New to hobby - question about Ich.

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Rebschan

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Mar 24, 2007
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Well, I am so glad to have found a forum such as this one - I'm new to keeping a tropical tank and I have found some great ideas here for what to do with mine. However, since I am new to all of this I have a question about what I should do with a possible Ich breakout...

My tank is a little over a month old - it's a 25g, live plants, heated to 78/79 degrees. I have 4 zebra danios, 2 dwarf gouramis, 3 tetras (1 flame, 1 serpae, 1 black skirt). Everyone was healthy - I had only one instance of cotton mouth on the black skirt when I first got him, but I used Melafix and got rid of that real fast.

Last weekend I decided to add 3 more danios to increase their school a bit. I unfortunately didn't use a containment tank. When I added them I made sure to limit the ammount of store water that got into my tank .

The new danios were fine for the first two days - then one morning one of the new danios was dead, and I noticed a small white spot on one of the other danio's fin - so pulled both of the remaining new danios out, managed to set up a hospital tank with some supplies from my brother's. (10g, heater, air stone) I added a half dosage of Formalin/malachite green medicine (since they were small I didn't think I should do a full dosage)

Within two days the white spot had gone away, they looked healthy - then they both up and died. Then one of the other danios in the main tank got what looked like what pictures of enteric red mouthlook like. I removed him...kept treating the main tank with Melafix. Everyone had been looking good - I did a nice big water change. I had seen no new health issues until last night. The black skirt has a single 'grain of salt' on his one side and he was very stressed (almost all grey). Right now I have him pulled out into a new hospital tank set up. I don't see anything wrong with anyone else - they are all acting normal.

I don't know what I should do though - should i treat everyone even without visible signs? Should i just treat the black skirt and the let the others sit in the main tank? If i just treat the black skirt do i wait until the cyst falls off to treat because the meds are rough on him? I don't want to stress the other tetras if i don't have to...and from what i've seen so far the serpae tetra can't deal with the high heat from the heat/salt treatment for ich.

Sorry for being so long...I know to give the best advice people need a good background...

Thanks in advance for whatever help you can give...
 

cohazard

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Apr 6, 2004
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Salt heat treatment:

I've always used the salt/heat treatment, and it works like a charm.

Raise the temp gradually to 85F.

Then, using a 5g bucket, add 1/4 tsp. of salt (regular kind is fine) per gallon, per hour.

So if your tank is 25g, then 1/4 tsp of salt per gallon equals 6.25 tsp's of salt per hour. Mix the 6.25 tsp's of salt with tank water i nthe bucket, then add to the main tank.

Do that once at one hour intervals for eight hours, which will get you to 2tsp's per gallon.

You're supposed to leave it in for several weeks, but one to two weeks does the trick IME.

HTH
 

justflow1983

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Mar 26, 2007
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I do the same and it works great. Keep in mind that the sickest fish will probably be goners since any ich treatment only kills the spores and not the actual infection, but anything relatively healthy when you start treatment will usually stay that way.
 
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