HELP! Now I've lost a ram!

Thanks for the help. :)

I'll up the salt in both tanks and see how that goes. And do frequent water changes. If there is no improvement in the next couple of days, then I'll be adding meds.

Should I be adding something to combat this secondary infection though? Or should the salt help with that as well?
 
Since the life cycle of ich at tropical tank temperatures is approximately 3 days, your fish have been re-infested six times since you began treatment. If you are going to try increased salt (and gravel vacuuming) as your next strep, and you don't see an improvement within the next three days, it's time to look at your other options.

The preferred site for infestation for the ich parasites is the gills, by the way. Many fish which die from ich die from suffocation. Thus the need for urgency.
 
Harry Tolen said:
Since the life cycle of ich at tropical tank temperatures is approximately 3 days, your fish have been re-infested six times since you began treatment. If you are going to try increased salt (and gravel vacuuming) as your next strep, and you don't see an improvement within the next three days, it's time to look at your other options.
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I don't know if I'll even give it 3 days. I may use meds sooner. Is there a particular brand of medication you recommend?

The preferred site for infestation for the ich parasites is the gills, by the way. Many fish which die from ich die from suffocation. Thus the need for urgency.
Click to expand...

Is it ich that killed my fish though? Two of my fish have died -- one was a cory that had no visible signs of ich (do they get ich?) and a tiny streak of red on its side. It started to do poorly when I started treating for ich. The other was a ram that showed definite signs of fin rot in addition to being covered in ich. The platy that introduced the ich no longer has any ich cysts or fin damage.

BTW, the platies that are are sick now had been sick a number of months ago (internal parasites is what I treated for), and I thought they had completely returned to health...perhaps they didn't. It's also possible that what they had had was not internal parasites, but something else (TB was one diagnosis that I kept going back to as a possibility, but everyone I talked to said it was too rare.) At any rate, I assume they got as sick as they did this time because they were more susceptible.

IT's also possible that the ram wasn't 100% healthy prior to infection. As I mentioned earlier, I've since heard reports that people aren't having a lot of luck with fish from this LFS lately. I had to replace one ram that looked like it had a concave stomach. The ram I replaced it with was the one that died.
 
Update

The sickest platy died last night. The remaining fish in the 20 gal have no spots at all, and appear healthy. I believe the ich is gone, but will continue with salt and heat for a while longer, and keep an eye on the fish. I do believe that what this platy had started with was ich, but got a secondary infection that was probably velvet (the spots were smaller than ich and absolutely covered her) and/or fin rot. The platy that introduced the ich seems to have recovered well.

My remaining platy in the 10 gal has no ich spots at all, but still has a bit of fin damage and is resting on the gravel quite a bit. I'm suspecting that he's still not 100% since recovering from an internal parasite infection of a few months ago. Will monitor and treat him as needed.
 
i had the same problem, the same cure, and the same anding. the meds did nothing but killed some of my smaller or weaker fish. i also did melafix for fungus, but i think that salt worked for that problem too, because i stoped using melafix when the fish still had fungus, and just stoped with everything, and about a week later the fungus mostly was gone. so far everything is o.k., but i've been monitoring my tank too. hope our fish will stay problem free
 
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