high temp or salt? what killed my raph's?

FooF

FooF

Daveedka & Harlock are my heroes!
Feb 13, 2005
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www.illusioncamp.com
well, thanks to some great advice from a few people on this site, i seem to slowly be winning my battle with ich with almost no loss of scaleless fish.

however, a few days after adding the salt and bringing up my temp to a fairly steady 88F, my striped raphael cat died and my two spotted raphs started acting very strange and they also passed soon after.

they were all rather small, between 2-3" and were all (to my knowledge) quite healthy.

so what may have killed them? would it be the salt or the temp? :(
 
I would say the Temp.

Were the fish that died acting like unguided missles? 88 is pretty high IMO. I would lower the temp to at least 82. I would rather have Ich a little longer than stress them with too high of a temp.
For a long time I kept my tanks at 76 with no salt and had a lot of Ich problems. Now I keep my tank at 80 and keep a little salt in the water at all times. I keep cats and loaches and they all seem fine. I also never have Ich.

Joe
 
I'll vote for neither or all plus some. If they had an Ich infestation on their gills, you might have had little indication and it could have affected them in many ways. At higher temps water holds less oxygen, compound that with parasites on your gills... Or the stress of heat, salt, ich, etc. There is really no definitive answer. Sorry for your loss.
 
When using the high heat treatment it is advisable to lower your water level if you are using a HOB filter so the splashing will help to oxygenate the water. Or else add in an airstone.

Getting rid of ich in one fell swoop is a better idea than running salt on scalless fish for their whole life.
 
i see... i really never thought about them having it on their gills because ive never seen a raphael show signs of ich. its just strange that they are the only ones to die from it and not my pictus, sun, banjo, or bumblebee cats, let alone my eels... just seems like the raphs would have held up the best. maybe they just needed more oxygen... although my tank is pretty well airated.


anyways, besides the raphs, my eels are acting slightly uncomfortable, but not to the point of being severely stressed. im pretty sure theyre doing alright for now. everything else is acting fine, my pictus cats lost some whiskes due to the ich med treatment i gave about a week ago (before i started the salt/heat) but even they are acting alot better now, and have even gone back to playing w/eachother.

the majority of the ich spots i see now are on my botias. my blues and clowns as well as my speckletail show spots, but my skunk has cleared up completely.

on another note, i figured while i had all the salt in the water, why not try something out.... and yes, brine shrimp are hatching by the hundreds, haha.... the botias are having a field day with that. :)
 
TKOS said:
When using the high heat treatment it is advisable to lower your water level if you are using a HOB filter so the splashing will help to oxygenate the water. Or else add in an airstone.

Getting rid of ich in one fell swoop is a better idea than running salt on scalless fish for their whole life.
Click to expand...
indeed. my temps were quite low up to this point (around 75ish). i dont plan to use salt all the time, and i do have a dual fountain as well as a 12" air stone running all the time
 
Well, my raph has been in here for a while, and there have been times where I had plennnty of salt in the tank. It certainly didnt kill him, but I think that it did make him act a bit funny...he never was very active or hungry with all the salt. But anyways, my tank has never really been over 82 degrees...that I know of. (at least for a long amount of time), so I wouldnt know what to tell you about that. But I dont think salt is the culprit here.
 
Don't jump to false conclusions,
first of all ICH killed your fish, because the salt and heat wouldn't have been there without the ich. It sounds like temp problems to me, but you are dealing with combined issues, all arising from the ich being in your tank. It may be that the heat alone wouldn't have hurt them, but combine that with other things and bad news occurred. There is also the distinct possibility that you saw residual effects from the meds. If the meds stressed the fish badly, then you switched over (reasonably quickly) you may have had a weakened fish that couldn't react well to the changes.
Many many possibilities, but in all the end result is the same.

Aside from the bad news on the Raph's it is good to hear that the other fish are doing well, be careful with the Brine shrimp hatchery, you don't want to pollute a tank that already has problems going on.

Dave
 
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