Ich and garlic

[hmilstead]

Hello all,
Have a question about treating Ich. Two days ago, my one swordtail was acting odd, staying at the bottom, not swimming around much. Yesterday morning, dead. No signs yesterday morning of anyone else in tank having problems. (55 gallon, diamond, cardinal and glowlite tetras; dalmation and cremcicle mollies, 1 powder blue dwarf gourami, 4 female bettas, spotted cory cats, 1 female swordtail left - had 4, two jumped out a few weeks ago and one male of course died yesterday morning) My water paramters were great, no amonia or nitrites and nitrates were at 10. Ph is 8 ( have high ph that comes out of tap).

Last night, I sat and studied the fish for a long time to look for other problems as one one dalmation molly was exhibiting the same signs and the swordtail. After a long time, I finally saw the white spots on the cardinals - Ich. Everyone else has varying degrees of white on their bodies so it was hard to see since they are suppossed to be white. So at 10:30 last night I did a 50% water change an then started adding the salt - a dose last night, this morning, lunch time today and tonight. My tank temp was already at 79-80 so I raised the heater to 82 and may raise it again tonight. The dalmation was a little perkier this morning, so I am hoping it will make it.

My husband talked to the LFS store we bought the new fish from last weekend (cardinals, spotted cories and the gourami0 to see if they had the problem and sure enough, the ich showed up in their gourami tank this morning. They are great - they will credit us for any fish we lose in our tank (including existing fish we already had prior to last weekend)

After this long explanation, here is my question - they recommended in addition to the salt, to put garlic in the filter. I tried to search on this idea and didn't find much information. Is this a tried and true treatment or old wives tale? If it works, is it a peeled clove to put in and how many for how long?

Heather

[plah831]

hi Heather. the best treatment for ich is heat and salt. follow the treatment plan laid out in this article. It is by far the safest and most effective cure for ich I've ever tried. I used a commercial chemical ich med, and it killed several of my favorite fish :( http://www.aquariumboard.com/forums/articles/25-ich-fw.html
If you follow those directions, and make sure to maintain salt levels for a long enough time (to prevent the ich from coming back, only one stage is vulnerable to salt), then you should be just fine with no need for garlic.


the use of garlic for ich has been suggested to work only in marine tanks, as far as I know. but you can read this link for more info http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/sp/index.php

Best of luck!

[sarcare]

Sorry about the ich! I'd also reccomend the salt treatment.

I have a question about your stocking sceme. Does your gourami have any agression issues with the female bettas? I'd thought of putting one in my 55g with my d. gourami, but I know that gouramis and bettas can be agressive towards one another.

[hmilstead]

Thanks for both your replies. By tonight, the salt in the tank will be at 2 teaspoons per gallon and I will have raised my temp again. I am new to fishkeeping but this board has been fabulous so didn't even panic last night, just started the treatments ( I had seen an earlier post yesterday about the ich, so I knew what to do last night).

Sarcare - on the bettas and gourami - the 4 bettas have been in the tank for a couple weeks, no problems so far. I have watched them to make sure they are ok with each other since I have read that females can be as nasty if not more than males. I added all 4 at once and they get along with themselves and everyone else.

This past weekend I added the gourami - have watched and everyone is getting along fine so far. I want to add one more flame dwarf and two more female bettas, but that will be down the road if everything still is working out. I have been watching the bettas and gourami and they don't even look interested in each other at this point. Charger (the gouarmi, my husband is a big fan of the San Diego Chargers) keeps to himself for the most part.

Heather

[Hurley]

The only reason I have heard about for using garlic in a freshwater tank is to stimulate appetite. If your fish are not eating I would recommend adding some garlic but other then that just stick with the salt and heat treatment for ich. Just make sure the salt you are using is table salt and not marine salt.

Good Luck!

[bigscout]

The Garlic concept is surfacing more and more, but so far I've found no information that really proves it's usefulness in freshwater and specifically against ich.
Here are several threads with some good discussion and links:

http://www.aquariumboard.com/forums/general-freshwater/1814-new-ich-cure-garlic.html

http://www.aquariumboard.com/forums/freshwater-newbie/2155-use-evaporated-sea-salt-garlic-extract.html

http://aquafacts.net/showthread.php?t=1202

I'm kind of the belief that experimental treatments are best left to the scientisits and proffessionals when there is a good proven option available. After some time we may find out that Garlic is great for Ich, but for now I wouldn't risk the chance of failure to something that hasn't had much controlled testing done.

Garlic is an awesome plant, and is extremely useful for many things, but I'm not ready to put it in my fishtank just yet.

[plah831]

at least your fish wouldn't suffer from heart disease or high blood pressure! :D