature to about 90 over the next 3 or 4 days. That should speed up the life cycle of the parasite. After a week (I could be wrong here), slowly bring it back down.

If you raise the temp, make sure you have decent airation.

Originally posted by hitz2b
can i treat ich with healthy fish in the tank or ......
Just wondering. Thanks.

Click to expand...

The whole tank needs to be treated... The other fish may not be showing any symptoms yet.

fish fry???

Temp to 90??? Anyone else think this is too high? I've always seen 82-83 as a limit. Wouldn't you have to worry about internal organ damage with temps that high??

Treat the whole tank, salt will benefit and you can use table salt, CAN!!! Probably the most threads on a topic on this board is on salt. Try a search (upper right corner) for salt and you'll have enough reading for...months?

I've heard that table salt will work as well, but it's only spoken about like it's heresey, so I'd like to see more proof of it before I do (though I did it alot when I was unexperienced, and everyone is fine). Most fish can tolerate temps that high for a little while. Just think of what would happen in the wild should a stream dry up until the next rains. It's puddle time! Besides, the neons are Amazonian, which doesn't necessarily mean much, but the water there in many parts is quite warm.

"Salt" = "common salt" = sodium chloride = NaCl. Other forms are rock salt, kosher salt.""Halite" is a rough-and-ready form of NaCl full of impurities, for salting roadways. "Aquarium salt" may be NaCl or it may be sea salt. "Freshwater salt" is a cheeky variant on "aquarium salt."

Marine salt a.k.a sea salt has other "salts" in it as well.

Table salt has a very few parts per million iodide added and some utterly harmless free-running ingredients, also in minute and irrelevant quantities. Not a genuine issue...

Heresy is more of a magical issue. Sort of a voodoo issue, eh!...

When I was a child, fluoridation of our drinking water was stalled by ignorant people crying out that the element fluorine was highly toxic. (as indeed it is!) If I sound testy, it's that I've suffered all my life with soft teeth. It could have been avoided.

However anyone who thinks iodide in salt is toxic won't get my point.

Salt

I have used salt at 1tbls per gallon, this is the level recommended for treating parasitic infections like ich. Raise the temp to 80 - 82 and wait two weeks.
This does the trick (well it did for me).

PS. Dont add the salt all at once, do it in three or four increments with a gap of 12 hours between each increment, up the tempreture slowly in the same manner.