ICK aftermath...HELP!!!

R

Red_Terror

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Nov 22, 2005
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Like the title states, i won the ICK battle but unfortunately i still have to deal with the aftermath. My little red devils has some open wounds and a light case of fin and tail rot... so i'm currently on the third day of treating them with maracyn... my questions are, why is the water cloudy? I took my carbon filter out prior to the first day of treatment(maracyn, salt levels are the same) because it was still fresh... then i did a 20% water change today after seeing the cloudy water... did i killed all my good bacteria colonies? Should i continue with the treatment and just do more water change? I'm lost please :help:

Thanks a bunch!!!
 
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I think you just answered your own question. When you put the carbon filter back in you will see most of that cloudy water dissappear. A decent amount of beneficial bacteria live in the carbon filter and the cloudy water could just be an ammonia spike because your filter media has been removed.

Maybe you should give your fish the treatments in the morning and do small partial water changes at night, therefore ensuring that your fish is getting the meds and you are removing any excess ammonia/nitrites.
 
Maracyn does not kill your bio filter. Depending upon how your filter is set-up removing the carbon will cause significant damage to the bio filter... If you do not have a bio wheel there is a high probability that is what hapened. The filter housing and any mechanical media left in the filter should contain enough bacteria to help jumpstart the "cycling" process.

Maracyn and maracyn II often cause cloudiness in the water--i even think the maracyn II label explicity states that.

The only way to know if this is what happened is to test the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels. Cloudiness is not the yardstick or guideline for determining if your bio-filter has been damaged. Test results are.

YES, finish the 5 day dosage of maracyn. Never use antibiotics improperly. Improper usage creates treatment resistant bacteria. Don't think you want to start the war of escalation in your tank. FOLLOW LABEL DIRECTIONS!
 
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Actually, Sully, Maracyn contains erythamicin, which is an antibiotic. Antibiotics kill bacteria and they don't care which bacteria they kill.

Test the water and post the parameters. Keep doing water changes of at least 50% daily and continue dosing with maracyn (now that you've started). You'll have to re-establish your bacterial colony (mini-cycle) once you've finished the regime.

What did you treat the ich with and for how long?

Most cases of fin rot and fungus can be cleared up quickly with daily water changes of at least 50% and the addition of salt (1 tsp per gallon) in severe cases.

Roan
 
whew! :thud: Thanks alot guys!!! i will surely finish the treatment because they(fish) looked alot better now compared to when i first started. BTW they are not affected by the cloudiness, i was just worried to what might have caused it because it only took a couple of hours for it to turn from clear to cloudy... I think the large concentration of salt in the water may have caused a chemical overload after the third day of using maracyn... i think i remembered from chemistry is that when a solvent reaches the maximum amount of solute that it can hold, it will do such a thing(cloudiness= suspended undissolved particles)... correct me if im wrong...

i used salt and heat for ick for the length of almost a week and a half... i still have the temp on 82 deg. and the same amount of salt just to be safe...

All my perimeters seems fine... i guess i'll just do more water changes after treatment and replace the filter... oh yeah, i don't have a bio wheel and i didn't save the filter media that i had because i know that if it dries up, that means that the good bacteria are dead too...

Thanks again!!!
 
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Roan Art said:
Actually, Sully, Maracyn contains erythamicin, which is an antibiotic. Antibiotics kill bacteria and they don't care which bacteria they kill.
Click to expand...
Sully is right. You should always continue any antibiotic regimen through the end. This is from the USFDA's website: Some research has shown that antibiotics are given to patients more often than guidelines set by federal and other healthcare organizations recommend. For example, patients sometimes ask their doctors for antibiotics for a cold, cough, or the flu, all of which are viral and don't respond to antibiotics. Also, patients who are prescribed antibiotics but don't take the full dosing regimen can contribute to resistance.

Red_Terror: Interesting. I am also fighting a cloudiness problem and also just finished an ich treatment using salt. I have been testing ammonia and nitrites and they have read 0 all through the cloudiness, so I don't think it is a problem with the bio-filter. My wife thinks the cloudiness is green, which would mean algae, but I don't think it is. I wish I could figure it out though. It looks awful.
 
EcoPit... yeah, it is very interesting... i did a water change last night and the cloudiness seems to subside a little bit... i will do more right after im done with the maracyn treatment... i guess the cloudiness on mine were maracyn particles that didn't get diluted completely... my baby fishes looks pretty good though... BTW, how did your ick problem started? was it from a new fish? mine was... thanks for the info, i am on the last day of treatment... thanks again!!!
 
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