Gold Nugget Pleco Ich treatment- case study

SoCalDiscus

SoCalDiscus

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Jan 31, 2007
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Southern California
Hi All,

I am creating a new thread documenting my treatment of Gold Nugget Plecos for ich. I didn't see a lot of information regarding this (specific to the GNP), so I thought I would share my experience in case it might be useful for others. I originally posted on an earlier thread about using Coppersafe with the GNP. I will incorporate some of that relevant background info here for continuity. I have been generally following the information contained on: [URL="http://aquafacts.net/components/com_mambowiki/index.php/Ich which"]http://aquafacts.net/components/com_mambowiki/index.php/Ich which[/URL] was suggested to me in a post from Mgamer20o0.

I am in the middle of treatment as I am creating this thread and will update as things change. So far I have lost one pleco and another is beginning to look weakened.

-Eric
 
Background

I started with 4 3" Gold Nugget Plecos (L018) in a 20 gal. (17.3 actual) quarantine tank (hang on the back filter). They will eventually be in my discus tank (hopefully), so I had been keeping them at a pH of ~ 6.8 and a temperature of 84.

Timeline:

Sunday Afternoon (12/9/07)
Noticed the Plecos had ich. I bumped up the temp to 88 (from 84) over about 12 hours, and I also moved my extra UV sterilizer into the tank. I generally have not had issues with Ich at 84 degrees and these guys are new. So, I’m a little concerned that I might have one of the nastier strains of ich. Luckily I was good and I have them by themselves in a bare bottom quarantine tank (with wood). Having discus has forced good quarantine habits. My plan for now is 2x daily water changes to get as many cysts as possible over the next few days. I have a heated RO reservoir system so I can match the water parameters exactly. If the heat treatment is effective I should see a reduction in the spots over the next few days given the sped-up life cycle. If I don't see a reduction, then I may well need to attempt medication.

Monday (12/10/07)
I did a partial water change in the morning and in the evening to try and get any cysts out of the tank. The higher temperature (88) seems to be making them much more active in the daytime. I noticed that the plecos were spending more time off of the wood and on the glass in the mid to upper water level. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. Two are still chewing on the wood, but repositioning much more often and two are on the glass at the mid water level scooting around. I guess active is better than wondering if they are still alive. A few times they were swimming up and breaching the surface, so I lowered the water level and decided to reposition the output of the UV sterilizer to break the surface of the water to get a better mix with air.

Here are pictures of the disease progress on Monday:
IMG_1836.JPG


IMG_1870.JPG
 
NICE WILD TYPE MAN!!!!! Is that your Discus???

Oh yeah treat ICk with malachite green can include formalin or potassium permanganate.
 
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Salt Treatment

Tuesday (12/11/07)
Bad news. One of the plecos died today. He did have a small scrape on him from before the outbreak, so I would imagine that didn't do him any favors. The amount of infection on each fish has actually appeared to increase instead of decrease as I would expect after nearly 48 hours of heat treatment. Given the shortened life-cycle period at that temperature I would expect to see some change after that amount of time (feel free to let me know if your opinion differs).

With the current situation of more spots, and a dead pleco, I have decided to try salt in addition to heat at this point. The plecos are quarantined in a 20 gal. tank (17.3 actual) and I have dissolved and added 2 teaspoons of API aquarium salt. I decided to try salt because it seemed like it might be less harsh than copper and I have read that it can have therapeutic effects on wounds.

I added the salt about an hour ago and although I have not had any jump attempts, 2 of the 3 remaining fish are on the glass near the top instead of in the mid water section where they were with just the temperature increase. This is also with the light on which is not typical behavior (I turned the light on to take the pictures). So I will be keeping an eye on them as I increase the salt content. My target dosage is 1 teaspoon per gallon which seems to be the lower bound of an effective salt treatment. I will work towards that level very slowly as I watch the behavior of the fish.


Here are updated pictures as of Tuesday:
gnp3.1.JPG


gnp3.2.JPG


gnp3.3.JPG


gnp3.4.JPG
 
RedScare said:
NICE WILD TYPE MAN!!!!! Is that your Discus???

Oh yeah treat ICk with malachite green can include formalin or potassium permanganate.
Click to expand...

Thanks! Yeah, this is a wild one that I got up in San Francisco at Sunrise Tropicals. http://www.sunrisetropicals.com/ They have awesome fish. I brought a few of them home in the car. They survived the 7 hour drive just fine.

I am currently treating with salt, as you will see in some of my later posts. Given the sensitive nature of the GNPs, I thought I would try salt first before I tried other medicines.
 
Friday (12/14/07)

The 3 remaining plecos are still alive. There are still spots. I will post some pictures I took when I have some extra time later on. We are up to 24 teaspoons of salt that were administered at 2 teaspoons per dosage dissolved in aquarium water. We added very slowly over about 2 days. One of the plecos has some areas that are looking lighter than the rest, so this is a little concerning, but they don't seem too stressed out by the salt. Also, I lowered the temperature down to 86 instead of 88 after adding a few doses of salt to reduce the stress level on the fish.
 
Poor plecos- they look so itchy! Good luck, and I hope they make it.
 
Saturday (12/15/07)

Two more plecos died last night. I will edit this post and add pictures when I have more time. So, maybe salt isn't the best thing for them. It is impossible to know whether the salt killed them or the ich. Either way, they didn't survive. For the one remaining pleco we decided to medicate with General Cure, which is a combo of copper sulfate, metronidozole, and something else. After 12 hours, the pleco is still alive. So, it doesn't seem to be any harder on him than the salt was. I would assume we would have seen some adverse reaction if there was going to be a problem. We did a 50% water change to remove some salt before we added the meds. I will post more on the dosages used later.
 
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