OKAY... I am currently cycling my 40gal aquarium. I had 10 feeder goldish in there, and they got ich. I tried treating them with salt, and brought the temp up a bit. At the same time my ammonia spiked and i lost 3 fish-they all seemed pretty sick. SO...I went to work today, and my cute (but not so bright) significant other went to the pet store and talked to someone about this. There advice: Get rid of the feeders, get some new fish to cycle the tank with, and add some blue ich chemicals to kill the ich in the tank--continue the cycle and get my new fish... I got home today, and no more feeders, and I have some danios in my tank. Hubby didnt put the blue stuff in the water yet--i wont let him till i know we are going about this right. ALSO, the ammonia levels are starting to drop (around 1.0 now, from abiut 3.0). So do i use the blue stuff and leave my tank for a week or so--untill ammonia levels have been 0 for a while or what??? Will the ich medication kill all my "good" bacteria?? Also i have some water ready to do about a 20% change tomarrow...
cycling, ich and new fish?!
- Thread starter m.a.ramsay
- Start date
Tifftastic
"With your powers combined . . ."
I can't think of what the name for the chemical that makes QuickCure blue, but I have been told by a few people that it stays in the body of the fish its entire life and can later cause big problems. I have a problem using anything that is considered a cancer causing agent though.
I would just use the salt and turn the temp up and not add any more fish until the ich is gone. If I remember it takes about 2 weeks, even if you are not seeing signs of ich.
Thats just my thoughts on it though I am sure someone else will have some more advice.
I would just use the salt and turn the temp up and not add any more fish until the ich is gone. If I remember it takes about 2 weeks, even if you are not seeing signs of ich.
Thats just my thoughts on it though I am sure someone else will have some more advice.
1oooop
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*sigh* why do they treat feeder fish so bad
it makes me wanna cry every time I see the feeder fish tank :cry:
Well returning them is probably not a good idea if they have ich as well....raising the temp and adding salt is really the only way to go. Ich isn't what killed your fish at this point, it was the ammonia, so you need to be doing water changes to keep the ammonia at .25 ppm. Anything above that could cause lasting damage to the fish.
You can always try a combination of Melafix and Pimafix. I use it religiously. I wont hurt anything including the good bacteria. No guarantees but it has worked for me many times. The ammonia levels are most likely what caused the ich, major stress on the fish opens them up to disease. Are the levels still at 0?
Sorry KitoKatlin but ich is a parasite. It is no more caused by stress than a sore throat is caused by dry air. The stress can make it affect your fish more but the parasite is or is not present. In this tank it is now present so it must be treated. The treatment with malachite green or methylene blue can be quite effective if you follow all the directions and continue treatment for a week after all signs of the parasite on the fish are gone. Another effective treatment that works quite well is salt combined with high temperatures. The reason that you continue the treatment after all signs of the parasite are gone is simple. The life cycle of the parasite includes a short period of a couple of days where the parasite has been released by the sore on the fish and fallen to the substrate. A couple of days later the parasite becomes free swimming and goes looking for a host. The free swimming stage is when the parasites are killed by the medication and if the medication is not present at that time the fish are infected again. The medications do not work on the parasite when it is attached to your fish or when it is spending those couple of days in the substrate. What we really do is interrupt the life cycle by killing the free swimming stage.