I have a serious ich problem. Need help!

[duragon]

I did about a 25% water change once... the tank has only been set up for about 2-3 (maybe 4 by now) weeks though.

The problems didnt start untill 1 of the mollies gave birth. The problems started a day or two after. The mother molly has had a rough life. A few days after I got her, the top part of her lyretail broke off. Now there is a small piece of tail missing right in the middle and one of the fins under neath has a chunk missing.

Unfortunately, no chance of a hospital tank. I dont have the funds for duplicates of everything right now... The best I can do is try to keep the water good and hope they handle it themselves... or adding medication to the whole tank...

Should I put the carbon back in the filter and add salt while lowering the temp? or just add salt and lower the temp, or just add carbon and lower the temp?

Should I try to start doing 25% water changes daily to see if that helps in addition to anything else?

 

[THE V]

Alright these are the possibilities as I see it.

Chilodonella - a protozoan parasite - the quick cure should work on it. So I doubt it is this one.

Oodinium - a protozoan parasite - Salt treatment + quick cure should work on this one. I lost 200+ guppy fry to an outbreak of this pathogen. Took me two weeks of blue water to finally clean it up. I had a total of 3 outbreaks before I finally medicated it up daily with malachite green for two weeks. Interestingly it only seem to affect the guppies.

Ich - still not ruled out because the pictures are not clear enough to see. Salt treatment should take care of the problem.

I doubt it is a bacterial infection that is causing this. However as the parasites are doing skin damage, infection of the wounds is pretty much a given at this point. Feeding a antibiotic food would be beneficial.

 

[duragon]

Alright. So what do I do now?

 

[mel_20_20]

I agree this had to have started with a parasitic infection of some kind, and secondary bacteria infection of some kind is involved now.

I've dealt with Ich, and it was a strain that was resistant to the heat/salt method. I had to treat for 28 days at 86 degrees and finally got rid of the disqusting pests.

The blurry photos sure look like Ich, Oodinium is one parasite I've been fortunate to miss seeing in my fish.

I think The V's advice is to continue the salt and the Quick Cure and is the best course, hopefully any parasite will be taken care of between those two.

I still think I would back off of the high temperature to try to slow down any bacterial infection, though it may take a bit longer to finish the parasites off.

There's a good recipe I can post for you on mixing up antibiotic in food for your fish, however, Jungle Labs makes a medicated food for bacterial infection, it's pretty cheap, around 5 or 6 dollars at WalMart. I think it must not taste very good, my fish hate it, so you need to hold off food a bit to try to get them hungry. I think it's called: Jungle Labs Medicated Anti-Bacterial food.

You could try to soak the Jungle medicated food pellets in some garlic juice to make it more tasty. I keep minced garlic in a jar (purchased from the grocery store) in my fridge and I use some of the liquid from that. Fish love the taste of garlic. You can crush some fresh garlic and rub the pellets in the juice from that if you have fresh garlic.

Keep us posted. I hope things get better for you and your fishies.

 

[duragon]

So do I use salt and Quick Cure at the same time? Or do I just use 1 or the other?

 

[Cerianthus]

ALthough pics are blur, I think it is neither Chilo nor Oodinium.

DO you have have or did you add any new inverts recently such as snail,mussels,etc?

Can you google images of Copepod infestation on fish?

LMK if the images found resemble your symptoms?

 

[mel_20_20]

I've been searching non-stop for images of copepod infestation, so far I'm finding pictures of fish with fish lice, but no other photos of parasite infested fish that look like the photo duragon posted. I'm sure they're out there... I just can't find them.

If you have any photos, Cerianthus, that would help.

Lord..... while searching for that I found hundreds of other photos of horrible parasitic infected fish ... leaches, anchor worms, gah... **shivers**

Somehow I wound up on a page that shows the small catfish sp in the Amazon that loves ammonia and swims up the source of ammonia in humans and other mammals.... aaaaaaaaaaaaarrggggg

I have goose bumps....

Sorry for the momentary hijack....

 

[duragon]

Hahahaha... No snails or anything, only fake plants in the tank.

Ok, I got the masters kit my readings are:

pH: 7.6
Nitrite: 1.0
Ammonia: 1.0
Nitrate: 5.0ish (i think 10, my girlfriend thinks 5)

This morning I did a 25% water change, and when I added the water there was all kinds of mess stirred up! Fish waste and old food was everywhere! I will do another water change either tonight, or tomorrow, and take more readings. I added Quick Cure after doing the water change (I dont know if that would affect the readings of the test or not), and I turned the heat down.

Oh, and the water now smells really really bad. The second I walk in my room, it hits your nose...

The fish seem to be doing fine, with the exception of 1 molly who is stark white and used to be a golden yellow/orangy color.

Hope this info helps you guys.

Thanks.

 

[mel_20_20]

Did you vacuum the substrate, or just stir things up with the inflow of water from the water change? You need to do another water change ASAP.

Your ammonia and nitrites are dangerously high. Do you have Prime to put in there in an emergency dose of 5 times the normal dose? This will help detox the ammonia and nitrite in the tank.

If you don't have Prime, please try to get some ASAP. I can't tell you how much this will help protect your fish while you're dealing with water quality issues. It has saved my fish and my sanity many times.

The water smells bad? What does it smell like? Rotten eggs? If you have fairly deep substrate that you haven't vaccumed in a long time it is possible that you had some pockets of poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas that have been released.

If it's just a fishy, decaying food smell, and not like rotten eggs then it's probably not poisonous gas.

Your tank may have an even bigger ammonia spike, the numbers may shoot up, if you just stirred up a ton of gunk in the substrate.

You need to do another water change right now, if you can possilby do it.

You have to get the ammonia and nitrite to 0ppm right away. This is really contributing to the problems in the tank. I'm sorry if this scares you, it is sereious, don't beat yourself up - we've all been there, too.

When you do water changes, from now on, vacuum the substrate really well to remove poo, leftover food, and gunk that sifts down into the gravel and rots.

For now, since it's so stirred up you need to do another water change and vacuum as much as you can out of it.

Aagain, you need Prime water conditioner. It will help with the out of control ammonia and nitrite until things settle down.

The salt has probably been helping with nitrite poisoning, thankfully, but ammonia burns the fish, their skin gills, and eyes.

Nitrite displaces (short version of the process) the O2 in the gills and they are deprived of O2, suffocating.

What was your ph reading?

 

[duragon]

pH is 7.6

I cant do another water change till about 10pm.. Most of the gunk has settled down again. I will do another water change tonight, but I will hit it with a 5x dose of Prime now, and check it again when I get back to see what its doing.